Talking about 'does anybody care about anything non-covid' - I've been wondering for days why nobody talks about Northern Ireland here!

I am sure Music and Fatman will be here soon with the 'LOL' button.

That is quite true, we (the US centric west) have already lost, it´s a war the Americans simply don´t understand, their whole military is ready for a WW2 type conflict, thing is they have over the years built such a huge military potential and now nobody wants to play, Iran is all "Nah! We good!" N-Korea can´t get their act together even though they have the potential. Iraq and Afghanistan is a shit show, China is the creepy one they can´t get their heads around so it´s only the "evil, red, commie Russkies" left.
Biden simply can´t be seen to be weak and Putin won´t back down either.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdji...atchPublishing

He who fires first, dies second.

__________________
Back in Bavaria, god´s own belly button.

This phrase certainly sounds a lot less sinister than I think you intended.

So you think they'll pull out?

There were French peace-keepers there but they got panned and went home. They were chicken Kiev.

The funny thing is, people don't realize we have a capability.

The UK has LIAG. The Russian program is pretty solid - and seems focused on CNI (Ukraine was allegedly a test bed). The North Korean one, allegedly, provides for a large part of the foreign income for the country. The Chinese program is stunning in it's size and complexity, and is very geared towards obtaining IP. The Israeli one seems to focus on tactical information gathering, and threat removal (did you see the tweet from the Israeli cyber program where they "eliminated" a threat? https://www.zdnet.com/article/in-a-f...an-air-strike/ In a nutshell, they identified a cyber threat, and then in a combined manner used a targeted strike to remove the whole building. That stopped the cyber threat.)

Heck, even the Swiss have a cyber-offensive program. That's a fun one to explain with the concept of neutrality...

The Chinese have replicated the Western model of conquest-through-loans, and are investing HEAVILY in Africa (with caveats like 70% of the loan to build the new roads must be spent on Chinese firms). Most African nations are now heavily indebted to the Chinese government.

Give it a few years, and they can request literally anything they want.

There was a wonderful analysis of a port that no-one wanted to invest in, as it was deemed uneconomical and needless. Guess what, the Chinese government funded it, Chinese firms built it... and when the port was uneconomical, and couldn't repay the loan, they got a second loan to repay the first loan... except the second loan came with much more aggressive collateral...

While the US managed to stop a Russian army base being build in Djibouti (tactical for the red sea shipping + oil routes), the Chinese have just build a military base.

I'm a bit in awe as to how the Chinese government has taken a country from the brink of poverty, to the most powerful nation on earth. If only we could get over our egos long enough to learn something....

The question is - at what point will the new war have more casualties in the originating powers and not in third countries? My guess is when we run out of a resource - be it oil, water, toilet paper or something else...

I got my extra 12 pack of TP last week.

I'm just waiting for Putin to parade all those forces that NATO countries most fear in his
annual Red Square parades.

No time now- but it is all pretty 'simple' really.

But will you post a photo?

And I bet it has to do with Brexit.

Now funnily enough, it has, 100%.

As for Ukraine:

Responses to Nuclear Proliferation CrisesThe EU has also responded with varying intensity to nuclear proliferation crises, i.e.situations where a state has developed nuclear weapons or behaved in a way that arosesuspicions that it intended to do so. The Union’s performance in this field has not beenuniform. It is in this domain that the EU ’s least concerted performance can be identified.Still, some examples constitute an exception to this rule.1. UkraineIn the early years of the past decade, the EU made a notable contribution to the resolutionof the proliferation crisis in Ukraine. The crisis erupted when the Ukrainian Parliamentrefused to ratify the Lisbon Protocol to the START-1 Treaty, which foresaw the removalof the nuclear weapons inherited from the Soviet Union from its territory and the coun-try’s accession to the NPT as a NNWP. Ukraine’s eventual ratification of the Protocol wasnegotiated primarily with the US. Diverse incentives were provided, including direct fi-nancial contributions by the US and security assurances by the five official NWS. For itspart, the EU signed with Ukraine a Partnership and Co-operation agreement dealing withthe whole spectrum of economic and political relations and made its implementationconditional on the latter’s renunciation of nuclear weapons. While this package was notthe principal incentive offered to Ukraine for signing of the Protocol, the EU’s contribu-tion complemented well US efforts and was instrumental in bringing about success.

Ukraine if of course very closely linked now to Russia, no?


And of course, Irak, Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan... How can we prevent them acquiring, and then more and more, nuclear weapons, and countries like the UK ramp up the numbers massively- leading to nuclear proliferation elsewhere, and in particular in the above mentionned countries.

North Korea, India and Pakistan already have nuclear weapons.

The text breaks indicate this may have been copied from some where. Source ?

From this pdf.

https://www.academia.edu/5419074/The...?auto=download

I have to say it is very bad form to pretend that someone else's text is one's own.

Very much so. Search for "Nato Defender 2021". What would the US do if Russia performed massive military manoeuvres in Mexico's northern half, even along its northern border?

Russia's moves look very much like a reaction to US/NATO aggression. Yet again.

Actually I think that this comic is more poignant than you may think. The Americans and indeed Nato are prepared to fight a WW2 style war, Guns, Tanks , bombers etc. And they would be pretty good at it. But that is not how wars are fought these days. WW3 is being fought with computers and disinformation, trade and propaganda, influence and money. And I think that "The West" has already lost, not only lost but the military industrial complex hasn´t even realized that that the battle has been long joined.

Part of the propaganda is that we should be scared of the Russian hacker army instead of looking under the hood at their decreasing population.

On top of that, a billion or so of people in China do not agree with Russian ideas and since 1969 they hold the line. Since then we live in a triangular diplomacy world......god bless Mr. Kissinger.