World Politics

[Tracker]

Apparently Brits approve of a monarchy by a slim margin, provided that Queen Elizabeth is the regent. Once she is gone, that would mean a drastically reduce support for her heirs, who have shown themselves to be problems. 

[TrueBlue4ever]

8 hours ago, Tracker said:

Apparently Brits approve of a monarchy by a slim margin, provided that Queen Elizabeth is the regent. Once she is gone, that would mean a drastically reduce support for her heirs, who have shown themselves to be problems. 

If Charles was bypassed and it went straight to William then they would still approve. The “Diana” after-effect. 

[blue_gold_84]

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-nato-politics-jens-stoltenberg-madrid-de99d66f04764cf598fd2dc941b6c6bb

Quote

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO will increase the strength of its rapid reaction force nearly eightfold to 300,000 troops as part of its response to an “era of strategic competition,” the military alliance’s secretary-general said Monday.

The NATO reaction force currently numbers around 40,000 soldiers which can deploy quickly when needed.

Coupled with other measures including the deployment of forces to defend specific allies, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the move is part of the “biggest overhaul of collective defense and deterrence since the Cold War.”

Stoltenberg made the remarks at a press conference ahead of a NATO summit later this week in Madrid when the 30 allies are expected to also agree on further support to Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Stoltenberg said he expects allies to make clear they consider Russia “as the most significant and direct threat to our security.”

In NATO’s new strategic concept, the alliance is also expected to address for the first time the security challenges posed by China, Stoltenberg said. In Madrid, allies will discuss how to respond to the growing influence of Russia and China in their “southern neighborhood,” he added.

 

[Tracker]

4 hours ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-nato-politics-jens-stoltenberg-madrid-de99d66f04764cf598fd2dc941b6c6bb

 

This is a probable reaction to Putin's offer/threat to station nuclear weapons in Belarus. The glove-puppet president there hasn't thought it through that a nuclear exchange would completely destroy Belarus and almost certainly kill him as well. No doubt Putin has assured him that he and his significant others would be given refuge in one of Russia's bunkers. Fat chance of that.

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

Looks like a clear path for Sweden and Finland to join NATO now.

 

 

[Tracker]

Even Russian Army Bosses Shocked by Putin’s ‘******* Imbecile’ Troops

Even Russian military leadership was shocked to learn of the mayhem and dysfunction among Vladimir Putin’s troops in occupied eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian intelligence.

In a five-minute recording shared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry on Thursday, a man identified as a fighter in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic can be heard complaining to his wife that “Russians are ******* imbeciles” and revealing that his fellow fighters raped and murdered civilians.

No details were provided on when the phone call was said to have taken place, or where exactly in Donetsk the man was based.

“Basically, today our guys went to the Russian headquarters,” said the man, who was not identified by name. “They are not aware that there are so few of us here... They all think that we’re professionals, that we’ve been fighting since 2014 and we’re already experts, that we’re badass ******* warriors,” he said.

“They raised the question about us not having a rotation, and not having weapons, nothing,” he went on. “Basically, they promised that within three days, some ******* Russian bogeys will come... they promised to change us out, the generals didn’t even know what kind of situation we had here,” he added, complaining that “we are almost down 50 ******* percent.”

The fighter recalled an incident where he said a group of Russian troops were sent to back up their fellow Russians, but then both sides “started to shell the **** out of each other, Russians with ******* Russians, they ******* killed each other.”

The wife then asked about the fate of an acquaintance, who the man told her was being interrogated along with several others in connection with a string of recent executions.

“Lena, he gunned down 75 people, you understand? Both locals and our guys,” he said, going on to recall how two of those shot were fighters who “raped a 55-year-old woman and beat the **** out of her husband” before returning days later to terrorize the pair again and shoot them.

“Our guys buried them,” he said.

https://news.yahoo.com/even-russian-army-bosses-shocked-160706096.html

[Tracker]

Top Tory Lawmaker Resigns After ‘Drunkenly Groping 2 Men’

Another day, another disaster for Boris Johnson. Senior Conservative party lawmaker Chris Pincher resigned Thursday after allegedly getting drunk and groping two men at a private members club in London. “Last night I drank far too much,” Pincher wrote to Johnson in his resignation letter. “I’ve embarrassed myself and other people which is the last thing I want to do and for that I apologise to you and to those concerned.” Pincher relinquished his job as Tory deputy chief whip—a figure responsible for party discipline—but is astonishingly set to stay on as a lawmaker, despite howls of protest from the opposition. This is actually the second time Pincher has resigned from the whips’ office; in 2017, he stood down after being accused of making unwanted advances towards a former Olympic rower. News of Pincher’s resignation comes after the Tory chairman resigned last week in the wake of a humiliating double-election defeat for Johnson’s party.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-tory-lawmaker-chris-pincher-resigns-after-drunkenly-groping-2-men?ref=home

[Tracker]

Russia Arrests Flyers’ Ivan Fedotov for Being ‘Army Draft Dodger’

Philadelphia Flyers hockey player Ivan Fedotov has been arrested by Russian police and accused of evading military service. Fedotov led the Russian Olympic Committee to a silver medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics but signed with the Flyers in May, terminating his contract with Moscow’s CSKA hockey club. Because the team is owned by the government, players are technically considered military personnel. It’s been speculated that by joining the Philadelphia Flyers NHL team, Russia can charge him with evading military service. Russian media reported that the military prosecutor’s office issued an arrest request, saying that “there are sufficient grounds to consider Fedotov an army draft dodger.” He could spend up to two years in prison if convicted for the violation. Moscow’s CSKA issued a statement, expressing confidence that “the competent authorities will sort out this situation.”

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/putin-declares-victory-ukraine-1.6509497

Quote

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday declared victory in the Eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, one day after Ukrainian forces withdrew from their last remaining bulwark of resistance in the province.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in a televised meeting Monday that Russian forces had taken control of Luhansk, which together with the neighbouring Donetsk province makes up Ukraine's industrial heartland of Donbas.

Shoigu told Putin that "the operation" was completed on Sunday after Russian troops overran the city of Lysychansk, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Luhansk.

[Tracker]

7 hours ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/putin-declares-victory-ukraine-1.6509497

Only at a very heavy cost of troops and equipment and the Russian army has nearly exhausted its reserves of troops and arms, leaving them vulnerable to a counterattack when the incoming military equipment from the west is fully integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

[JCon]

14 hours ago, Tracker said:

Only at a very heavy cost of troops and equipment and the Russian army has nearly exhausted its reserves of troops and arms, leaving them vulnerable to a counterattack when the incoming military equipment from the west is fully integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

The Russian's have been there, with local militias and a sudo-gov't, for 10 years. They won't be able to take it back. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by JCon

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, JCon said:

The Russian's have been there, with local militias and a sudo-gov't, for 10 years. They won't be able to take it back. 

The Russians under Putin have been chipping away at Ukraine for decades with the aim of reducing it to a rump state, which would have to depend on Russia and eventually become a province. Had they stopped at Donetsk and Crimea, they might have gotten away with it, but greed and arrogance has led Putin to try for a much larger grab. With all the new military equipment flooding into Ukraine, and the demoralized state of the Russian military, Ukraine has a good chance of regaining the lost territory. There is good evidence that Putin in unwell- cancer or Parkinson's and his death would change everything. The Russian oligarchs are really chafing at the restrictions and losses they are forced to undergo and will take that for only so long.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Tracker

[JCon]

1 minute ago, Tracker said:

The Russians under Putin have been chipping away at Ukraine for decades with the aim of reducing it to a rump state, which would have to depend on Russia and eventually become a province. Had they stopped at Donetsk and Crimea, they might have gotten away with it, but greed and arrogance has led Putin to try for a much larger grab. With all the new military equipment flooding into Ukraine, and the demoralized state of the Russian military, Ukraine has a good chance of regaining the lost territory. There is good evidence that Putin in unwell- cancer or Parkinson's and his death would change everything. The Russian oligarchs are really chafing at the restrictions and losses they are forced to undergo and will take that for only so long.

The West won't continue to fund a proxy war with Russia. They'll get the Ukrainians to negotiate a peace deal, with a disputed zone. There will be ongoing tensions but I don't see the war continuing, as it has, much longer. 

[Tracker]

10 minutes ago, JCon said:

The West won't continue to fund a proxy war with Russia. They'll get the Ukrainians to negotiate a peace deal, with a disputed zone. There will be ongoing tensions but I don't see the war continuing, as it has, much longer. 

There are good strategic reasons for the West to continue supporting Ukraine. Should Putin's gamble pay off for him, his advisors have already begun saying how poorly ethnic Russians in Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and other places are being treated and that they need to be rescued. This is not idle talk and even the Poles. Bulgarians and Romanians are worried. From credible reports, as much as 80% of Russian military equipment and well over 100,000 troops are disabled and this is good news, but Putin is monomaniacal about pursuing his imperial objectives regardless of the cost.

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nato-finland-sweden-1.6510575

Quote

The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals — and possible political trouble in Turkey.

The move further increases Russia's strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved the decisions of last week's NATO summit when the alliance made the historic decision to invite Russia's neighbour Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Securing parliamentary approval for the new members in Turkey, however, could still pose a problem even though Sweden, Finland and Turkey reached a memorandum of understanding at the recent Madrid summit.

[Tracker]

High Cost Of Russia Gains In Ukraine Could Limit New Advance

After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.

But Moscow’s rout of the last remaining bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its seizure of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.
“Yes, the Russians have seized the Luhansk region, but at what price?” asked Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Ukraine, noting that some Russian units involved in the battle lost up to a half their soldiers.

Even President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops involved in action in Luhansk need to “take some rest and beef up their combat capability.”

That raises doubts about whether Moscow’s forces and their separatist allies are ready to quickly thrust deeper into Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas. Observers estimated in recent weeks that Russia controlled about half of Donetsk, and battle lines have changed little since then.

What happens in the Donbas could determine the course of the war. If Russia succeeds there, it could free up its forces to grab even more land and dictate the terms of any peace agreement. If Ukraine, on the other hand, manages to pin the Russians down for a protracted period, it could build up the resources for a counteroffensive.
In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on July 3, 2022, Russian soldiers set a Russian national flag and a replica of the Victory banner atop of the administration after capturing the eastern village of Bilohorivka which is now a territory under the Government of the Luhansk People's Republic control, eastern Ukraine.
In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on July 3, 2022, Russian soldiers set a Russian national flag and a replica of the Victory banner atop of the administration after capturing the eastern village of Bilohorivka which is now a territory under the Government of the Luhansk People's Republic control, eastern Ukraine.
Exhausting the Russians has long been part of the plan for the Ukrainians, who began the conflict outgunned — but hoped Western weapons could eventually tip the scales in their favor.

They are already effectively using heavy howitzers and advanced rocket systems sent by the U.S. and other Western allies, and more is on the way. But Ukrainian forces have said they remain badly outmatched.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/high-cost-of-russia-gains-in-ukraine-could-limit-new-advance_n_62c3f633e4b00a9334ec6d7f

Edited July 5, 2022 by Tracker

[the watcher]

A good article I thought belonged in this sub as it crosses alot of borders.I believe it crosses alot of political lines as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/06/power-wealthy-earth-politics-democracy-plutocracy

[Tracker]

But but but...they're Commies, Gawdamit!

 

Cuba is eradicating child mortality and banishing diseases that affect the impoverished
   
Palpite, Cuba, is just a few miles away from Playa Girón, along the Bay of Pigs, where the United States attempted to overthrow the Cuban Revolution in 1961. Down a modest street in a small building with a Cuban flag and a large picture of Fidel Castro near the front door, Dr. Dayamis Gómez La Rosa sees patients from 8 AM to 5 PM. In fact, that is an inaccurate sentence. Dr. Dayamis, like most primary care doctors in Cuba, lives above the clinic that she runs. “I became a doctor,” she told us as we sat in the clinic’s waiting room, “because I wanted to make the world a better place.” Her father was a bartender, and her mother was a housecleaner, but “thanks to the Revolution,” she says, she is a primary care doctor, and her brother is a dentist. Patients come when they need care, even in the middle of the night.
Apart from the waiting room, the clinic only has three other rooms, all of them small and clean. The 1,970 people in Palpite come to see Dr. Dayamis, who emphasizes that she has in her care several pregnant women and infants. She wants to talk about pregnancy and children because she wants to let me know that over the past three years, not one infant has died in her town or in the municipality. “The last time an infant died,” she said, “was in 2008 when a child was born prematurely and had great difficulty breathing.” When we asked her how she remembered that death with such clarity, she said that for her as a doctor any death is terrible, but the death of a child must be avoided at all costs. “I wish I did not have to experience that,” she said.

The region of the Zapata Swamp, where the Bay of Pigs is located, before the Revolution, had an infant mortality rate of 59 per 1,000 live births. The population of the area, mostly engaged in subsistence fishing and in the charcoal trade, lived in great poverty. Fidel spent the first Christmas Eve after the Revolution of 1959 with the newly formed cooperative of charcoal producers, listening to them talk about their problems and working with them to find a way to exit the condition of hunger, illiteracy, and ill-health. A large-scale project of transformation had been set into motion a few months before, which drew in hundreds of very poor people into a process to lift themselves up from the wretched conditions that afflicted them. This is the reason why these people rose in large numbers to defend the Revolution against the attack by the United States and its mercenaries in 1961.

To move from 59 infant deaths out of every 1,000 live births to no infant deaths in the matter of a few decades is an extraordinary feat. It was done, Dr. Dayamis says, because the Cuban Revolution pays an enormous attention to the health of the population. Pregnant mothers are given regular care from primary care doctors and gynecologists and their infants are tended by pediatricians—all of it paid from the social wealth of the country. Small towns such as Palpite do not have specialists such as gynecologists and pediatricians, but within a short ride a few miles away, they can access these doctors in Playa Larga.

Walking through the Playa Giron museum earlier that day, the museum’s director Dulce María Limonta del Pozo tells us that the many of the captured mercenaries were returned to the United States in exchange for food and medicines for children; it is telling that this is what the Cuban Revolution demanded. From early into the Revolution, literacy campaigns and vaccination campaigns developed to address the facts of poverty. Now, Dr. Dayamis reports, each child gets between twelve and sixteen vaccinations for such ailments as smallpox and hepatitis.

In Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), Dr. Merardo Pujol Ferrer tells us that the country has almost eradicated hepatitis B using a vaccine developed by their Center. That vaccine—Heberbiovac HB—has been administered to 70 million people around the world. “We believe that this vaccine is safe and effective,” he said. “It could help to eradicate hepatitis around the world, particularly in poorer countries.” All the children in her town are vaccinated against hepatitis, Dr. Dayamis says. “The health care system ensures that not one person dies from diarrhea or malnutrition, and not one person dies from diseases of poverty.

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.businessinsider.com/kremlin-official-suggests-US-remember-Alaska-belonged-to-Russia-2022-7

Quote

A Russian official this week threatened the US over the freezing of Russian assets, urging it to remember that Alaska was once part of Russia's territory.

"Let America always remember: there is a part of its territory that is Russia — Alaska," Vyacheslav Volodin, a Putin ally and speaker of the Russian parliament's lower house, said on Wednesday, according to multiple media outlets.

"When they attempt to appropriate our assets abroad, they should be aware that we also have something to claim back," Volodin added in remarks reported on by the Associated Press and Russian publication RBC News. 

Per RBC News, Volodin also referenced a suggestion made by State Duma Vice Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy that a referendum could be held in Alaska on the matter.

[iHeart]

That's the end of that

https://deadline.com/2022/07/timetable-for-appointment-of-new-uk-prime-minister-to-be-unveiled-next-week-as-boris-johnson-resigns-says-in-politics-no-one-is-indispensable-1235059330/

Edited July 7, 2022 by iHeart

[Mark F]

Read that there might be a  trade of some people grabbed by the russian scumlord.... for Victor Bout.

makes sense.

[Mark F]

some good news  bloomberg. def worth reading. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/us-factory-boom-heats-up-as-ceos-yank-production-out-of-china

There has been a sense in financial circles that the fever among American executives to shorten supply lines and bring production back home would prove short-lived. As soon as the pandemic started to fade, so too would the fad, the thinking went.

And yet, two years in, not only is the trend still alive, it appears to be rapidly accelerating.

The construction of new manufacturing facilities in the US has soared 116% over the past year, dwarfing the 10% gain on all building projects combined, according to Dodge Construction Network. There are massive chip factories going up in Phoenix: Intel is building two just outside the city; Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is constructing one in it. And aluminum and steel plants that are being erected all across the south: in Bay Minette, Alabama (Novelis); in Osceola, Arkansas (US Steel); and in Brandenburg, Kentucky (Nucor). Up near Buffalo, all this new semiconductor and steel output is fueling orders for air compressors that will be cranked out at an Ingersoll Rand plant that had been shuttered for years.

Scores of smaller companies are making similar moves, according to Richard Branch, the chief economist at Dodge. Not all are examples of reshoring. Some are designed to expand capacity. But they all point to the same thing -- a major re-assessment of supply chains in the wake of port bottlenecks, parts shortages and skyrocketing shipping costs that have wreaked havoc on corporate budgets in the US and across the globe."

sometimes the profit motive works.

maybe also a dim sense in executives, that their country might collapse, and they do not want that. 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Mark F

[Tracker]

We are just meat here

Almost 5 months Vladimir Putin’s “Special military operation” And after countless reports that the military appeals to Desperate measures To stop the war, the Russian Defense Ministry suddenly announced on Thursday that it was giving some Ukrainian Donbas soldiers a “chance to rest.”

The expected break was reportedly announced to Russian journalists early Thursday by a provincial spokesman. TASS News agency. It was constructed as a compassionate gesture aimed at ensuring the well-being of the army, allowing the spokesman to “replenish combat capabilities” in time and allow the army to “receive letters and luggage from home”. Said said it would be used to.

The announcement was made after the Institute for the Study of War pointed out that Russia was not proud of the acquisition of new territory for the first time in a full-scale aggression. According to experts, they “mostly started the operation.” pause. “

However, another briefing by Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Thursday did not mention such a break, and it is clear how many troops are allowed to time out. It wasn’t. Also, it was not clear exactly what the “chance to rest” was associated with.

https://securykid.com/we-are-just-meat-here/

[iHeart]

6 hours ago, iHeart said:

That's the end of that

https://deadline.com/2022/07/timetable-for-appointment-of-new-uk-prime-minister-to-be-unveiled-next-week-as-boris-johnson-resigns-says-in-politics-no-one-is-indispensable-1235059330/

 

[Mark F]

1 hour ago, Tracker said:

Almost 5 months Vladimir Putin’s “Special military operation”

awful, abominable worst of human nature running rampant.

I loathe the man.

why is it that everywhere you look, the worst people have the power?

Edited July 7, 2022 by Mark F