It is like WWII. German Flak (AA guns) was relatively successful, but every shot was a shot not delivered to the front lines, but on the other hand, the AA could not prevent the Allies from destroying all the cities. The front troops could not answer the Soviet artillery bombardments because of ammunition shortages. And in Ukraine, every drone that hunts other drones is one drone less on the frontlines.
Drones are cheap -- because they are often built with Chinese components, which are low-cost both because of Chinese manufacturing skill and because of the massive scale of Chinese production. Whether the drone is Ukrainian, Russian, European, or US -- most of them rely on some critical Chinese components.
This is one of the mysteries of the proxy war in the Ukraine. China could change the trajectory of that conflict substantially simply by taking effective means to deny drone components to either or both sides. Instead, China seems to be quite happy selling to both sides. What game is China playing?
Whatever game they're playing Gavin, in one aspect it appears similar to the one played by the US during WW2, that is profiting from both sides of the conflict. I even heard that after the War was over firms like GM and Ford were generously compensated for the damages caused to their factories by Allied bombings. Ycnmiu.
The race is to enable the drones to use AI to evade destruction before detonation . We are already seeing drones becoming aware of interception and using evading tactics . How long before drones have expendable "wingmen" ? We are also seeing missiles which have countermeasures to combat air defence . War is driving the increase in the advancement the drone tech as it has done for weapons in every war. R&D on steroids.
There are all kinds of possibilities for UAVs (drones are actually bees and musical tones….)! VTOL UAV interceptors modeled after something like the Ring UAV would make for a good screening defensive line for example. Also having AA MLRS in miniature with excellent guidance and coordination would help a great deal.
The war has become a laboratory for drones (UAV's) and its soon going to be a race to build the cheapest and most scalable units . AI is already built in for the bigger units and as miniaturisation increases this will be the path forward for surveillance . Russian assaults (and probably Ukraine) are assisted by drone surveillance and bombardment . I would assume that China is using this conflict to improve their designs and tactics for when the USA decides to set their proxy's on them. The West has started to realise that its not worth using a $20,000 missile to destroy a $2000 drone(UAV). Drones are ALSO bees and musical tones ;)
Why would one want to carpet bomb such an old beautiful city if it brings only distraction and suffering for civilians?
I don't get this way of thinking. If I can reach my goals by other means why destroy? - seems to be a really perverted western mindset. It's so inhuman, like your name here.
Fish cant swim with no water. Civilians are the water. Not to mention it's civilians who make the wars. Putin and Zelensky are civilians. Their oligarchs are civilians. etc If you were to ask Gen Sherman civilians should be primary targets then army who are just coolies doing what civilians tell them to do.
That's the way he won the US Civil war over Lee's masterful Generalship.
And they voted overwhelmingly for a revolutionary and highly people-centred government, that had for example made interest-free ( a term which sends a cold shiver down every jewish spine) loans available for the citizens to purchase farms and homes with all the necessary accoutrements - the loans being cancelled if they went on to have four children, and pro rata for fewer.
The NSDAP 25 point manifesto is a complete revelation to those who ever read it, which of course, our present leaders are reluctant for us to do, lest we realise how badly they have conned us all.
read the article: usually, but not "only" the left eye. but you're right, it's all conjecture anyway. we don't have the information that Macron's bloodied eye is connected to the ritual executed on him by this big club that we're not in.
I live in Moscow region, and while it is likely not so bad in the South, the snow has in fact been heavy enough to cause problems. And yes the holidays DO slow things down, as strange as that might seem to thr American mind.
Well if the eastern express is so successful for Russia and the large majority of Ukraine was living poorly before the conflict, you’d have to imagine that the west financing these guys, who have the same productive resourceful, patriotic, energy as the people they are fighting, would be fierce. The sad part is Ukraine is fighting for the side that kept them impoverished to begin with…
Forcibly conscripted, given no military training to speak of, and the Kiev dictatorship has Nazi foreign mercenaries behind them to shoot them if they retreat, and control the skies above with FPS drones if they try to surrender.
They don't even do much fighting, by many accounts, they are simply there as sacrifices to slow the Russian advances down, simply by BEING there.
Sadly that's the impression I've got too. I even feel sorry for the hundreds or thousands of deluded Colombian mercs who arrive and get droned immediately. They never get paid, nor their families get any compensation.
I didn't know that. It fits with the reputation of Colombian gangs though.
However some of the grunts featured on TG channel TrackaNaziMerc are just ordinary people: hairdressers, taxi drivers or CoD players who join up. Though I think that most people who need some extra cash start an ebay sideline or something, rather than travel to a foreign land to murder and torture.
Well when we consider the decades of low intensity conflict and infiltration Colombia and surrounding nations have endured, it’s no surprise that the flower of brutality has blossomed. One has to wonder if the mercs from SudAmerica got the memo about the Slavs attitude toward their kind before getting on the plane….
Agree, but since they are no more, it’s sad for those left behind. But indeed, giving their circumstances, it may be the easiest way to make some money. That the money is not being paid to the family makes it rven sadder.
A similar injustice affects Ukrainian families whose fathers and sons are deliberately classified as missing in action to deny them the compensation they are owed. Meanwhile, corrupt commanding officers continue to draw their pay. In stark contrast, Zelensky remains insulated from the realities of the war, living in luxury and spending extended periods abroad in high-end hotels with fine food and wine, while manipulating casualty figures, rejecting Russian refrigerated lorries carrying thousands of bodies of fallen AFU soldiers, and reinforcing mainstream media narratives that understate the true scale of losses.
And you would assume that the western secret services know all of this as well, but deliberately feeding the false narrative. Probably also because Macron, Starmer, Merz, Rutte, FondOfLying, Kallas are not interested in the realities and thus have become war criminals.
Nobody will risk paying in advance, but probably there is a "sign-on bonus." If paid in advance, who says you won't desert at the first stop once you got pay?
Why would you feel sorry for violent young men who take money to kill people? Or their families if they knowingly approve of their children doing this?
I worded that badly: I should say "I sometimes feel sorry"...and it's for the hapless fools who don't know what they are signing up for.
When I was at school a few people joined the British Army, and they weren't the brightest; I don't think they really thought much about what they were doing. Two of them were idiots who I wouldn't have let be in charge of fireworks, let alone actual weapons!
Yes I know what you mean. However, when those people joined the British Army in the 60s and 70s (I assume that's what you mean) they went in to travel the world and learn a trade - they didn't think they'd be doing any fighting.
Mercenaries are a whole different thing and I have no sympathy for people who willingly take money to kill people, however ignorant because mostly they are people who have a penchant for violence and a disregard for innocents; some are born psychopaths. Then there are those "noble" idiots who bought the propaganda and think themselves virtuous while committing violence and taking a paycheck for it etc.
Not all Ukrainians fight because 'they don't really have a choice'- some fight for an "idea," some for hatred of "moskali," some revenge for their loved ones being killed.
Mark, you underestimate the industrial grade propaganda Ukrainians were exposed since 1991. My life-long Ukrainian friends tell me that they "hate Russians" - I'm like since WHEN I knew you from teens, it's the first time I find out you hated Russians?
After seeing woke burn through the western world , nothing would surprise me . Logic and common sense have been lost in favour of emotional manipulation and victim mentality . Nobody seems to understand that war will destroy civilisation . Its notable that we have another major conflict just as the survivors of the last are gone.
The fact that the AFU holds on, continues to counter attack and continues to be able to shift forces seemingly at will from crisis to crisis, even launches the occasional Airstrike with JDAM's, continues to reach targets inside Russia, continues to attack ships in the Black Sea...all of that must raise at least some questions about the real capacity of the Russian Army and Navy.
This is not to suggest that Russia is not grinding forward. But it seems to me that continuation of reform remains a critical necessity in the MOD.
It's also should remind us of Cicero's maxim that the "The sinews of war are infinite money". In the midst of war the Russian MOD only has 120 billion per year to spend while the US war department is spending (borrowing) 1 trillion per year with Trump agitating for 1.5 trillion.
How much of the Russian Army operating in Ukraine is actually operating on a shoestring budget ? Much of the success or failure on the LOC seems to come down to the deployment of elite units - those units each side fells to be capable and motivated enough to spend funds on fully kitting out.
Money can' t win a war. Men do. Americans do not want to fight, Europeans neither, nor they can because the shrink by nature and Ukraine is running out of 'em. Your money elite deepstate fed view does not work on the battlefield.
Men certainly, but Russia has men out of patriotism and the ability to pay them generously. Besides men it takes weapons, ammunition, transport, sensors and all of these in the "modern era" require vast infrastructure created and sustained by money. Ukraine has endured this long because the west pours as much money into Ukraine as Russia is able to spend.
To say that money is the sinews of war does not depreciate the motivation and bravery of the men. It does not make them less, it simply puts into perspective another, important aspect of the balance of forces.
If we could compare the best Russian units; how richly they are kitted out and backstopped with expensive support of every kind compared to the average Russian Army infantry unit, I suspect we would find a big difference. I doubt its entirely due to the unwillingness of the Army to lavish money, training and support onto more of the Army, it will come down to budget. There is never enough money to satisfy all of the commanders wants - thats as true in the US Army as it is in the Russian.
Thanks Simplicius, much appreciation for the larger scale maps. The youtube mappers seldom provide such overviews, just jerky moves from one small scale view to another.
Whether their capital cities are worth taking or not, large buffer zones in the Sumy and Chernigov regions are required for protection against drones. There is no need to govern this territory, just occupy it as payback for the Kursk incursion.
So the West is scared of Oreshnick and Micron announced they need one of their own. Yah, well, there are a few problems there. Over the last 30 years the West has prioritized the following in its universities:
1. Womens' studies (whatever that is),
2. Transgenderism,
3. Political science,
4. Law,
5. International relations.
While these subject areas are great for bilking students out of thousands of dollars in tuition fees, the graduates of these programs are completely useless to the economy or the defense of a country. Most NATO officers have graduate degrees in these fields, which explains much.
I went through university in Canada in the late eighties, electrical engineering. TA=teaching assistance, these people supervise labs, seminars and tutorials. They are graduate students. Obviously in engineering the subject matter was math, physics, chemistry and pure engineering. I had only ONE Canadian TA in 5 years of engineering, the rest were from overseas, mostly Chinese and Indian. The Canadians were all getting MBAs or law degrees. You might get a better salary with an MBA but its not that great for building up an economy.....or an Orechnick.
It was pointed out to Catherine Austin Fitts by a guy from the People's Republic of China in the 1980s: 70-80% of our legislators are engineers; 70-80% of your legislators are lawyers. An unfortunate disparity as the world was entering a technological age, when the people needed to understand the tech they were writing laws and weighing in on policies about.
According to the first US Constitution, no legislator could be a lawyer - because by definition, each had to swear an oath to "The Bar" prior to starting out on that lucrative career path - the acronym standing for "British Accreditation Registry" so you can see the slight conflict of interest which would immediately rear its ugly head.
As time went on, though, such irritating and pedantic considerations were laid aside, and thus the US legislature today is largely peopled by directly treasonous individuals who are loyal to Britain rather than the US - or more specifically, to the jewish cabal which controls that nation, and has done so since the mid 17th century, when Cromwell allowed them to re enter the sceptred isle.
Learn something new every day, had no idea that's where the acronym came from or about that early prohibition. Brings to mind the Brandeis quote: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Mr Brandeis could have applied that quote to himself, and to his - and his fellow Democrat SC Judges’ - economically pig ignorant, Constitution-twisting support for the campaign of barmy price fixing, crop destroying, quota setting, cartel creating Peronist laws enacted by FDR, a milquetoast Stalin and the most overrated POTUS in history.
It was a widespread fashion among upper class politicians back then. Putting politicians on the payroll came in a few decades later (Churchill excepted), as their general quality and social status declined.
And then, finally, all the way down to the bottom of the rotten sump, you end up with the likes of LFI stooge Starmer, who has just fired a police chief for making a rational and entirely correct judgment, as the law specifically required him to do, about the feral Judeosupremacist louts of Maccabi Tel Aviv. What other nations’ serial violent football thugs would be fawned over and put on a media and Westminster pedestal like that? That episode tells you all you need to know about UKanian politicians' bootlicking servility to their Israeli patron-crybullies. They love the sweet, juicy financial carrots, but how they cringe at the blue and white stick...
There was no such restriction in the constitution and "The Bar" has never been an acronym for "British Accreditation Registry"
The term "the bar" in a legal context comes from the physical barrier or railing in a courtroom that separated the public area from the space occupied by judges, lawyers, and court officials. To be "called to the bar" meant you were allowed to pass this barrier and practice before the court.
"Bar" is cognate with "Barrier" through the Latin / Old Norman French "Barre".
Nobody was stitching up acronyms like B.A.R. in late 18th century Britain or America.
Find me this "British Accreditation Register", who complied it, where they complied it and whose names are on it.
Show me where, in any draft of the constitution it says "no legislator could be a lawyer", paragraph and line please.
Is not the case that James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and John Rutledge were all both lawyers and founding fathers who signed the constitution?
Find me ANY professional association, British or American who used an acronym for their name in the 18th century.
No doubt many lies are told to obscure reality by those who wish for reality to be obscured. How do I know that this story of the "British Accreditation Register" is not one of those lies and that YOU are not one of the obscurers?
I will know this by evidence. Evidence in support of your claim from multiple independent sources which I can cross reference against each other.
I can find no official recognition that such an acronym ever existed, esp in relation to the American Bar Association. I have to agree with you. Neither is there any evidence that I have seen that there was an earlier version of the US Constitution.
I also believe such claims should be accompanied by actual evidence to support them.
look up British Crown Temple: "...The governmental and judicial systems within the United States of America, at both federal and local state levels, is owned by the “Crown,” which is a private foreign power....[....] all Bar Associations throughout the world are signatories and franchises to the international Bar Association located at the Inns of Court at Crown Temple, London..." - https://ia802808.us.archive.org/35/items/pdfy-A3_v4SEVxCudIit2/2014%20the_crown_temple.pdf
The 'first Constitution', if it was as you say it was, had absolutely the right idea: as we’ve seen here with the vile Blair and the wretched Starmer, no one has less respect for the spirit of the law than a barrister (as we call trial lawyers here). We too are drowning under a plague of third rate hack parasite lawyers in our Parliament and throughout our State. But your BAR acronym story sounds very unlikely. The common law legal system of England and Wales is separate to the largely civil law system of Scotland, so there is not and never has been any such thing as a British legal system or British Bar. The British Accreditation Registry is a scientific/ technical standards agency.
It seems that those men had "absolutely the right idea," but as I implied, the right ideas will rapidly be removed from the lexicon if the subject of money and power intrudes into the discussion.
By simple prima facie logic, then, the "Bar" explanation I gave - to howls of disapproval - looks to be correct.
As to the superiority of English over Scottish law, it is self-evident, as the Scots make up only 10% of the population, so their system will be confined to groups of savages with blue faces, whereas the English system will be carried around the world.
I am not sure that “BAR” is derived from this acronym. In my humble opinion, there are two possible explanations:
- According to the first, BAR is derived from places where drinks are served. Of course, lawyers are human beings who also need to hydrate, but I reject this interpretation.
- The other is simply that BAR is derived from the French “BARRE” and “BARREAU”.
BARRE is the place where one defends one's case before a magistrate. And BARREAU is the name given to the congregation of lawyers in French.
Oh, well, given that George Washington didn't have any formal education, he almost qualified by Lenin's "any scullery maid must be able to govern the state"
No, the original U.S. Constitution, or any of its amendments, never prohibited a president from being a lawyer; in fact, many early presidents were lawyers, and the Constitution doesn't restrict any profession for the presidency, only requiring the president to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident for 14 years. The confusion might come from the Prohibition Era (18th Amendment) or debates about lawyers in government, but no amendment bans lawyers from the presidency. "
Doubtless you would also say that "No legislation bars a foreigner born in Kenya" from becoming President either, or "Every President must demonstrate mental fitness before assuming the role."
The whole point of US political history is that many things which were by no means in the interests of the population nevertheless went on to be inflicted on them - I have given two examples of this, but one of the most egregious surely has to be the institution of something we now fondly refer to as a federal reserve bank, and its bedfellow, the IRS.
Today: American Bar Association (ABA) reporting approximately 1.32 million active lawyers as of early 2024, and projections showing growth to around 1.37 million by 2025, according to the ABA Profile of the Legal Profession. New York and California host about a quarter of the nation's lawyers, with around 4 lawyers per 1,000 residents nationally.
I really developed an appetite to watch these bastards to become homeless and starve to death.
I did and it's what is known as a "backronym", like "shit" being an acronym for "store high in transit", starting with the word and making up the phrase for which it is supposed to be an acronym, i.e. bollocks. From an etymological dictionary:
bar(n.3)
"whole body of lawyers, the legal profession," 1550s, a sense which derives ultimately from the railing that separated benchers from the hall in the Inns of Court (see bar (n.1)). Students who had attained a certain standing were "called" to it to take part in the important exercises of the house. After c. 1600, however, this was popularly assumed to mean the bar in a courtroom, the wooden railing marking off the area around the judge's seat, where prisoners stood for arraignment and where a barrister (q.v.) stood to plead. As the place where the business of court was done, bar in this sense had become synonymous with court by early 14c.
The weakness in your argument, entertaining though it is, is why is it necessary to swear an oath before entering the profession, and to whom is it sworn?
There's definitely secrecy involved, n'est ce pas?
Why should an organization dedicated supposedly to revealing truth, need to swear an oath to keep something secret?
( crickets. )
The whole business of the law has been subverted to ulterior ends; financial gain is now its modus operandi, whereas originally, it was the discharge of justice.
An entirely new language called legalese was devised in pursuance of this overall objective, according to which, a word which in English means one thing, in legalese means its exact opposite.
The establishment of this system is what kept the British in the US for eight years after their supposed defeat, so that yanqui agents could be trained up, and sworn in, to maintain the bleeding of the colony's resources - which is why the whole operation was funded in the first place.
Forget about "Pilgrim Fathers," or any of the other nonsense you have been told.
The US is a commercial operation run by "The Crown," ie the jewish cabal which infests the City of London to this day.
Their mechanism of control is via lawyers, each one of whom has to swear an oath of allegiance to it.
"I really developed an appetite to watch these bastards to become homeless and starve to death."
You may feel differently should you ever get a bit drunk in a public place, somebody shoves you, you shove back, and suddenly you find yourself under arrest because not all of the third party witnesses who saw what happened had a clear view that you didn't shove first.
I know a few working, honest lawyers and their days are not spent dreaming up ways to screw honest doctors with fake malpractice claims. They do basic family law, helping to clean up the ruins when two people in a marriage decide they hate each other and want to destroy their spouse no matter what that does to the kids, they save your ass when genuine misunderstandings happen (like that "who shoved first?" bit), and they deal with the truly squalid consequences when some people decide they are going to be career criminals for life, just taking whatever they want from local stores. But even those people in the US have a right to defensive counsel.
That's not a bad system and without any law and any lawyers the US would be even more of a cesspool that it is. That's not a new thing: in the 19th century there was plenty of crime and truly dishonest behavior going on at all economic strata.
A society that has laws also needs honest lawyers. With one truly foul exception, all of the lawyers I've known have been honest, whether they were practicing civil law or criminal law and whether on the criminal law side they were defensive council or prosecutors. I'd say that was ten to twenty to one honest vs. dishonest. I can't say the same for the non-practicing lawyers I've met in government, where it seems only one or two were "honest" in the sense that they weren't driven by the need to cater to special interest groups to raise money for their next election campaign.
The reason we need so many lawyers is because of the explosion of laws . Elected officials keep creating new laws and these often conflict with others and tend to be reactionary . The irony is the number of laws that are now being ignored . Considering how many Lawyers there are they should be a lot cheaper . Its a racket .
"Considering how many Lawyers there are they should be a lot cheaper . Its a racket ."
The above is broken logic, as if you didn't read what you wrote in the first sentence of your paragraph: "The reason we need so many lawyers is because of the explosion of laws "
So, is there or isn't there an explosion of laws? Were you writing the truth when you wrote that? And how about "the reason we need so many lawyers" - were you telling the truth there? Do you need so many lawyers or don't you? ("we" doesn't fit in this sub since many people participating here either aren't Americans or, like me, they're Americans who don't live in the US.)
If you stick to your story, that the reason the US needs so many lawyers is because of the explosion of laws, don't complain that you have many lawyers.
Complain about the asshole politicians who keep piling up laws and regulations. Those are the real drivers of judicial overlordship, the explosion of regulations that even a single law can generate. In the US, regulations are the people-killing shrapnel generated when a single cluster-bomb law goes to work.
You are, indeed, correct. The reason there are so many lawyers in the US is because of the obscene expansion of laws and regulations. When you consider how many laws and regulations there are, which effect every damned part of your stinking vassal life in the US, from the amount of water your toilet can use to flush your shit to whether or not you can braid your neighbor's hair and get paid a small amount for your trouble, there probably aren't enough lawyers to provide the full legal assistance people need if they don't want to be at risk from the "three felonies a day" wrath of their overlords.
"Three felonies a day" is a reference to the famous book of that name written by (if I recall correctly) a prosecutor who pointed out that the vast expansion of the regulatory state at the Federal, State, and local level meant that most people end up committing about three felonies a day as part of ordinary life. A lot of those are technical, of course, but they can still get you jail time and wipe out your savings for defending yourself if people in government decide to charge you.
As for your broken logic that a large number of lawyers means they should be a lot cheaper, the conclusion doesn't follow from your starting point. We've already covered that it could well be that the even larger number of laws and regulations means that a large number of lawyers might not be enough. In such a deficit situation you'd expect fees to be higher (supply and demand).
There's also the complexity of the laws and regulations. Many are phenomenally complicated. For example, if you're an American businessman and you're doing the loyal, patriotic thing of helping to reduce the US's trade deficit by building in the US and exporting abroad, unless you're a huge multinational with buildings full of export control specialists almost certainly you're committing multiple crimes each time you sell even a single product abroad. Dealing with that shit is extraordinarily labor intensive. So even if there are few laws, if those laws are phenomenally complicated you could end up having to pay for, literally, hundreds of hours of legal time to figure out how to not break that law. That's expensive.
Beyond the internal complexity of laws and regulations you also have the built up complexity of the legal system in the US, where precedent has a huge role. It's not enough to just read the law to know if you are in the clear or not, because none of those thousand page laws has hermetic clarity. They're all full of gray areas that only get resolved through precedents. So you also have to research all the precedents, yet more labor time.
To do all that you need a very extensive legal education with lots of practical experience. That takes years of expensive education (costly because in the real world you have to pay talented people a lot to be willing to spend the labor time required to pass on their expertise to beginners) followed by years of apprentice-like low wage earning to gain the experience and skills required to take on real work as the attorney in charge.
So when you hire somebody to do something that takes a huge amount of labor time where the skill set required to do that task requires extremely expensive investment of time and money to acquire, why the fuck do you expect them to save your ass for cheap? If you think it's that easy, go represent yourself.
The racket is in government, where they use laws and regulations to control vassals like you, and where they use those laws and regulations on a bigger scale to shake down entire industries for money. Pay up or they regulate you to death, giving your competitors advantages you don't have.
The racket is not on the part of individual attorneys who for the most part face daunting financial obstacles to running individual practices. There are a very few grifters that are symbionts with government grifters, and for those few, yes, "racket" is exactly the word just like it is for the government parasites. But by overwhelming margins for most working attorneys the business is no gravy train.
It's a lot of hard work and for many of them retirement is a dream that recedes with each year. That's why you have so many old guys who are still working at their law practices in towns across America. They never made the money required to put away enough for a comfy retirement so in their 70's they're still taking on the DUI cases and family law cases, despite the emotional stress, because they need the money just to get by.
While I agree with a lot of your points, its interesting that there have been some lawyers that have been caught using AI's to do their work for them (and at this point they work for free). As to the retirement issues that's widespread in all occupations , except government employment . The race between inflation and growth is screwing all prospective retirees who need ever increasing superannuation savings. If the government doesn't fix the debt and liability issues it will hit everybody who isn't rich . I have had lawyers who have given good service for money and one who played everyone concerned . If you want a definition of difficult try suing a Doctor or Lawyer . The big issue is accountability - especially in politics and they are the ones making the laws .
In my large city (West Coast, USA)- Director of Public Utilities Development is drumrolls.... an accountant. Imagine, not a PE (professional engineer, who after a degree must pass a few hard exams to get a seal), or an architect, a civil engineer, a geodesist/whatever but an... accountant?! As a result of some hard-core "accounting," they came up with a brilliant idea to charge private builders for the PUBLIC PIPES to their lots in the areas which are already taxed to the eyeballs... The water mains n the city are from 1901-1920s, all corroded, so they "cleverly" saddle a private resident trying to build a home with paying for the pipes alone $250,000 + and it is already after the city "generously" chips in 70% of the costs reimbursement and the entire amount the builders must pay upfront and get reimbursed after LOL
The situation in the western world generally, directly pertains to the emergence of bankers as the directors of society - ie those who "Know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
The west is simply a jewish-controlled tax farm, pure and simple.
A friend of mine in a smaller community has to pay for public water even though no one is stupid enough to drink from the tap. Apparently runoff from the ag land put a lot of toxic chemicals into the water and the city is now supposedly doing something to reverse that but meanwhile, despite a notice with every water bill that the toxins aren't at a high enough % to cause cancer, etc., people opt to live off bottled water.
The fun thing is that when this city actually BUILT these water mains in 1920s, the entire City Planning Department was just 7 people, but now just the Public Utilities Department is 1,400 and they build nothing. Running excel sheets like a crazy man with a gun and all to show for decades but intrigues & schemes, is not a legitimate occupation! Look how the architect/wife team built the Brookline Bridge - can you even imagine the galore of bureaucrats "building it" now? LOL
I think you'll find the greater problem is that those coming out with STEM degrees but no family trust fund are finding their pay is as crappy as anyone else's today. The West has quite deliberately crunched wages to everyone except the courses you didn't mention - "Financial Services".
The likely reason you didn't mention is that is because you aren't part of the 1%, and get your "News" from the corporate media that is lying about everything else, blaming "Migrants" for the general impoverishment, "Putin" for the war in eastern Europe, and "Hamas" for the genocide in Palestine.
Those degrees CAN be as useful as any other, IF the courses are actually taught well. Who would doubt that a course by Mearsheimer, Alastair Crooke, Glenn Diesen, Jacques Baud, or heck, even Garland Nixon would be full of interesting and relevant information and analysis?
Needless to say, such Professors would struggle to find work in most Western universities, which are simply corporate cash cows today.
But if you want to turn this situation around with regards to STEM, stop blaming the students, and start blaming the structure of Western society, where it is now all Class based - the Financial sector taking 70-80% of all profits generated, and start raising wages for the actual workers in those industries.
Who knows? Perhaps if engineers could pay off their student loans, afford to buy a home and raise a child or two on their wages, more young people would go into those courses.
Much of this is true, but when I upgraded my own Women's Studies degree certificate to a degree in materials science, I saw a definite skyrocketing of my income.
I'm going to take a rough guess, that a women-hating patriarchal misogynist would probably suffer trying to make good money from women's studies, however.
Unless I'm mistaking you for another conservative-christian "Tim" on stack.
I paid mine off in one year. When my brother graduated i paid his off in one shot and he paid me two hundred bucks a month for 6 years.
It beats working at starbucks.
That being said, i hear you when you talk of wage compresssion, that is a real issue. Its a massive problem in Europe and north america is catching up fast.
On a related note....
In the late nineties i had the "pleasure" of working in China, when Pudong, east of Shanghai, was just pig farms and defecating along the road was normal. Been there 3 times in the last year....absolutely shocking. Its a different country. Clean, efficient, functional...they have almost caught up to south korea. Completely blown away. Reminded me of canada in the early seventies when we were building airports, highways, bridges, steel plants, refineries...when life for everyone was improving. Now we do environmental accessments for decades rather than build anything.
Financialisation. The West's wealth is piling up in personal accounts on offshore tax-havens, while China's banking system is under the ownership or control of the Govt - and anyone getting TOO greedy will soon regret it.
Their money circulates, and invests, our money is printed, stacked, and depreciates.
Personally, I worked through my degree, and didn't have a penny of debt at the end - but the degree was also designed to accommodate that, as well as being a fantastic experience from beginning to end. The Danish are wonderful at such stuff.
Gnuneo. Other than the number crunchers and IT bods, most people in the City have non vocational degrees. But they did get them at Oxbridge, London, Exeter, Durham or Bristol and often have parents who also work in the City.
This is a very interesting point and worth further examination.
When I was at school, it was explained as the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary industries.
The Primary are farmers, fishermen, coal miners, etc.
The Secondary are carpenters, builders, cooks, plumbers, electricians, technicians, etc.
The Tertiary are professors, philosophers, poets, priests, politicians, etc.
The structure is a pyramid; the later, higher stages are built upon the earlier, lower stages. We can easily imagine a society with only Primary industry, fishermen who make their own boats and nets, farmers who make their own spades and pitchforks. Such societies have existed throughout history. When they grow larger, then they create specialists.
But a society based on Tertiary industry, made up entirely of professors of sociology and Harvard MBAs, is insane. They would, at best, be an elite clique, not a society capable of survival and reproduction.
The real trick involves weapons and the men (let's be honest here, it's MEN) trained to use them. No man is free without a gun; or a very good friend with a gun willing to use it on his behalf. What's true for the individual is true for society as a whole.
No society is safe without weapons. This means gunsmiths to make them (Secondary), who in turn need steel, lead, copper, sulfur, nitrates, etc. (Primary).
The problem is that weapons are never freely traded on the open market; the more powerful the weapon, the less likely it is to be traded freely. Therefore, the Tertiary clique of society can never be safe relying solely on money gained from licensing fees, consultation, investment dividends and so on.
That is where the Western Professional Managerial Class is now. They’ve cut themselves off at the knees by alienating themselves from the base of their own society, thinking the free market will supply them with everything.
But it won’t.
Weapons and soldiers are the failure mode of this system of thought.
Perhaps I'm missing something here.... Weapons are never freely traded on the open market? There are gun dealers advertising on billboards around me not to mention massive gun shows where guns and ammo are bought and sold in their hundreds if not thousands.
Try and buy a man portable air defense missile system, man portable anti armor weapon, light crew served weapons such as squad level mortar, general purpose or heavy machine gun. Then look for a few antitank mines?
Rifles and pistols are essentially useless against a state level police force, let alone a national army with air assets & armored vehicles. Drones were slowly altering that a bit but I wouldn't count on time to develop such before getting rolled over.
Where I come from you can't even own a machete .Long gun ownership requires training courses and has onerous restrictions and pistols are restricted to target shooters , security guards and law enforcement . All Guns have to be registered and all owners have to be licensed . Even paintball guns require a license and gel blasters are prohibited . You can't even own pepper spray .
Rice, beans, timber etc. are freely traded on the open market, whereby anyone can bid and anyone’s dollar is the same as anyone else’s dollar.
The American DOMESTIC market for SMALL arms is probably the closest to a free market for weapons you are going to find anywhere in the world, but it’s still very far from a free market.
That is true, if you are a convicted felon you aren't allowed to buy weapons. Other than that it depends on the state. I haven't been in the market for a weapon so haven't checked the particulars but Florida is pretty open. If you want a gun you can get one. Past that I think you are splitting hairs just to be argumentative. To your earlier point, no they wouldn't be effective in a toe-to-toe battle with the weaponry the state police could bring to bear. On the other hand, like the redcoats complaining during the American Revolution that the colonists hid behind trees instead of coming at them in massed formations like proper soldiers, if the police did turn on the citizenry they'd never know where the bullets were coming from. All the big guns in the world won't help if you don't have a target. And I believe I just read that there is an estimated 300 million guns in private hands in the US....
That weapons are not freely traded on the open market, and that the more powerful the weapon the less freely they are traded is at the root of my argument, and it’s true, it’s not hair splitting. Although maybe I should have said “Weapon Systems” because that’s what it is.
It isn’t about whether or not you can go to a gun shop and get a pistol for your pocket or a shotgun for your cupboard, those are just the results of an integrated system. A system that also puts submarines in the ocean and rockets in space.
You have got to move away from an 18th & 19th century American 2nd amendment political perspective. This is the global condition of the human species across time.
Look at what’s been happening in Ukraine for the past 4 years and right now. Western Professional Elites are currently debating if to send in an army AFTER a treaty has been signed, how to choke the Russian economy, if they can seize Russian bonds, and are actually seizing unarmed oil tankers.
None of that will stop the Oreshnik.
A similar story is the rare earth minerals situation. China, quite reasonably, will not send vital materials to nations that may use them to create weapons targeted against China.
The Western Elites have cut themselves off their base, and the breaking point, the failure mode, is in weapon systems, those who can make them and those who can use them. Money, status and prestige won’t cover that gap.
The Harvard faculty COULD arm themselves and become a militia, but then they’re not the Harvard faculty anymore, they’d just be another armed militia.
Based on available data, Business and Management consistently emerges as the most popular university degree in Canada. This field often includes related majors like Business Administration, Accounting, and Finance.
📊 Other Highly Popular University Majors
Beyond business, several other fields see high enrollment across Canadian universities. The following list summarizes key popular areas and common career paths for graduates.
Computer Science / Software Engineering
· Why it's popular: Strong demand in tech hubs like Toronto, Waterloo, and Vancouver.
· Common career paths: Junior developer, product analyst, cybersecurity specialist.
Nursing & Health Sciences
· Why it's popular: High job security, strong demand due to an aging population.
· Common career paths: Registered Nurse, community health roles, health program coordinator.
Psychology
· Why it's popular: Versatile skills applicable to HR, UX research, social services, and more.
· Common career paths: Human resources, community services, research assistant.
Engineering (various disciplines)
· Why it's popular: Practical, in-demand skills for infrastructure and technology sectors.
· Common career paths: Civil, mechanical, electrical, and software engineering roles.
Arts & Humanities (e.g., English, History)
· Why it's popular: Develops strong communication and critical thinking skills.
· Common career paths: Communications, policy analysis, publishing, public service.
I don't know what it is like in the US or Canada, but in the UK, the entire education system is built around an aim to direct students into the "professions", law, medicine, finance etc. Instead of learning to do something practical, everyone is supposed to go to university, get a degree and get a job that involves staring at a computer screen all day. It really doesn't matter whether universities are producing enough engineering graduates or not: there's no point in having a lot of talented designers if you haven't got anyone to actually build what has been designed. The new wunderwaffen equivalent to Oreshnik is not going to be a lot of use against China or Russia if it has to be built in China.
It's the same in IT, John. I work in sales within the IT industry. I am almost never in touch with any Western names.
Just did a random search on LinkedIn, that I use a lot to generate leads. Searched for IT Directors in US/Canada within my niche. Out of the first 25 results we have 19 Indians, 1 Mexican, 1 Dutch, 2 Canadians and 2 Americans.
In Europe it's usually a bit more balanced, but still a majority of foreigners.
But who needs to work with engineering or IT. That's boring. That will not turn you into a new powerful Kaja Kallas.
Visit Nvidia's headquarters in Silicon Valley, go to their cafeteria and by a 20 to 1 margin you see foreigners. It used to be the only Americans you saw in there were fat people doing food prep. For years now even those are Latinos. Now the only Americans you see are the occasional marketing people, whose contribution is designing T-shirts, not chips.
It's true, by the way, that there are still a few Americans in chip design and hard core science, and some of them work in Nvidia. But there are fewer and fewer as the industry expands. It's no accident that one of the biggest barriers in the bipartisan US plan to duplicate in the US the huge TSMC foundry in Taiwan was that they discovered they would have to import all the workers from Taiwan to not only build it but also to operate it.
In Canada, gender/women’s studies departments remain poorly funded and with low enrolment, especially beyond the intro-level course which may be a popular elective. I legitimately have no idea what to tell you if you really believe that ‘transgenderism’ is a discipline that exists within Canadian universities, let alone one that is prioritized by administration and taken by ‘most Nato officers’. Financialization is the problem here, along with the suffocating contradictions of 45+ years neoliberal economic-political doctrine enforced by the out-of-touch elite class. But yeah, keep blaming the youth like a typical boomer.
There is no value to Russia in storming into territory that it then has to use personnel-weapons etc defending against relentless counter-attacks. Boring though this might be for game show addicts, the only way for Russia to secure its objectives is by grinding down effective military opposition in all sorts of ways. And there is no rush, not while the current inchoacy is playing to Russian advantage with the western alliance losing its wallet and its solidarity in case you hadn't noticed, and Trump bombasting about, losing friends and influence all over the place.
Attrition always works on both sides and it's hard to know the truth, though now the Europeans are flagging engagement with the Evil Barbarians. Things must have shifted significantly in recent days. The Coalition of the Willing have been sent to Greenland I hear. Ukraine is circling down the narrative plug hole.
Attrition is not symmetric here because the Russians, unlike the Ukrainians who have to keep on showcasing counter attacks to keep their allies onside, can sit back and wait for the enemy to impale itself. And it does so, over and over again. This is a one sided game par excellence.
Minus 15 C for unprotected city people will have serious consequences. Water pipes will be seriously damaged by icing. It is only a question of days when frozen corpses will be removed from their communist style apartment blocks. The Servant of the People did not disclose this possibility when he was running for election.
They're as ugly as sin, have poor window-glazing, but had good and cheap heating provided by estate-wide water pipes from the industrial plants.
There's hopefully not that many homeless tents in Alaska, but if there were, it's doubtful that the US regime would do anything except burn the tents and blame the inhabitants for their plight.
I was staying in one of those for a while. The single elevator occasionally died and of course I was the one who had to carry groceries and whatever else up to the 10th floor. These things had no internal metal frames to hold them together. Each concrete panel around 3X6 meters had four metal clips at the corners and was delivered on trucks from the 'house factory'. I was watching them putting these things together like a house of cards and had nightmares sleeping there.
true, everything concrete. and knowing that a fire hose has a limited reach (6 floors?), a dystopian horror show. and we allow this because....? (rhet.)
If you read/watched the various "social collapse best practices" articles and videos Dmitry Orlov produced?
You are familiar with the projected difference between collapse era Russian Federation rent free, heated apartment & public transport to your community garden allotment vs. USA and losing your house in a detached suburb to the bank (which cracker box house you couldn't afford heat or electricity for, let alone gas to go to the grocery store now)?
We may well find out how accurately Dmitri predicted the "other collapse" soon enough.
-15C turns buildings into nothing but hovels for squatters. The whole fu——g building will have to come down (the burst pipes will flood when they thaw). What a waste.
They might have ways to drain the whole system of water before tragedy strikes but they have to act fast and draining thousands of large building takes a lot of men with some knowledge.
Macron .... microclots from the clotshot. For those that are not aware of the data that has been published (and peer reviwed), quite a few people are still producing the spike protein 4 to 5 years after their last shots. While the immune system keeps clearing up the microclots that are induced, any that doesn't get cleared, creates a cascading set of issues. Notice that Trump has been slurring a lot more in his speeches lately.. and there's been lots of commentary (some snarky, some concerned) about his swollen hands and ankle/feet.
Quite a number of folks in my very limited social circle, say 100 people whose health situation I know well enough to ask, had a detached retina soon after their P shots. I'm counting.. total of 3. Another developed double vision for a year and spent $5K seeing ophthalmologists. Before the internet was clamped down by the deep state near the begining of the rollout of the shots, I was still able to google "double vision pfizer" and found forums where 2000+ people had experienced that... that was within the 1st month of the jab rollout. After that, all those discussions were nuked, and you couldn't find them on the internet anymore.
Why does this matter? Coz most of western europe is shot up.... Americans about 2/3.... there really isn't any ability to field any army from western europe anytime soon... their health issues will keep escalating, medical systems will collapse due to overload...
Swollen ankles is a health problem I have now, and I never took the safe and effective.
And if Donnie has mental issues, it isn't necessary to automatically equate that with the shots.
I think we know his diet is McDonalds-based, so he won't be getting enough omega 3 fatty acids, in all likelihood.
As to Micron's black eye, many of the elite, from popes to princes ( Philip had a good one ) to pop stars, show up with this symptom on a regular basis - Richard Branson had a spectacular one - it's thought this is some sort of elite ritual whereby they get humiliated by their owners - ie those who put them where they are in the first place, ( you didn't think it was through sheer hard work and ability, did you? )
one would not knowingly destroy his own population.
It is definitely not a conspiracy.
It was partly an experimental vaccine, yes.
Experiments with vaccines, gain of function research is ongoing generally
Why? Who is financing it?
Three types
A. military - lets get biologic weapons that kill Chinese, or RUssians...
B. financialized pharma - lets find a vaccine that will make billions, even if in the process we risk creating a disease that kills hundred of millions
C pure scientists - like with nuclear power, one cannot forbid intelligent people to ask questions and investigate
like AI
it is simply the way capitalism works
and big power politics works - best described as realism
with Britain as a state being a fine example of realism in foreign politics
It is possible that someone made a mistake, but it is highly unlikely that vaccination of a majority of golden billion will have serious negative effects.
Humans survive incredible things.
Vaccination, COVID did significantly more damage to minds, culture, society than to the bodies of the humans themselves.
keep drinking the Kool Aid and stay ignorant. The bio-weapon, counter measure, has been proven beyond all doubt (except for morons) that it was intended to harm and kill.
many ideas that have been treated as conspiracy have been shown to be true
Snowden in Moscow is the proof, no one of any importance in public sphere is able to face the reality Snowden has revealed
US secret services are unlawfully, and unconstitutionally monitoring all human beings, including all American citizens
But here is a logic behind NSA, CIA, etc.
An Empire doing its job.
If NSA, CIA were found to do things to directly help China or Russia I would think twice, and investigate the matter three times before accepting the story.
You are being too 'rational'.... because if you've the chance to study the history of 'vaccines', especially those of the smallpox and polio variety, you'd then discover the level of fraud and coercion involved, all in the name of public health. Midwesterndoc has a great substack, that a few pieces devoted to actual medical history... *hint* people of Leicester rioted against the vex mandates and the authorities had to withdraw. Those shots were killing people, yet it still got mandated (sound familiar?).
For the person who is getting swollen ankles... the folks who took the jabs are shedding. That is actually in the Pfizer documents that they only wanted to release over 75 years.... You need to take enteric-coated natto / serrapeptase on an empty stomach, and the natural enzymes will dissolve the clots and help improve blood flow. If you don't do that, more issues will arise in short order. You can do really high dose, but monitor with a blood pressure monitor - coz what happens is that as the clots in your body are being dissolved, it becomes waste products in the bloodstream, and your blood pressure will increase until your kidneys have enough time to clear it out. So you can control the dosage and the level of detox you want to do by yourself.
Venezuela and Iran have lifted the world actuality from Ukraine. Even if not visible there are movements regurgitating inside the Kievan NATO colony. Timoshenko has been prosecuted, for exemple. Probably she was trying to position herself for an after Zelensky life, which is coming. The departure of Yermak was the signal. He is preparing the terrain for Zelensky somewhere in the UK, Canada or Israel. So, overall, even if the AFU hold the line, there are signs that the Bandera circus time is up. Trump is weak internally and externally. Macron is weak too. Merz..Starmer. The EU is admitting to resume talks with Russia and is cracking and drowning visibly. With -20C temperatures in the trenches, no major gains are to be expected.
Imagine trying to hide from drones with no leaves on the trees and your thermal signature very sharply contrasting with the cold ground/snow/buildings around you?
Then trying to dig a fighting hole in frozen ground? (Yes, I know about the 2 step high explosive trenching systems USA developed, about 5 minutes after using one I would expect drones or artillery to be hitting the ground signature of such).
Beyond that? I live in a cold place. Although I can and have worked or hunted all day in the snow, it takes about twice the energy it would above freezing. Under some conditions, the weather might kill me faster than the opposition too.
Whole thing looks like a stalemate for 3 years to me... back off a few feet on the map instead of using a microscope. No major cities taken just little villages no one ever heard of until war
Attrition war yes but Russia will need to kill 4 million to equal % of males of last Nazis before they quit. How long will that take?
300 million actually. How? Vlad turbo spiked inflation back in 2022 and today those 300 mil buy stuff that costs 50% with stagnant salaries
You have made some good points but, like many others on this board, does not see that wars were/are/will always be hybrid.
Russia might not be progressing to your liking but it has won the most difficult part of the war so far. The feared american sanctions that proved to be one big pile of LOL
I was very careful in my expression about inflation. Never said or implied that Vlad caused it but for sure he threw lots of benzine on that fire :)
Strongly disagree about the military part. Let’s set aside the Social and Finance aspects of a war for a sec (aside from the fact that the Fin part is the hardest to grasp in its complexity re the global flow of goods and money - there is not enough paper to write a book about all that)
So let me ask you this, and I acknowledge that from all the critics here you are the most opened minded.
Have you ever observed how an invincible predator, say the Great White Shark approaches the victim? The most fearsome of all animals, always approaches even the smallest of the victims very ...
Fill those 3 dots and that should give you a strong insight how the Great White Vlad sees things :)
PS: Thank you for the like, a good convo is the best thing that can happen during a boring day in the “West” :)
> To speak non-metaphorically, if Putin wanted to reduce Russian casualties, he should have decapitated Ukrainian leadership,
but that was never the plan. The Dec 2021 ultimatum was neither to Ukraine nor towards their leadership. It was to NATO
>Humans are not animals, however, and we take calculated risks and are notoriously willing to sacrifice the pain of even our allies.
for the real victory, not some American Hollywood style firework show, Killing that peep squeak will solve no problem. It is pointless like that staged bull with poor Maduro....
So here is a calculation to ponder.
A Go for the win now with probability 40% to lose
or
B Wait 5-6 years till Trump and his boomers are gone for good and lower the risk to 20%?
A mature great white shark hunting sea mamals approaches their prey very fast from an angle they can't see it coming from (straight below, at dusk or dawn with prey illuminated and predator NOT).
They will give such prey one very serious bite, back off and watch it, wait for it to bleed out and die, then eat the animal after it can't fight back.
Things like tiger sharks or oceanic white tips have different strategies...
I don’t disagree at all with that very detailed description...carefully still applies doesn’t it?
I don’t think my point was getting across regardless If I had used your very detailed description or just the word “carefully” . It wouldn't matter one iota.
And then they say men have one track mind LOL
PS: Just for the record, certified diver here/done shark dives in the open water in South Pacific
I seriously doubt that it will require the Russians to kill a % of Ukrainian males equal to the casualties of the last Nazis regime before they quit.
The last Nazi regime was notoriously harsh on discipline, unit commanders would literally hang deserters and cowards from the lamp posts as a public warning and thought it very important to do so.
Not even the most fanatical of the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis have done that (yet).
The Kiev political class is even less dedicated than that and the Brussels political class is much less dedicated than Kiev.
It will be easier to understand if you imagine First World War, it was a stalemate, until in the spring of 1918 it wasn't.
It is a proxy war, NATO vs Russia.
NATO/US/West has refused all offers from Russia to discuss and find a compromise, and continuously demands victory.
Putin is among other characteristics, quite talkative, so we, the public, do have his offers
going back to 2007
- 2007 do not enlarge NATO, otherwise business as usual
- 2008 after Georgia, OK Georgia is gone, but do not enlarge NATO further, and business as usual
- 2014 after Maidan, OK Crimea is gone, otherwise business as usual
- 2022 last offer, keep Ukraine neutral, and business as usual
- 2022 spring, we respect Ukrainian resolve, let it be EU, but still, keep Ukraine neutral, and we can go back to business
- 2024 summer, if we agree on Crimea, 4 regions (Donbas absolutely) and neutrality, we can go back to business
- 2026 winter, there will be no negotiations on neutrality, no NATO, and once we take Donbas by force, no negotiations on territory either,
It is not a stalemate
it is a proxy war started upon assumption that Russia can be extended, exhausted, to the degree that causes internal disorder and collapse of the Russian state
It remains a possibility but the chances of it happening are lessening, as the war continues.
Does Russia need to kill 4 million? Should not the "attrition" figure include the Ukrainians who escaped across the border and the Ukrainians who avoided military service and the Ukrainians who deserted as well as those killed & injured? All of those are lost to military activity. Add them all up, and consider the difference in populations between WWII Germany and pre-conflict Ukraine -- it may be that Russia is getting close.
Yip anti drone drones swarms of snowballs
It is like WWII. German Flak (AA guns) was relatively successful, but every shot was a shot not delivered to the front lines, but on the other hand, the AA could not prevent the Allies from destroying all the cities. The front troops could not answer the Soviet artillery bombardments because of ammunition shortages. And in Ukraine, every drone that hunts other drones is one drone less on the frontlines.
Drones are cheap -- because they are often built with Chinese components, which are low-cost both because of Chinese manufacturing skill and because of the massive scale of Chinese production. Whether the drone is Ukrainian, Russian, European, or US -- most of them rely on some critical Chinese components.
This is one of the mysteries of the proxy war in the Ukraine. China could change the trajectory of that conflict substantially simply by taking effective means to deny drone components to either or both sides. Instead, China seems to be quite happy selling to both sides. What game is China playing?
Elena,
Multipolarity in play . China following China's interests .
Whatever game they're playing Gavin, in one aspect it appears similar to the one played by the US during WW2, that is profiting from both sides of the conflict. I even heard that after the War was over firms like GM and Ford were generously compensated for the damages caused to their factories by Allied bombings. Ycnmiu.
"What game is China playing?"
China craves American carrot and fears American stick.
China hopes that the Americans will eat them last.
Elena,
The race is to enable the drones to use AI to evade destruction before detonation . We are already seeing drones becoming aware of interception and using evading tactics . How long before drones have expendable "wingmen" ? We are also seeing missiles which have countermeasures to combat air defence . War is driving the increase in the advancement the drone tech as it has done for weapons in every war. R&D on steroids.
There are all kinds of possibilities for UAVs (drones are actually bees and musical tones….)! VTOL UAV interceptors modeled after something like the Ring UAV would make for a good screening defensive line for example. Also having AA MLRS in miniature with excellent guidance and coordination would help a great deal.
Chevrus,
The war has become a laboratory for drones (UAV's) and its soon going to be a race to build the cheapest and most scalable units . AI is already built in for the bigger units and as miniaturisation increases this will be the path forward for surveillance . Russian assaults (and probably Ukraine) are assisted by drone surveillance and bombardment . I would assume that China is using this conflict to improve their designs and tactics for when the USA decides to set their proxy's on them. The West has started to realise that its not worth using a $20,000 missile to destroy a $2000 drone(UAV). Drones are ALSO bees and musical tones ;)
Carpet bomb KEEEEEV!! Get this sh+t over with already!!
Why would one want to carpet bomb such an old beautiful city if it brings only distraction and suffering for civilians?
I don't get this way of thinking. If I can reach my goals by other means why destroy? - seems to be a really perverted western mindset. It's so inhuman, like your name here.
That's what the war criminal Winston Churchill did in WWII with the assistance of the Yanks. Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, among many others.
It's the jewish way.
The gentleman's mother was Jenny Jerome, so he was one of the tribe.
The tribe of Huguenots, Tim?
RU being deliberately obtuse?
I don know Timmy, am I?
Only her ancestry is French Protestant apparently.
Yuri Besmenov laid out your way of doing things many years ago.
It's been very successful.
Fish cant swim with no water. Civilians are the water. Not to mention it's civilians who make the wars. Putin and Zelensky are civilians. Their oligarchs are civilians. etc If you were to ask Gen Sherman civilians should be primary targets then army who are just coolies doing what civilians tell them to do.
That's the way he won the US Civil war over Lee's masterful Generalship.
Agree. Carpet-bombing is a crime against Humanity.
Just another crime, and a minor one at that. Meh.
The Germans were also civilians. Nazi civilians.
You could say much the same of the Japanese. Individuals generally didn’t get much choice.
When the avalanche comes the pebbles don't get a vote.
And they voted overwhelmingly for a revolutionary and highly people-centred government, that had for example made interest-free ( a term which sends a cold shiver down every jewish spine) loans available for the citizens to purchase farms and homes with all the necessary accoutrements - the loans being cancelled if they went on to have four children, and pro rata for fewer.
The NSDAP 25 point manifesto is a complete revelation to those who ever read it, which of course, our present leaders are reluctant for us to do, lest we realise how badly they have conned us all.
Don't forget your testosterone replacement therapy appointment this afternoon, Frank. Your T levels are dangerously low.
I can't believe you dignify @CHUCKY with response:-)
Zionist behavior demencia accordind to talmud
Thats the american and british way ie killing civilians in non military sites Dresden etc
There are Russians there also so they would be killing their own, hence the resistance to carpet bombing
Nothing in Excess , All things in moderation
First... Whhooo!
That photo of Macron looks like he's been snorting something he shouldn't.
I reckon Maracon would prefer felching rather than snorting.....
Now that is funny.
Whatever he's doing it ain't helping his blood pressure.
Now that is gross!
Well said!..LOL
perhaps he stumbled on a dark ritual known as the Black Eye Club - https://thephoenixenigma.com/the-black-eye-club/
A bloodied eye like Macron's is an indicator of a STROKE. He's in some serious trouble, health-wise.
Maybe it was a Stroke from Brigitte's clenched Fist with a protruding ring's mounting responsible for bursting the blood vessels.
Yeah but it would have been so much worse without the booster….
Those loons only blacken the left eye. Macron's right eye is having the problem.
read the article: usually, but not "only" the left eye. but you're right, it's all conjecture anyway. we don't have the information that Macron's bloodied eye is connected to the ritual executed on him by this big club that we're not in.
I think it is so odd that people who are so horrifically evil need the trappings of participation trophies,
Or maybe the demons that inhabit them, given their lives must be desperately dull, like the jewelry, aprons, masks, etc.?
Very, very twisted demonic people...or lizards as the case may be.
Or that he received a powerful jet in the eye. Both are equally likely.
I live in Moscow region, and while it is likely not so bad in the South, the snow has in fact been heavy enough to cause problems. And yes the holidays DO slow things down, as strange as that might seem to thr American mind.
To be honest, it amazes me how the Ukrainian forces hold on.
Well if the eastern express is so successful for Russia and the large majority of Ukraine was living poorly before the conflict, you’d have to imagine that the west financing these guys, who have the same productive resourceful, patriotic, energy as the people they are fighting, would be fierce. The sad part is Ukraine is fighting for the side that kept them impoverished to begin with…
They don't really have a choice, do they?
Forcibly conscripted, given no military training to speak of, and the Kiev dictatorship has Nazi foreign mercenaries behind them to shoot them if they retreat, and control the skies above with FPS drones if they try to surrender.
They don't even do much fighting, by many accounts, they are simply there as sacrifices to slow the Russian advances down, simply by BEING there.
Sadly that's the impression I've got too. I even feel sorry for the hundreds or thousands of deluded Colombian mercs who arrive and get droned immediately. They never get paid, nor their families get any compensation.
I didn't know that. It fits with the reputation of Colombian gangs though.
However some of the grunts featured on TG channel TrackaNaziMerc are just ordinary people: hairdressers, taxi drivers or CoD players who join up. Though I think that most people who need some extra cash start an ebay sideline or something, rather than travel to a foreign land to murder and torture.
Incas?
The old ways live on....
Well when we consider the decades of low intensity conflict and infiltration Colombia and surrounding nations have endured, it’s no surprise that the flower of brutality has blossomed. One has to wonder if the mercs from SudAmerica got the memo about the Slavs attitude toward their kind before getting on the plane….
But they go straight to heaven though, so there's that.
I wonder what "Ring of Heaven" is filled with fascist mercenaries?
Dante never mentioned that.
Agree, but since they are no more, it’s sad for those left behind. But indeed, giving their circumstances, it may be the easiest way to make some money. That the money is not being paid to the family makes it rven sadder.
A similar injustice affects Ukrainian families whose fathers and sons are deliberately classified as missing in action to deny them the compensation they are owed. Meanwhile, corrupt commanding officers continue to draw their pay. In stark contrast, Zelensky remains insulated from the realities of the war, living in luxury and spending extended periods abroad in high-end hotels with fine food and wine, while manipulating casualty figures, rejecting Russian refrigerated lorries carrying thousands of bodies of fallen AFU soldiers, and reinforcing mainstream media narratives that understate the true scale of losses.
And you would assume that the western secret services know all of this as well, but deliberately feeding the false narrative. Probably also because Macron, Starmer, Merz, Rutte, FondOfLying, Kallas are not interested in the realities and thus have become war criminals.
The old "there's a sucker born every minute" saying comes to mind.
I don't think I would sign up to be a mercenary unless I got paid in advance.
Nobody will risk paying in advance, but probably there is a "sign-on bonus." If paid in advance, who says you won't desert at the first stop once you got pay?
Why would you feel sorry for violent young men who take money to kill people? Or their families if they knowingly approve of their children doing this?
I worded that badly: I should say "I sometimes feel sorry"...and it's for the hapless fools who don't know what they are signing up for.
When I was at school a few people joined the British Army, and they weren't the brightest; I don't think they really thought much about what they were doing. Two of them were idiots who I wouldn't have let be in charge of fireworks, let alone actual weapons!
Yes I know what you mean. However, when those people joined the British Army in the 60s and 70s (I assume that's what you mean) they went in to travel the world and learn a trade - they didn't think they'd be doing any fighting.
Mercenaries are a whole different thing and I have no sympathy for people who willingly take money to kill people, however ignorant because mostly they are people who have a penchant for violence and a disregard for innocents; some are born psychopaths. Then there are those "noble" idiots who bought the propaganda and think themselves virtuous while committing violence and taking a paycheck for it etc.
Thanks for replying.
feeling sry 4 mercs, lmao. i hope the survivors die in labour camps.
Not all Ukrainians fight because 'they don't really have a choice'- some fight for an "idea," some for hatred of "moskali," some revenge for their loved ones being killed.
Angelina,
The Banderists are the ones the Russians want dead . De-Nazification is one of the demands and they hate the Russians .
Mark, you underestimate the industrial grade propaganda Ukrainians were exposed since 1991. My life-long Ukrainian friends tell me that they "hate Russians" - I'm like since WHEN I knew you from teens, it's the first time I find out you hated Russians?
Angelina,
After seeing woke burn through the western world , nothing would surprise me . Logic and common sense have been lost in favour of emotional manipulation and victim mentality . Nobody seems to understand that war will destroy civilisation . Its notable that we have another major conflict just as the survivors of the last are gone.
Makes sense, and in the end they will be eliminated thus making the lessons learned last for generations to come.
Unfortunately, nobody learns and tend to step on the same rake again and again
Even taking that as granted - it works.
The fact that the AFU holds on, continues to counter attack and continues to be able to shift forces seemingly at will from crisis to crisis, even launches the occasional Airstrike with JDAM's, continues to reach targets inside Russia, continues to attack ships in the Black Sea...all of that must raise at least some questions about the real capacity of the Russian Army and Navy.
This is not to suggest that Russia is not grinding forward. But it seems to me that continuation of reform remains a critical necessity in the MOD.
It's also should remind us of Cicero's maxim that the "The sinews of war are infinite money". In the midst of war the Russian MOD only has 120 billion per year to spend while the US war department is spending (borrowing) 1 trillion per year with Trump agitating for 1.5 trillion.
How much of the Russian Army operating in Ukraine is actually operating on a shoestring budget ? Much of the success or failure on the LOC seems to come down to the deployment of elite units - those units each side fells to be capable and motivated enough to spend funds on fully kitting out.
Money can' t win a war. Men do. Americans do not want to fight, Europeans neither, nor they can because the shrink by nature and Ukraine is running out of 'em. Your money elite deepstate fed view does not work on the battlefield.
Men certainly, but Russia has men out of patriotism and the ability to pay them generously. Besides men it takes weapons, ammunition, transport, sensors and all of these in the "modern era" require vast infrastructure created and sustained by money. Ukraine has endured this long because the west pours as much money into Ukraine as Russia is able to spend.
To say that money is the sinews of war does not depreciate the motivation and bravery of the men. It does not make them less, it simply puts into perspective another, important aspect of the balance of forces.
If we could compare the best Russian units; how richly they are kitted out and backstopped with expensive support of every kind compared to the average Russian Army infantry unit, I suspect we would find a big difference. I doubt its entirely due to the unwillingness of the Army to lavish money, training and support onto more of the Army, it will come down to budget. There is never enough money to satisfy all of the commanders wants - thats as true in the US Army as it is in the Russian.
They are very brave we must admit. But they are also highly indoctrinated. Most Ukrainians hate Russians no matter what Russians do.
Best monicker on Substack! Always makes me smile when I see it. I really should follow you!
I chose it because of the unusual horror story Poe wrote, that later came true. Look it up ;) Quite eerie
Ah I’ll look it up! I thought it was a reference to the Pequod’s cabin boy in the incomparable Moby Dick.
Because we've been hearing for four years that Ukraine is out of men, that the end if coming, but it never does.
Thanks Simplicius, much appreciation for the larger scale maps. The youtube mappers seldom provide such overviews, just jerky moves from one small scale view to another.
Whether their capital cities are worth taking or not, large buffer zones in the Sumy and Chernigov regions are required for protection against drones. There is no need to govern this territory, just occupy it as payback for the Kursk incursion.
Brigitte with her strong right hook again, eh? :P
You should see his arsehole when she gets the strap-on out - apparently like a massive balloon knot. I suspect he's a glutton for it.
Mr Brigitte needs a strap-on?
😂
Was gonna say….Big Mike dont need one either…
So the West is scared of Oreshnick and Micron announced they need one of their own. Yah, well, there are a few problems there. Over the last 30 years the West has prioritized the following in its universities:
1. Womens' studies (whatever that is),
2. Transgenderism,
3. Political science,
4. Law,
5. International relations.
While these subject areas are great for bilking students out of thousands of dollars in tuition fees, the graduates of these programs are completely useless to the economy or the defense of a country. Most NATO officers have graduate degrees in these fields, which explains much.
I went through university in Canada in the late eighties, electrical engineering. TA=teaching assistance, these people supervise labs, seminars and tutorials. They are graduate students. Obviously in engineering the subject matter was math, physics, chemistry and pure engineering. I had only ONE Canadian TA in 5 years of engineering, the rest were from overseas, mostly Chinese and Indian. The Canadians were all getting MBAs or law degrees. You might get a better salary with an MBA but its not that great for building up an economy.....or an Orechnick.
And so, here we are.
John
Same thing really with everybody joining hedge funds, but nobody planting hedges.
It was pointed out to Catherine Austin Fitts by a guy from the People's Republic of China in the 1980s: 70-80% of our legislators are engineers; 70-80% of your legislators are lawyers. An unfortunate disparity as the world was entering a technological age, when the people needed to understand the tech they were writing laws and weighing in on policies about.
According to the first US Constitution, no legislator could be a lawyer - because by definition, each had to swear an oath to "The Bar" prior to starting out on that lucrative career path - the acronym standing for "British Accreditation Registry" so you can see the slight conflict of interest which would immediately rear its ugly head.
As time went on, though, such irritating and pedantic considerations were laid aside, and thus the US legislature today is largely peopled by directly treasonous individuals who are loyal to Britain rather than the US - or more specifically, to the jewish cabal which controls that nation, and has done so since the mid 17th century, when Cromwell allowed them to re enter the sceptred isle.
Learn something new every day, had no idea that's where the acronym came from or about that early prohibition. Brings to mind the Brandeis quote: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
C’est vrai, ca.
Mr Brandeis could have applied that quote to himself, and to his - and his fellow Democrat SC Judges’ - economically pig ignorant, Constitution-twisting support for the campaign of barmy price fixing, crop destroying, quota setting, cartel creating Peronist laws enacted by FDR, a milquetoast Stalin and the most overrated POTUS in history.
Also, sadly, an arch zionist.
It was a widespread fashion among upper class politicians back then. Putting politicians on the payroll came in a few decades later (Churchill excepted), as their general quality and social status declined.
And then, finally, all the way down to the bottom of the rotten sump, you end up with the likes of LFI stooge Starmer, who has just fired a police chief for making a rational and entirely correct judgment, as the law specifically required him to do, about the feral Judeosupremacist louts of Maccabi Tel Aviv. What other nations’ serial violent football thugs would be fawned over and put on a media and Westminster pedestal like that? That episode tells you all you need to know about UKanian politicians' bootlicking servility to their Israeli patron-crybullies. They love the sweet, juicy financial carrots, but how they cringe at the blue and white stick...
I am going to rate your comment Bovine Scatology.
There was no such restriction in the constitution and "The Bar" has never been an acronym for "British Accreditation Registry"
The term "the bar" in a legal context comes from the physical barrier or railing in a courtroom that separated the public area from the space occupied by judges, lawyers, and court officials. To be "called to the bar" meant you were allowed to pass this barrier and practice before the court.
"Bar" is cognate with "Barrier" through the Latin / Old Norman French "Barre".
Nobody was stitching up acronyms like B.A.R. in late 18th century Britain or America.
And I am going to rate yours "Could do better."
One of the things you learn as you get older and wiser is that many lies are told to obscure reality by those who wish for reality to be obscured.
You can make up all kinds of stories to account for all kinds of things; but in this case, what I said was exactly correct.
Find me this "British Accreditation Register", who complied it, where they complied it and whose names are on it.
Show me where, in any draft of the constitution it says "no legislator could be a lawyer", paragraph and line please.
Is not the case that James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and John Rutledge were all both lawyers and founding fathers who signed the constitution?
Find me ANY professional association, British or American who used an acronym for their name in the 18th century.
No doubt many lies are told to obscure reality by those who wish for reality to be obscured. How do I know that this story of the "British Accreditation Register" is not one of those lies and that YOU are not one of the obscurers?
I will know this by evidence. Evidence in support of your claim from multiple independent sources which I can cross reference against each other.
I can find no official recognition that such an acronym ever existed, esp in relation to the American Bar Association. I have to agree with you. Neither is there any evidence that I have seen that there was an earlier version of the US Constitution.
I also believe such claims should be accompanied by actual evidence to support them.
Oh no it isn’t.
Quite. Hence barre, the, er, exercise bar used by ballet dancers. BAR stands primarily for Browning Automatic Rifle.
Generations of lawyers will hold you in contempt of court for such a belief.
Jeez! Where shall I hide?
look up British Crown Temple: "...The governmental and judicial systems within the United States of America, at both federal and local state levels, is owned by the “Crown,” which is a private foreign power....[....] all Bar Associations throughout the world are signatories and franchises to the international Bar Association located at the Inns of Court at Crown Temple, London..." - https://ia802808.us.archive.org/35/items/pdfy-A3_v4SEVxCudIit2/2014%20the_crown_temple.pdf
The 'first Constitution', if it was as you say it was, had absolutely the right idea: as we’ve seen here with the vile Blair and the wretched Starmer, no one has less respect for the spirit of the law than a barrister (as we call trial lawyers here). We too are drowning under a plague of third rate hack parasite lawyers in our Parliament and throughout our State. But your BAR acronym story sounds very unlikely. The common law legal system of England and Wales is separate to the largely civil law system of Scotland, so there is not and never has been any such thing as a British legal system or British Bar. The British Accreditation Registry is a scientific/ technical standards agency.
So look at the situation "In the beginning."
It seems that those men had "absolutely the right idea," but as I implied, the right ideas will rapidly be removed from the lexicon if the subject of money and power intrudes into the discussion.
By simple prima facie logic, then, the "Bar" explanation I gave - to howls of disapproval - looks to be correct.
As to the superiority of English over Scottish law, it is self-evident, as the Scots make up only 10% of the population, so their system will be confined to groups of savages with blue faces, whereas the English system will be carried around the world.
I am not sure that “BAR” is derived from this acronym. In my humble opinion, there are two possible explanations:
- According to the first, BAR is derived from places where drinks are served. Of course, lawyers are human beings who also need to hydrate, but I reject this interpretation.
- The other is simply that BAR is derived from the French “BARRE” and “BARREAU”.
BARRE is the place where one defends one's case before a magistrate. And BARREAU is the name given to the congregation of lawyers in French.
An old remnant of the Norman invasion of England.
There is a third explanation, which I have adduced.
Oh, well, given that George Washington didn't have any formal education, he almost qualified by Lenin's "any scullery maid must be able to govern the state"
According to AI
No, the original U.S. Constitution, or any of its amendments, never prohibited a president from being a lawyer; in fact, many early presidents were lawyers, and the Constitution doesn't restrict any profession for the presidency, only requiring the president to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident for 14 years. The confusion might come from the Prohibition Era (18th Amendment) or debates about lawyers in government, but no amendment bans lawyers from the presidency. "
Doubtless you would also say that "No legislation bars a foreigner born in Kenya" from becoming President either, or "Every President must demonstrate mental fitness before assuming the role."
The whole point of US political history is that many things which were by no means in the interests of the population nevertheless went on to be inflicted on them - I have given two examples of this, but one of the most egregious surely has to be the institution of something we now fondly refer to as a federal reserve bank, and its bedfellow, the IRS.
It is true. I have also seen that video.
Tom Paxton is wrong, when he says:
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
One million lawyers, one million lawyers
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
How much can a poor nation stand?
Today: American Bar Association (ABA) reporting approximately 1.32 million active lawyers as of early 2024, and projections showing growth to around 1.37 million by 2025, according to the ABA Profile of the Legal Profession. New York and California host about a quarter of the nation's lawyers, with around 4 lawyers per 1,000 residents nationally.
I really developed an appetite to watch these bastards to become homeless and starve to death.
Note what I said about the "Bar" acronym above.
I did and it's what is known as a "backronym", like "shit" being an acronym for "store high in transit", starting with the word and making up the phrase for which it is supposed to be an acronym, i.e. bollocks. From an etymological dictionary:
bar(n.3)
"whole body of lawyers, the legal profession," 1550s, a sense which derives ultimately from the railing that separated benchers from the hall in the Inns of Court (see bar (n.1)). Students who had attained a certain standing were "called" to it to take part in the important exercises of the house. After c. 1600, however, this was popularly assumed to mean the bar in a courtroom, the wooden railing marking off the area around the judge's seat, where prisoners stood for arraignment and where a barrister (q.v.) stood to plead. As the place where the business of court was done, bar in this sense had become synonymous with court by early 14c.
The weakness in your argument, entertaining though it is, is why is it necessary to swear an oath before entering the profession, and to whom is it sworn?
There's definitely secrecy involved, n'est ce pas?
Why should an organization dedicated supposedly to revealing truth, need to swear an oath to keep something secret?
( crickets. )
The whole business of the law has been subverted to ulterior ends; financial gain is now its modus operandi, whereas originally, it was the discharge of justice.
An entirely new language called legalese was devised in pursuance of this overall objective, according to which, a word which in English means one thing, in legalese means its exact opposite.
The establishment of this system is what kept the British in the US for eight years after their supposed defeat, so that yanqui agents could be trained up, and sworn in, to maintain the bleeding of the colony's resources - which is why the whole operation was funded in the first place.
Forget about "Pilgrim Fathers," or any of the other nonsense you have been told.
The US is a commercial operation run by "The Crown," ie the jewish cabal which infests the City of London to this day.
Their mechanism of control is via lawyers, each one of whom has to swear an oath of allegiance to it.
Quote a source or you've been exposed as a charlatan Tim.
You’ll be wanting to, er, bar Doctors next: they swear an oath too.
"I really developed an appetite to watch these bastards to become homeless and starve to death."
You may feel differently should you ever get a bit drunk in a public place, somebody shoves you, you shove back, and suddenly you find yourself under arrest because not all of the third party witnesses who saw what happened had a clear view that you didn't shove first.
I know a few working, honest lawyers and their days are not spent dreaming up ways to screw honest doctors with fake malpractice claims. They do basic family law, helping to clean up the ruins when two people in a marriage decide they hate each other and want to destroy their spouse no matter what that does to the kids, they save your ass when genuine misunderstandings happen (like that "who shoved first?" bit), and they deal with the truly squalid consequences when some people decide they are going to be career criminals for life, just taking whatever they want from local stores. But even those people in the US have a right to defensive counsel.
That's not a bad system and without any law and any lawyers the US would be even more of a cesspool that it is. That's not a new thing: in the 19th century there was plenty of crime and truly dishonest behavior going on at all economic strata.
A society that has laws also needs honest lawyers. With one truly foul exception, all of the lawyers I've known have been honest, whether they were practicing civil law or criminal law and whether on the criminal law side they were defensive council or prosecutors. I'd say that was ten to twenty to one honest vs. dishonest. I can't say the same for the non-practicing lawyers I've met in government, where it seems only one or two were "honest" in the sense that they weren't driven by the need to cater to special interest groups to raise money for their next election campaign.
John,
The reason we need so many lawyers is because of the explosion of laws . Elected officials keep creating new laws and these often conflict with others and tend to be reactionary . The irony is the number of laws that are now being ignored . Considering how many Lawyers there are they should be a lot cheaper . Its a racket .
"Considering how many Lawyers there are they should be a lot cheaper . Its a racket ."
The above is broken logic, as if you didn't read what you wrote in the first sentence of your paragraph: "The reason we need so many lawyers is because of the explosion of laws "
So, is there or isn't there an explosion of laws? Were you writing the truth when you wrote that? And how about "the reason we need so many lawyers" - were you telling the truth there? Do you need so many lawyers or don't you? ("we" doesn't fit in this sub since many people participating here either aren't Americans or, like me, they're Americans who don't live in the US.)
If you stick to your story, that the reason the US needs so many lawyers is because of the explosion of laws, don't complain that you have many lawyers.
Complain about the asshole politicians who keep piling up laws and regulations. Those are the real drivers of judicial overlordship, the explosion of regulations that even a single law can generate. In the US, regulations are the people-killing shrapnel generated when a single cluster-bomb law goes to work.
You are, indeed, correct. The reason there are so many lawyers in the US is because of the obscene expansion of laws and regulations. When you consider how many laws and regulations there are, which effect every damned part of your stinking vassal life in the US, from the amount of water your toilet can use to flush your shit to whether or not you can braid your neighbor's hair and get paid a small amount for your trouble, there probably aren't enough lawyers to provide the full legal assistance people need if they don't want to be at risk from the "three felonies a day" wrath of their overlords.
"Three felonies a day" is a reference to the famous book of that name written by (if I recall correctly) a prosecutor who pointed out that the vast expansion of the regulatory state at the Federal, State, and local level meant that most people end up committing about three felonies a day as part of ordinary life. A lot of those are technical, of course, but they can still get you jail time and wipe out your savings for defending yourself if people in government decide to charge you.
As for your broken logic that a large number of lawyers means they should be a lot cheaper, the conclusion doesn't follow from your starting point. We've already covered that it could well be that the even larger number of laws and regulations means that a large number of lawyers might not be enough. In such a deficit situation you'd expect fees to be higher (supply and demand).
There's also the complexity of the laws and regulations. Many are phenomenally complicated. For example, if you're an American businessman and you're doing the loyal, patriotic thing of helping to reduce the US's trade deficit by building in the US and exporting abroad, unless you're a huge multinational with buildings full of export control specialists almost certainly you're committing multiple crimes each time you sell even a single product abroad. Dealing with that shit is extraordinarily labor intensive. So even if there are few laws, if those laws are phenomenally complicated you could end up having to pay for, literally, hundreds of hours of legal time to figure out how to not break that law. That's expensive.
Beyond the internal complexity of laws and regulations you also have the built up complexity of the legal system in the US, where precedent has a huge role. It's not enough to just read the law to know if you are in the clear or not, because none of those thousand page laws has hermetic clarity. They're all full of gray areas that only get resolved through precedents. So you also have to research all the precedents, yet more labor time.
To do all that you need a very extensive legal education with lots of practical experience. That takes years of expensive education (costly because in the real world you have to pay talented people a lot to be willing to spend the labor time required to pass on their expertise to beginners) followed by years of apprentice-like low wage earning to gain the experience and skills required to take on real work as the attorney in charge.
So when you hire somebody to do something that takes a huge amount of labor time where the skill set required to do that task requires extremely expensive investment of time and money to acquire, why the fuck do you expect them to save your ass for cheap? If you think it's that easy, go represent yourself.
The racket is in government, where they use laws and regulations to control vassals like you, and where they use those laws and regulations on a bigger scale to shake down entire industries for money. Pay up or they regulate you to death, giving your competitors advantages you don't have.
The racket is not on the part of individual attorneys who for the most part face daunting financial obstacles to running individual practices. There are a very few grifters that are symbionts with government grifters, and for those few, yes, "racket" is exactly the word just like it is for the government parasites. But by overwhelming margins for most working attorneys the business is no gravy train.
It's a lot of hard work and for many of them retirement is a dream that recedes with each year. That's why you have so many old guys who are still working at their law practices in towns across America. They never made the money required to put away enough for a comfy retirement so in their 70's they're still taking on the DUI cases and family law cases, despite the emotional stress, because they need the money just to get by.
John,
While I agree with a lot of your points, its interesting that there have been some lawyers that have been caught using AI's to do their work for them (and at this point they work for free). As to the retirement issues that's widespread in all occupations , except government employment . The race between inflation and growth is screwing all prospective retirees who need ever increasing superannuation savings. If the government doesn't fix the debt and liability issues it will hit everybody who isn't rich . I have had lawyers who have given good service for money and one who played everyone concerned . If you want a definition of difficult try suing a Doctor or Lawyer . The big issue is accountability - especially in politics and they are the ones making the laws .
👏
In my large city (West Coast, USA)- Director of Public Utilities Development is drumrolls.... an accountant. Imagine, not a PE (professional engineer, who after a degree must pass a few hard exams to get a seal), or an architect, a civil engineer, a geodesist/whatever but an... accountant?! As a result of some hard-core "accounting," they came up with a brilliant idea to charge private builders for the PUBLIC PIPES to their lots in the areas which are already taxed to the eyeballs... The water mains n the city are from 1901-1920s, all corroded, so they "cleverly" saddle a private resident trying to build a home with paying for the pipes alone $250,000 + and it is already after the city "generously" chips in 70% of the costs reimbursement and the entire amount the builders must pay upfront and get reimbursed after LOL
This says it all.
The situation in the western world generally, directly pertains to the emergence of bankers as the directors of society - ie those who "Know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
The west is simply a jewish-controlled tax farm, pure and simple.
Usury in all forms and shapes
jewsury.
A friend of mine in a smaller community has to pay for public water even though no one is stupid enough to drink from the tap. Apparently runoff from the ag land put a lot of toxic chemicals into the water and the city is now supposedly doing something to reverse that but meanwhile, despite a notice with every water bill that the toxins aren't at a high enough % to cause cancer, etc., people opt to live off bottled water.
The fun thing is that when this city actually BUILT these water mains in 1920s, the entire City Planning Department was just 7 people, but now just the Public Utilities Department is 1,400 and they build nothing. Running excel sheets like a crazy man with a gun and all to show for decades but intrigues & schemes, is not a legitimate occupation! Look how the architect/wife team built the Brookline Bridge - can you even imagine the galore of bureaucrats "building it" now? LOL
'And so, here we are.'
But we are not there yet.
But we here, are we not? Else, where am I?
'Don't give up you are almost there' Says the sign on a hopeless, barely two lane road, between Las Vegas and Death Valley half way.
I think you'll find the greater problem is that those coming out with STEM degrees but no family trust fund are finding their pay is as crappy as anyone else's today. The West has quite deliberately crunched wages to everyone except the courses you didn't mention - "Financial Services".
The likely reason you didn't mention is that is because you aren't part of the 1%, and get your "News" from the corporate media that is lying about everything else, blaming "Migrants" for the general impoverishment, "Putin" for the war in eastern Europe, and "Hamas" for the genocide in Palestine.
Those degrees CAN be as useful as any other, IF the courses are actually taught well. Who would doubt that a course by Mearsheimer, Alastair Crooke, Glenn Diesen, Jacques Baud, or heck, even Garland Nixon would be full of interesting and relevant information and analysis?
Needless to say, such Professors would struggle to find work in most Western universities, which are simply corporate cash cows today.
But if you want to turn this situation around with regards to STEM, stop blaming the students, and start blaming the structure of Western society, where it is now all Class based - the Financial sector taking 70-80% of all profits generated, and start raising wages for the actual workers in those industries.
Who knows? Perhaps if engineers could pay off their student loans, afford to buy a home and raise a child or two on their wages, more young people would go into those courses.
Much of this is true, but when I upgraded my own Women's Studies degree certificate to a degree in materials science, I saw a definite skyrocketing of my income.
I'm going to take a rough guess, that a women-hating patriarchal misogynist would probably suffer trying to make good money from women's studies, however.
Unless I'm mistaking you for another conservative-christian "Tim" on stack.
Bit silly, really.
But I shouldn't expect my ironical remark to do anything much except fly 6' above your head.
Of course, as I'm not one of those 12ft tall North Korean Super-Soldiers who fire RPG's out of their arse and drove the Ukrainians from Kursk.
That's obvious.
Ironical?
And here you were, pretending to be an adult who "knows things others don't" yet you have the vocabulary of an 8 year old.
Ironic, really.
I expect that next time before you open your mouth, you will check a dictionary first.
Not so.
I paid mine off in one year. When my brother graduated i paid his off in one shot and he paid me two hundred bucks a month for 6 years.
It beats working at starbucks.
That being said, i hear you when you talk of wage compresssion, that is a real issue. Its a massive problem in Europe and north america is catching up fast.
On a related note....
In the late nineties i had the "pleasure" of working in China, when Pudong, east of Shanghai, was just pig farms and defecating along the road was normal. Been there 3 times in the last year....absolutely shocking. Its a different country. Clean, efficient, functional...they have almost caught up to south korea. Completely blown away. Reminded me of canada in the early seventies when we were building airports, highways, bridges, steel plants, refineries...when life for everyone was improving. Now we do environmental accessments for decades rather than build anything.
It is what it is.
John
Financialisation. The West's wealth is piling up in personal accounts on offshore tax-havens, while China's banking system is under the ownership or control of the Govt - and anyone getting TOO greedy will soon regret it.
Their money circulates, and invests, our money is printed, stacked, and depreciates.
Personally, I worked through my degree, and didn't have a penny of debt at the end - but the degree was also designed to accommodate that, as well as being a fantastic experience from beginning to end. The Danish are wonderful at such stuff.
Agree.
The MBA has destroyed the west. August 15, 1971 was the beginning of the last chapter of the West.
John
Here we are
It is what it is
Reminds me of Slaughterhouse 5
the spirit of the times
one of those beautiful backwards going movies
so it goes
if you think death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I've said
LOVE all things Kurt Vonnegut. Your screen name is reminiscent of the character, Rabo Karabekian, from the K.V. novel "Bluebeard."
.
Gnuneo. Other than the number crunchers and IT bods, most people in the City have non vocational degrees. But they did get them at Oxbridge, London, Exeter, Durham or Bristol and often have parents who also work in the City.
This is a very interesting point and worth further examination.
When I was at school, it was explained as the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary industries.
The Primary are farmers, fishermen, coal miners, etc.
The Secondary are carpenters, builders, cooks, plumbers, electricians, technicians, etc.
The Tertiary are professors, philosophers, poets, priests, politicians, etc.
The structure is a pyramid; the later, higher stages are built upon the earlier, lower stages. We can easily imagine a society with only Primary industry, fishermen who make their own boats and nets, farmers who make their own spades and pitchforks. Such societies have existed throughout history. When they grow larger, then they create specialists.
But a society based on Tertiary industry, made up entirely of professors of sociology and Harvard MBAs, is insane. They would, at best, be an elite clique, not a society capable of survival and reproduction.
The real trick involves weapons and the men (let's be honest here, it's MEN) trained to use them. No man is free without a gun; or a very good friend with a gun willing to use it on his behalf. What's true for the individual is true for society as a whole.
No society is safe without weapons. This means gunsmiths to make them (Secondary), who in turn need steel, lead, copper, sulfur, nitrates, etc. (Primary).
The problem is that weapons are never freely traded on the open market; the more powerful the weapon, the less likely it is to be traded freely. Therefore, the Tertiary clique of society can never be safe relying solely on money gained from licensing fees, consultation, investment dividends and so on.
That is where the Western Professional Managerial Class is now. They’ve cut themselves off at the knees by alienating themselves from the base of their own society, thinking the free market will supply them with everything.
But it won’t.
Weapons and soldiers are the failure mode of this system of thought.
This what civilisation collapse looks like : everybody sues/prosecutes everybody else for having wrong views
This is what civilisational growth looks like : everybody has a practical skill and produces things to benefit everyone else
Examples: 1. Europe. 2. China
This is what civilisational retardation looks like : US of A.
Perhaps I'm missing something here.... Weapons are never freely traded on the open market? There are gun dealers advertising on billboards around me not to mention massive gun shows where guns and ammo are bought and sold in their hundreds if not thousands.
@bemused
Try and buy a man portable air defense missile system, man portable anti armor weapon, light crew served weapons such as squad level mortar, general purpose or heavy machine gun. Then look for a few antitank mines?
Rifles and pistols are essentially useless against a state level police force, let alone a national army with air assets & armored vehicles. Drones were slowly altering that a bit but I wouldn't count on time to develop such before getting rolled over.
If you were planning on starting army I'd agree with you. For an insurgency the weaponry available might well suffice. I hope we never find out.
Billy,
Where I come from you can't even own a machete .Long gun ownership requires training courses and has onerous restrictions and pistols are restricted to target shooters , security guards and law enforcement . All Guns have to be registered and all owners have to be licensed . Even paintball guns require a license and gel blasters are prohibited . You can't even own pepper spray .
Rice, beans, timber etc. are freely traded on the open market, whereby anyone can bid and anyone’s dollar is the same as anyone else’s dollar.
The American DOMESTIC market for SMALL arms is probably the closest to a free market for weapons you are going to find anywhere in the world, but it’s still very far from a free market.
Can anyone sell to anyone anywhere?
That is true, if you are a convicted felon you aren't allowed to buy weapons. Other than that it depends on the state. I haven't been in the market for a weapon so haven't checked the particulars but Florida is pretty open. If you want a gun you can get one. Past that I think you are splitting hairs just to be argumentative. To your earlier point, no they wouldn't be effective in a toe-to-toe battle with the weaponry the state police could bring to bear. On the other hand, like the redcoats complaining during the American Revolution that the colonists hid behind trees instead of coming at them in massed formations like proper soldiers, if the police did turn on the citizenry they'd never know where the bullets were coming from. All the big guns in the world won't help if you don't have a target. And I believe I just read that there is an estimated 300 million guns in private hands in the US....
That weapons are not freely traded on the open market, and that the more powerful the weapon the less freely they are traded is at the root of my argument, and it’s true, it’s not hair splitting. Although maybe I should have said “Weapon Systems” because that’s what it is.
It isn’t about whether or not you can go to a gun shop and get a pistol for your pocket or a shotgun for your cupboard, those are just the results of an integrated system. A system that also puts submarines in the ocean and rockets in space.
You have got to move away from an 18th & 19th century American 2nd amendment political perspective. This is the global condition of the human species across time.
Look at what’s been happening in Ukraine for the past 4 years and right now. Western Professional Elites are currently debating if to send in an army AFTER a treaty has been signed, how to choke the Russian economy, if they can seize Russian bonds, and are actually seizing unarmed oil tankers.
None of that will stop the Oreshnik.
A similar story is the rare earth minerals situation. China, quite reasonably, will not send vital materials to nations that may use them to create weapons targeted against China.
The Western Elites have cut themselves off their base, and the breaking point, the failure mode, is in weapon systems, those who can make them and those who can use them. Money, status and prestige won’t cover that gap.
The Harvard faculty COULD arm themselves and become a militia, but then they’re not the Harvard faculty anymore, they’d just be another armed militia.
Based on available data, Business and Management consistently emerges as the most popular university degree in Canada. This field often includes related majors like Business Administration, Accounting, and Finance.
📊 Other Highly Popular University Majors
Beyond business, several other fields see high enrollment across Canadian universities. The following list summarizes key popular areas and common career paths for graduates.
Computer Science / Software Engineering
· Why it's popular: Strong demand in tech hubs like Toronto, Waterloo, and Vancouver.
· Common career paths: Junior developer, product analyst, cybersecurity specialist.
Nursing & Health Sciences
· Why it's popular: High job security, strong demand due to an aging population.
· Common career paths: Registered Nurse, community health roles, health program coordinator.
Psychology
· Why it's popular: Versatile skills applicable to HR, UX research, social services, and more.
· Common career paths: Human resources, community services, research assistant.
Engineering (various disciplines)
· Why it's popular: Practical, in-demand skills for infrastructure and technology sectors.
· Common career paths: Civil, mechanical, electrical, and software engineering roles.
Arts & Humanities (e.g., English, History)
· Why it's popular: Develops strong communication and critical thinking skills.
· Common career paths: Communications, policy analysis, publishing, public service.
I don't know what it is like in the US or Canada, but in the UK, the entire education system is built around an aim to direct students into the "professions", law, medicine, finance etc. Instead of learning to do something practical, everyone is supposed to go to university, get a degree and get a job that involves staring at a computer screen all day. It really doesn't matter whether universities are producing enough engineering graduates or not: there's no point in having a lot of talented designers if you haven't got anyone to actually build what has been designed. The new wunderwaffen equivalent to Oreshnik is not going to be a lot of use against China or Russia if it has to be built in China.
Malaysia has been touted, and final assembly by Hindustan Aviation Ltd.
It's the same in IT, John. I work in sales within the IT industry. I am almost never in touch with any Western names.
Just did a random search on LinkedIn, that I use a lot to generate leads. Searched for IT Directors in US/Canada within my niche. Out of the first 25 results we have 19 Indians, 1 Mexican, 1 Dutch, 2 Canadians and 2 Americans.
In Europe it's usually a bit more balanced, but still a majority of foreigners.
But who needs to work with engineering or IT. That's boring. That will not turn you into a new powerful Kaja Kallas.
Visit Nvidia's headquarters in Silicon Valley, go to their cafeteria and by a 20 to 1 margin you see foreigners. It used to be the only Americans you saw in there were fat people doing food prep. For years now even those are Latinos. Now the only Americans you see are the occasional marketing people, whose contribution is designing T-shirts, not chips.
It's true, by the way, that there are still a few Americans in chip design and hard core science, and some of them work in Nvidia. But there are fewer and fewer as the industry expands. It's no accident that one of the biggest barriers in the bipartisan US plan to duplicate in the US the huge TSMC foundry in Taiwan was that they discovered they would have to import all the workers from Taiwan to not only build it but also to operate it.
Ah - Kaya.
Everybody's dream girl.
Probably second only to Annalena in every schoolboy's fantasy girlfriend list.
"The West" could build an Oreshnik, John.
The problem isn't a lack of STEM graduates, or pink hair.
In Canada, gender/women’s studies departments remain poorly funded and with low enrolment, especially beyond the intro-level course which may be a popular elective. I legitimately have no idea what to tell you if you really believe that ‘transgenderism’ is a discipline that exists within Canadian universities, let alone one that is prioritized by administration and taken by ‘most Nato officers’. Financialization is the problem here, along with the suffocating contradictions of 45+ years neoliberal economic-political doctrine enforced by the out-of-touch elite class. But yeah, keep blaming the youth like a typical boomer.
There is no value to Russia in storming into territory that it then has to use personnel-weapons etc defending against relentless counter-attacks. Boring though this might be for game show addicts, the only way for Russia to secure its objectives is by grinding down effective military opposition in all sorts of ways. And there is no rush, not while the current inchoacy is playing to Russian advantage with the western alliance losing its wallet and its solidarity in case you hadn't noticed, and Trump bombasting about, losing friends and influence all over the place.
Putin really does play multi-dimensional chess.
Attrition always works on both sides and it's hard to know the truth, though now the Europeans are flagging engagement with the Evil Barbarians. Things must have shifted significantly in recent days. The Coalition of the Willing have been sent to Greenland I hear. Ukraine is circling down the narrative plug hole.
Attrition is not symmetric here because the Russians, unlike the Ukrainians who have to keep on showcasing counter attacks to keep their allies onside, can sit back and wait for the enemy to impale itself. And it does so, over and over again. This is a one sided game par excellence.
Normandy in June and July 1944.
“Inchoacy”. Nice. Didn’t even know there was such a word. The English language never ends.
Minus 15 C for unprotected city people will have serious consequences. Water pipes will be seriously damaged by icing. It is only a question of days when frozen corpses will be removed from their communist style apartment blocks. The Servant of the People did not disclose this possibility when he was running for election.
What's wrong with 'communist' apartment blocks?
I can imagine that many people in the US would prefere those over their tents on the sidewalk or shitty trailers/sleeping in their cars.
They're as ugly as sin, have poor window-glazing, but had good and cheap heating provided by estate-wide water pipes from the industrial plants.
There's hopefully not that many homeless tents in Alaska, but if there were, it's doubtful that the US regime would do anything except burn the tents and blame the inhabitants for their plight.
ugly, harsh and high-rise. without electricity elevators won't work, no running water.
I was staying in one of those for a while. The single elevator occasionally died and of course I was the one who had to carry groceries and whatever else up to the 10th floor. These things had no internal metal frames to hold them together. Each concrete panel around 3X6 meters had four metal clips at the corners and was delivered on trucks from the 'house factory'. I was watching them putting these things together like a house of cards and had nightmares sleeping there.
true, everything concrete. and knowing that a fire hose has a limited reach (6 floors?), a dystopian horror show. and we allow this because....? (rhet.)
Yep. It is widely recognised that the Soviet apartments saved many from death (exposure) when austerity was imposed, as citizens had secure homes.
If the same situation was imposed on the west the masses would be homeless.
If you read/watched the various "social collapse best practices" articles and videos Dmitry Orlov produced?
You are familiar with the projected difference between collapse era Russian Federation rent free, heated apartment & public transport to your community garden allotment vs. USA and losing your house in a detached suburb to the bank (which cracker box house you couldn't afford heat or electricity for, let alone gas to go to the grocery store now)?
We may well find out how accurately Dmitri predicted the "other collapse" soon enough.
https://youtu.be/kySDKESt3_M?si=gj6sQg1oq4EBL-M7
The question nobody asked was "The servant of which people?"
It was a TV show Tim.
Always with Timmy
What do you mean was , it is still running with same clapped out actor, just a different theatre
It's a political party, abcdefghij.
Yes, though more party and less political.
Weak.
SOTP is a political party which includes all of the top Ukrainian operatives amongst its membership.
But good to see you slyly backing away from your sarcastic remark last post.
Soon you will break into headlong flight.
Soviet style. Not Communist style, that is absurd.
Freezing to death is a mild way to go over to the other side. Maybe even smoother with some alcohol. There are worse and very dreadful ways.😢
Miadonna, as soon as I can I will fly to Kiev and ask a few people if they agree with you. :)))
No need, they won’t
But in the geopolitical power ‘game’, people are not relevant, collateral damage, unless they support the powers that be (and the circle around them).
Since I saved you a flight to Kiev, maybe you can send me half the money? Win win😀
Si, Senora, your wish is my order. It seems you were also hanging around there for a while, you have an idea how they think and act.
-15C turns buildings into nothing but hovels for squatters. The whole fu——g building will have to come down (the burst pipes will flood when they thaw). What a waste.
They might have ways to drain the whole system of water before tragedy strikes but they have to act fast and draining thousands of large building takes a lot of men with some knowledge.
A “burst blood vessel”, according to Macron’s clean-up crew. >> My guess is an overdose of Viagra required to respond to the mesmerizing Brigitte.
Lola Macron is a feisty lady.
Cross it at your peril.
very mannish 'lady'
Macron .... microclots from the clotshot. For those that are not aware of the data that has been published (and peer reviwed), quite a few people are still producing the spike protein 4 to 5 years after their last shots. While the immune system keeps clearing up the microclots that are induced, any that doesn't get cleared, creates a cascading set of issues. Notice that Trump has been slurring a lot more in his speeches lately.. and there's been lots of commentary (some snarky, some concerned) about his swollen hands and ankle/feet.
Quite a number of folks in my very limited social circle, say 100 people whose health situation I know well enough to ask, had a detached retina soon after their P shots. I'm counting.. total of 3. Another developed double vision for a year and spent $5K seeing ophthalmologists. Before the internet was clamped down by the deep state near the begining of the rollout of the shots, I was still able to google "double vision pfizer" and found forums where 2000+ people had experienced that... that was within the 1st month of the jab rollout. After that, all those discussions were nuked, and you couldn't find them on the internet anymore.
Why does this matter? Coz most of western europe is shot up.... Americans about 2/3.... there really isn't any ability to field any army from western europe anytime soon... their health issues will keep escalating, medical systems will collapse due to overload...
There were different versions produced even of the same line of "vaccine". The health workers got the worse variants... curious that.
No doubt the 'cleanest' versions went to the 1%.
Tbf, Micron is under ENORMOUS pressure, and there is absolutely no way out even for a slimy Gallic two-faced turd for most of the problems.
Swollen ankles is a health problem I have now, and I never took the safe and effective.
And if Donnie has mental issues, it isn't necessary to automatically equate that with the shots.
I think we know his diet is McDonalds-based, so he won't be getting enough omega 3 fatty acids, in all likelihood.
As to Micron's black eye, many of the elite, from popes to princes ( Philip had a good one ) to pop stars, show up with this symptom on a regular basis - Richard Branson had a spectacular one - it's thought this is some sort of elite ritual whereby they get humiliated by their owners - ie those who put them where they are in the first place, ( you didn't think it was through sheer hard work and ability, did you? )
i think the russians call it: Хуй в глаз
"FU in the eye" for those who are a bit rusty on their Russian slang.
SG
one would not knowingly destroy his own population.
It is definitely not a conspiracy.
It was partly an experimental vaccine, yes.
Experiments with vaccines, gain of function research is ongoing generally
Why? Who is financing it?
Three types
A. military - lets get biologic weapons that kill Chinese, or RUssians...
B. financialized pharma - lets find a vaccine that will make billions, even if in the process we risk creating a disease that kills hundred of millions
C pure scientists - like with nuclear power, one cannot forbid intelligent people to ask questions and investigate
like AI
it is simply the way capitalism works
and big power politics works - best described as realism
with Britain as a state being a fine example of realism in foreign politics
It is possible that someone made a mistake, but it is highly unlikely that vaccination of a majority of golden billion will have serious negative effects.
Humans survive incredible things.
Vaccination, COVID did significantly more damage to minds, culture, society than to the bodies of the humans themselves.
keep drinking the Kool Aid and stay ignorant. The bio-weapon, counter measure, has been proven beyond all doubt (except for morons) that it was intended to harm and kill.
Idiot. Hope you have had several.
grr
are you trying to tell us that West knowingly tries to destroy its own population, the golden billion?
who would be doing that?
why?
eugenicism is strong among the powerful (Bill Gates' family) - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/blue-plaque-stories/eugenics/
mary lou
I understand the problem
many ideas that have been treated as conspiracy have been shown to be true
Snowden in Moscow is the proof, no one of any importance in public sphere is able to face the reality Snowden has revealed
US secret services are unlawfully, and unconstitutionally monitoring all human beings, including all American citizens
But here is a logic behind NSA, CIA, etc.
An Empire doing its job.
If NSA, CIA were found to do things to directly help China or Russia I would think twice, and investigate the matter three times before accepting the story.
Mary-Lou
You forgot "The club of Rome" . They are all addicted to the drug called "power" and its companion "control".
you're absolutely right, the Club of Rome and its many tentacles (shudder)
FFS.
“Idiot” is completely uncalled for—merely self-promoting
You are being too 'rational'.... because if you've the chance to study the history of 'vaccines', especially those of the smallpox and polio variety, you'd then discover the level of fraud and coercion involved, all in the name of public health. Midwesterndoc has a great substack, that a few pieces devoted to actual medical history... *hint* people of Leicester rioted against the vex mandates and the authorities had to withdraw. Those shots were killing people, yet it still got mandated (sound familiar?).
For the person who is getting swollen ankles... the folks who took the jabs are shedding. That is actually in the Pfizer documents that they only wanted to release over 75 years.... You need to take enteric-coated natto / serrapeptase on an empty stomach, and the natural enzymes will dissolve the clots and help improve blood flow. If you don't do that, more issues will arise in short order. You can do really high dose, but monitor with a blood pressure monitor - coz what happens is that as the clots in your body are being dissolved, it becomes waste products in the bloodstream, and your blood pressure will increase until your kidneys have enough time to clear it out. So you can control the dosage and the level of detox you want to do by yourself.
SG
have you even read what I wrote.
Thanks for that - but swollen ankles in the elderly were around long before the jabs.
I see vanishingly few people from one week to the next, so I think it's unlikely that people are shedding on me.
But who really knows?
Venezuela and Iran have lifted the world actuality from Ukraine. Even if not visible there are movements regurgitating inside the Kievan NATO colony. Timoshenko has been prosecuted, for exemple. Probably she was trying to position herself for an after Zelensky life, which is coming. The departure of Yermak was the signal. He is preparing the terrain for Zelensky somewhere in the UK, Canada or Israel. So, overall, even if the AFU hold the line, there are signs that the Bandera circus time is up. Trump is weak internally and externally. Macron is weak too. Merz..Starmer. The EU is admitting to resume talks with Russia and is cracking and drowning visibly. With -20C temperatures in the trenches, no major gains are to be expected.
Imagine - 20' in the trenches, plus a few dead bodies and several wounded, no food or water, and FPVs and FABs overhead.
Those guys are tough - and they are the old ones - all the youngsters are dead.
Why should cold temperatures stop the soldiers? In Eastern Europe the traditional campaign season is the Winter. And drones will be very ineffective.
ask the Germans in Moscow and Stalingrad. Napoleon? Heard of?
@Werner Hillinger
Imagine trying to hide from drones with no leaves on the trees and your thermal signature very sharply contrasting with the cold ground/snow/buildings around you?
Then trying to dig a fighting hole in frozen ground? (Yes, I know about the 2 step high explosive trenching systems USA developed, about 5 minutes after using one I would expect drones or artillery to be hitting the ground signature of such).
Beyond that? I live in a cold place. Although I can and have worked or hunted all day in the snow, it takes about twice the energy it would above freezing. Under some conditions, the weather might kill me faster than the opposition too.
Whole thing looks like a stalemate for 3 years to me... back off a few feet on the map instead of using a microscope. No major cities taken just little villages no one ever heard of until war
Attrition war yes but Russia will need to kill 4 million to equal % of males of last Nazis before they quit. How long will that take?
>Total number of American casualties so far?
300 million actually. How? Vlad turbo spiked inflation back in 2022 and today those 300 mil buy stuff that costs 50% with stagnant salaries
You have made some good points but, like many others on this board, does not see that wars were/are/will always be hybrid.
Russia might not be progressing to your liking but it has won the most difficult part of the war so far. The feared american sanctions that proved to be one big pile of LOL
I was very careful in my expression about inflation. Never said or implied that Vlad caused it but for sure he threw lots of benzine on that fire :)
Strongly disagree about the military part. Let’s set aside the Social and Finance aspects of a war for a sec (aside from the fact that the Fin part is the hardest to grasp in its complexity re the global flow of goods and money - there is not enough paper to write a book about all that)
So let me ask you this, and I acknowledge that from all the critics here you are the most opened minded.
Have you ever observed how an invincible predator, say the Great White Shark approaches the victim? The most fearsome of all animals, always approaches even the smallest of the victims very ...
Fill those 3 dots and that should give you a strong insight how the Great White Vlad sees things :)
PS: Thank you for the like, a good convo is the best thing that can happen during a boring day in the “West” :)
> To speak non-metaphorically, if Putin wanted to reduce Russian casualties, he should have decapitated Ukrainian leadership,
but that was never the plan. The Dec 2021 ultimatum was neither to Ukraine nor towards their leadership. It was to NATO
>Humans are not animals, however, and we take calculated risks and are notoriously willing to sacrifice the pain of even our allies.
for the real victory, not some American Hollywood style firework show, Killing that peep squeak will solve no problem. It is pointless like that staged bull with poor Maduro....
So here is a calculation to ponder.
A Go for the win now with probability 40% to lose
or
B Wait 5-6 years till Trump and his boomers are gone for good and lower the risk to 20%?
@Demian
A mature great white shark hunting sea mamals approaches their prey very fast from an angle they can't see it coming from (straight below, at dusk or dawn with prey illuminated and predator NOT).
They will give such prey one very serious bite, back off and watch it, wait for it to bleed out and die, then eat the animal after it can't fight back.
Things like tiger sharks or oceanic white tips have different strategies...
I don’t disagree at all with that very detailed description...carefully still applies doesn’t it?
I don’t think my point was getting across regardless If I had used your very detailed description or just the word “carefully” . It wouldn't matter one iota.
And then they say men have one track mind LOL
PS: Just for the record, certified diver here/done shark dives in the open water in South Pacific
I seriously doubt that it will require the Russians to kill a % of Ukrainian males equal to the casualties of the last Nazis regime before they quit.
The last Nazi regime was notoriously harsh on discipline, unit commanders would literally hang deserters and cowards from the lamp posts as a public warning and thought it very important to do so.
Not even the most fanatical of the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis have done that (yet).
The Kiev political class is even less dedicated than that and the Brussels political class is much less dedicated than Kiev.
FFS when will the ignorant take heed and stop the pathetic whining?
For the millionth time; it's not about "taking" cities, it is attrition warfare.
I have a feeling if it was your kids in the trenches, you might have a few better ideas than - just continue attrition warfare.
At least I hope you would, I begin to wonder about the sanity of people these days.
One needs more than "feelings" in life. Try reality. It will set you free.
It will be easier to understand if you imagine First World War, it was a stalemate, until in the spring of 1918 it wasn't.
It is a proxy war, NATO vs Russia.
NATO/US/West has refused all offers from Russia to discuss and find a compromise, and continuously demands victory.
Putin is among other characteristics, quite talkative, so we, the public, do have his offers
going back to 2007
- 2007 do not enlarge NATO, otherwise business as usual
- 2008 after Georgia, OK Georgia is gone, but do not enlarge NATO further, and business as usual
- 2014 after Maidan, OK Crimea is gone, otherwise business as usual
- 2022 last offer, keep Ukraine neutral, and business as usual
- 2022 spring, we respect Ukrainian resolve, let it be EU, but still, keep Ukraine neutral, and we can go back to business
- 2024 summer, if we agree on Crimea, 4 regions (Donbas absolutely) and neutrality, we can go back to business
- 2026 winter, there will be no negotiations on neutrality, no NATO, and once we take Donbas by force, no negotiations on territory either,
It is not a stalemate
it is a proxy war started upon assumption that Russia can be extended, exhausted, to the degree that causes internal disorder and collapse of the Russian state
It remains a possibility but the chances of it happening are lessening, as the war continues.
Does Russia need to kill 4 million? Should not the "attrition" figure include the Ukrainians who escaped across the border and the Ukrainians who avoided military service and the Ukrainians who deserted as well as those killed & injured? All of those are lost to military activity. Add them all up, and consider the difference in populations between WWII Germany and pre-conflict Ukraine -- it may be that Russia is getting close.
More likely his adrenochrone fix or what ever its called.