Zoraptor

Ironically, given their prior conduct he'd probably do better at the ICC than ICJ. Just wouldn't be able to turn up in person.

BruceVC is a very anglo name. He'd need to change it to something like Janie/ Fanie/ Faf/ Kepler/ Wilhansie/ Bakkies/ Reuben/ Jan or JoostVC in order to claim to be afrikaans. (Does my entire knowledge of Afrikaans first names come from rugby and cricket? Seems so)

My friend, have you not heard the good news about The Prosperity Gospel? God wants you to be wealthy, and if you aren't, it's because you're a dirty sinner. Let's be honest here, strip away the name 'Jesus' from the teachings and an awful lot of Christians would regard them as being 'woke marxism'.

Yep. Without the direct EU access the UK has been trying to make trade deals with anyone. They even joined the Trans Pacific Partnership despite, well, not being anywhere near the Pacific except for intrinsic and important parts of the realm like Pitcairn Island. They were very close to a deal with Biden's administration last year. Not a free trade deal like the TPP, but then this one isn't by any stretch a free trade deal either. It may even have been delayed specifically to give Trump an ego boost.

A search for 'indian rafale shot down' is extremely funny at the moment. All the top results are Indian fact check sites insisting it hasn't happened while it's blatantly obvious they've lost at least one since there's a Rafale engine sitting randomly in a field all over social media. Stupid approach, since it just ends up making you suspect that the Pakistani claims are entirely accurate. If it's done one thing it's made it a lot more likely for India to buy stealth jets as a matter of urgency, and ones that cannot be turned off by the US if they don't like the targets.

Israel approves plan to seize all of Gaza. Funny how Hasbara insisted that was never going to happen, but now it is. Good news for the Palestinians, they're going to go into, shall we say, high density temporary accommodation. For their own protection. And in other lack of news noted orthopaedic surgeon Adnan al Bursh's body has still not been released more than a year after his death in Israeli custody.

Talking about elections with lessons for elsewhere: Romania. Shock win in first round to anti EU candidate, heaven and earth moved to get rid of him first due to 'Russian interference' (turned out it was actually another Romanian party trying to game the system, ho hum, still gets labelled as due to alleged Russian interference by the media), eventually got rid of on financial irregularities. Great victory for democracy. Redo first round election... a different nationalist anti EU candidate wins, with 40% of the vote instead of 23%. Might be better to try addressing the cause, rather than the symptoms.

Even AI thinks Trump is a bad guy. James Weeks confirmed as most successful politician of all time?

The second anglophone election since Trump's 2nd inauguration has gone much the same as the first- previously unexpected swing towards the incumbent left (well, 'left'). Though Australia's Albanese never had the horrific polling of Canada's Trudeau he managed to increase Labor's vote share and it looks like a 2:1 landslide, with the opposition leader losing his seat same as Canada. Extremely funny given how many people on the right thought Trump winning would usher in similar governments elsewhere.

Colour sizes mean 2/3 of sweet fanny adams. It's not an intensity map. For that you want something like this. Though even that only has four levels. It's always easy to say something and paint it onto a nice raster image for people to Just Believe. Did you know New Zealand has the highest deposits of unobtainium in the known world and so much gold we use it for toilet paper? Would you believe it if I put it into a graphic? Back in the land of reality though from the USGS, 2024. ctrl f ukraine, no results. This is utterly unsurprising as that graphic is based on 'Ukraine claims'. No wonder the reserve amounts are, heh, 'classified'. Much like the Rare Earths claimed by Ukraine there's only slightly more evidence they exist than the tooth fairy or Prince Idris Kaore, the temporarily embarrassed Nigerian millionaire who just needs a few hundred to unlock his account.

Make a note of the date, I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with Gromnir. The concept of what inflation is is easy enough to understand. If politicians genuinely didn't get the concept they should have nothing at all to do with economics. But fundamentally the classic politician inference that if inflation goes down prices will go back to how they were- which is obviously a load of bollocks- exists because that will get them votes and allow them to do things they want more easily while the truthful observation that prices won't go back down but will just increase more slowly, won't. You can pretty much guarantee the party that goes for approach A will be the one voters think is more economically literate because it's what they want to be true. eg it's brilliant rhetoric for depressing wages. Inflation is 5% but going down, and when prices 'return to normal' you'll still have that 1.5% pay increase! So you aren't really 3.5% worse off year on year, indeed you'll be 1.5% better off after the prices stabilise! Again, obvious rubbish if you know what inflation actually means. But it's what a lot of people- including many getting that 3.5% effective pay cut- want to hear.

I know a man ain't supposed to cry, but these tears I can't hold inside. Watching WoT would end my sanity, because it's just that, uh hmmm, plain crappy? etc etc and with copious apologies to Marvin Gaye. Not that he's likely to take offence any more. I certainly put in more effort than the show's writers anyway. Except when it comes to finding extra screen time for their boyfriend. (Wheel of Time has the most obvious astroturfing campaign I've ever seen. Starts one week before release, ends one week after the finale. 98% of the 'people' who loved it seem to have completely forgotten about how awesome it was, outside that window)

My weighting is certainly conjectural to a large part, but so is Russia not having the resources to go for more. It seems far more likely that Ukraine will hit its limit first, and once that happens things will go downhill fast. The balance/ compromise for Russia is getting less now against what they'd get when (if) Ukraine collapses and what that would cost them. Sure, if you believe that Ukraine has only had, what, 41k dead while Russia has had 800k then Russia doesn't have the resources to outlast Ukraine. That is not likely to reflect reality though, and anything even approaching 1:1 favours Russia massively- and for this matter most importantly that gets more so as time goes by.

Not much actual evidence that Russian forces need rebuilding (or at least as compared to Ukrainian forces)- except the enormous ex soviet stockpiles which aren't ever going to be replaced by either side. Even if they did, we've been told multiple times that Russia has the GDP of Italy, and surely the collective west could out produce Italy when it comes to munitions. Saying that Russia can rearm while Ukraine cannot only happens if the west abandons Ukraine or if western aid is significantly less than Russia's output. Eh, the compromise Russia makes is ultimately the same one any winner in a war makes- not going for more. Which will greatly upset those who see it in moral terms since it's the bad guy winning, but this isn't a fairy tale.

I really don't know if it's the lack of experience or a deliberate strategy of some kind. It's been too consistent. Foreign policy is always a distant second to domestic politics/ policy and it seems that Zelensky thinks the... unique approach taken plays well at home or he'd try something different, surely. And he's been repeatedly advised how to best handle Trump but seems to have consistently ignored the advice. That ain't on Kubela or Podoliak. You don't need to be the reincarnation of Metternich or Talleyrand to get along with Trump- you just need to be able to fake a smile and mouth platitudes- or for a non Zelensky issue, realise that being described as 'low intellectual potential' is going to annoy Indians and Chinese completely pointlessly. Why pick a fight with Poland over Bandera? You know that's going to be a loser in every respect, except domestically, with a very vocal group. In the end I'm not sure that the constant acritical hero worship and feting from other western leaders is doing Zelensky (and Ukraine) any favours either.