Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Watchman wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 8:33 pm If he makes it clear exactly what the Party has inherited, and what the priorities are. Grown up talk, no bullshit

Arguably, he ‘s already been doing that for at least 12 months.

I think that is why his promises aren’t as high as some would hope.

I have a feeling he will underpromise and over deliver.

Abernathy wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:58 pm

Watchman wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 8:33 pm If he makes it clear exactly what the Party has inherited, and what the priorities are. Grown up talk, no bullshit

Arguably, he ‘s already been doing that for at least 12 months.

I just worry about all the “hidden” stuff. And there’s a dark corner in my brain that would love us to find all the greedy stuff that’s attached to the PPE fraud and lay it all out, but that sound’s simply like revenge when there are more pressing issues

I don't think there's any more pressing matter than putting these bastards out of power for a generation.

I'd not stop there.

Yes, if there's a wipeout they'll retreat, regroup and all that. Maybe even repackage under a new name. And yes, I know that if we go for PR voting, that would likely see the right buried, or at least neutered. But while I acknowledge that there are always going to be right wing voters and I'm not for a moment suggesting disenfranchising things, I do think that what an awful lot of people want is just quiet competence. Do that, raise living standards, bring prices down, just exude an aura of things fucking working again.

The pope, of all people, should know that if you capitulate to them, the bastards will nail you to a fucking cross.

What a twat.

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 1:57 pm The pope, of all people, should know that if you capitulate to them, the bastards will nail you to a fucking cross.

What a twat.

Never through I'd say it, but Fuck that P...

Where's my tin flute.

A bazillion dollars in whizz-bang-pop going to Ukraine to defend us all against Putin.'s goons. When you are a mere 800km from his next hurdle, Krynki, that comes as some relief. They would flatten Berlin for the historical fun of it.

A very (very very very) long article in the Baffler, entitled How to Read Wars, touching on everything from Gaza to Nagorno-Karabakh to the current situation in Ukraine. Requires a serious investment time-wise, but very much worth reading (the author also co-hosts the Radio War Nerd podcast, which is equally worth a listen).

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/how-to-read-wars-dolan

Pundits leapt from the plausible premise that Ukraine was the good guy in this fight to the belief that Ukraine will therefore win, a childish and ahistorical delusion. But that’s what highly paid pundits have been doing for years. In February of last year, Sebastian Junger wrote for Time magazine “Why the People of Ukraine Will Triumph”; his explanation was that their cause is just. The grand Ukrainian offensive was scheduled for the summer of 2023. Though its triumph was telegraphed far in advance like a windmill punch, the offensive failed. Pundits were seriously puzzling over whether, after crushing the Russian lines in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian armies should move on to reconquer the Crimean Peninsula. They got ahead of themselves. Attempting to drive south across the Dnieper, Ukrainian forces almost immediately stalled in Russian minefields, where they were destroyed by artillery. This should hardly have been a surprise, since the dug-in Russian positions had almost a year to prepare for the highly touted Ukrainian counteroffensive.

In general terms, this bit is also depressingly accurate.

The hard truth here is that not all deaths matter equally. Some don’t matter at all; some mass deaths are in fact welcomed, though those who welcome them have usually learned to be discreet since they cheered for famines across the British Empire, from Ireland to India. (Israel is setting new standards for genocidal rhetoric at the moment. In October, Knesset member Tali Gottlieb said, “Without hunger and thirst among the Gazan population we will not be able to recruit collaborators, we will not be able to recruit intelligence, we will not be able to bribe people with food, drink, and medicine, in order to obtain intelligence.”) Famine is the most effective and ancient form of warfare, killing far more than combat does. When armies with Western support can’t defeat insurgent movements on the battlefield, they resort to blockades and the famines and epidemics that always follow. This is what happened in the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967–1970, when Biafran troops stopped federal Nigerian forces, who retaliated with a naval blockade that killed up to two million Biafrans. The United States and UK were, of course, solidly behind the Nigerian regime.

British bought up all the Baltic fish stocks in WWI with the aim of starving Germany into submission. Hence the fish and chips boom which helped stave off domestic hunger as the price of fish plummeted.

That POV shouldn’t be dismissed. The army of an invaded nation fighting for their lives do have a massive advantage in morale over a badly paid conscript army that doesn’t want to be there.

Pundits leapt from the plausible premise that Ukraine was the good guy in this fight to the belief that Ukraine will therefore win, a childish and ahistorical delusion.

Youngian wrote: ↑Sun Apr 21, 2024 9:04 am British bought up all the Baltic fish stocks in WWI with the aim of starving Germany into submission. Hence the fish and chips boom which helped stave off domestic hunger as the price of fish plummeted.

That POV shouldn’t be dismissed. The army of an invaded nation fighting for their lives do have a massive advantage in morale over a badly conscript army that doesn’t want to be there.

Pundits leapt from the plausible premise that Ukraine was the good guy in this fight to the belief that Ukraine will therefore win, a childish and ahistorical delusion.

I didn't know that, but I know a similar story with a distinct Russian angle.

In 1905 Russian and Japan went to war in the Far East - most Europeans expected a rapid Russian victory.
Maybe not the British, who had been assisting the Japanese in developing their navy.
Maybe not the Germans, who had been assisting the Japanese in developing their army.
Most other nations expected a modern European army to crush a feudal Asian force much like the Boxer Rebellion five years earlier.

That's the background - sorry to make it so long.
The war didn't proceed according to Russian plans.

They soon found themselves besieged in their Eastern Ports: Port Arthur and Vladivostock.
Their pacific fleets were lost.
One sunk by the novel tactic of a nighttime torpedo attack.
The other bombarded by Krupp howitzers from the surrounding hills.

The Russian response was to dispatch their Baltic Fleet on the long journey to Japanese waters.
There they planned to enact revenge.

It didn't go well, the fleet opened fire on the British north Sea fishing fleet.
The resulting diplomatic incident saw Britain close the Channel and Suez Canal, adding (nautical) miles and weeks to the journey.

Perhaps worse, the fleet and its attendant colliers now needed to plan additional coaling stops.
This wasn't helped by the British wiring their agents at all major ports along the way.
They instructed buying all stocks of coal, or where the harbour would not sell, placing offers which drove up the selling price.

There, we finally got to the monopolistic behaviour bit of the story.

As for the Russians, they finally reached Japanese waters, some ships with their decks and passageways still crammed with extra coal.
There they suffered a shock (not shock if you know your stuff) defeat.

The Russian Navy (3rd most powerful in the world at the outset of the war) never regained its standing.
Germany, USA and Japan (The new victors on the block) soon expanded their navies to fill the void.
The resulting building race between Britain and Germany is cited as a leading cause of the first world war.
Russian Sailors developed a reputation for mutiny, and played major roles in the revolutions of 1905and 1917.

Yeah I got halfway through reading that before I gave up. These two paragraphs really stand out

It became a “Let’s you and him fight” proxy war. The bitterest irony of this propaganda is that the NATO elite never had any intention of sending their own troops to fight in Ukraine, the poorest and most depopulated country in Europe. For a decade before the all-out Russian attack in 2022, Russia and Ukraine fought for control of the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. Russia used local militias; Ukraine sent its own militias, including the far-right Azov Battalion, to suppress the locals. The extreme Ukrainian right never considered the Russian-speaking industrial workers of the Donets Basin as real Ukrainians, and many Donbas residents did feel closer to Russia than to the independent Ukrainian state. By late 2021, the Russian leadership had lost faith in NATO and its Ukrainian proxy, so Putin started considering the military option. The Russian army had supposedly been reformed in 2009 under Anatoly Serdyukov: less top-heavy, faster, and more efficient, with fewer high officers and more noncommissioned officers. The military brass swore up and down that they were a changed force and they would show their new speed and power against Ukraine. They lied.

This repeats the same onld lie that Ukraine is full of Neo-Nazis

This led to war reporting that was bone stupid and biased. Of course, the skeptics were also often wide of the mark: my own outlet, Radio War Nerd, was one of the earliest to be massively, publicly wrong; we predicted that Russia would not invade Ukraine only days before it did. Very embarrassing, but in our defense, we’d concluded that the Russians had the sense to be cautious. (In their successful intervention in Syria, they had made all the right moves, proceeding carefully and effectively to shore up the Syrian Army and serve as its de facto air wing against the Islamic State with long-range air-to-ground weapons that IS could not counter.) The invasion of Ukraine made no sense from any sane military perspective. But that embarrassment saved us from making any more predictions. We swore off soothsaying when every other would-be military oracle was jumping into the game. And no one has since done well at that game. Wartime media have never been notable for their courage or accuracy, but at least pundits in past wars didn’t have the internet to blast their fond fancies over the world at the speed of light.

Their succesful intervention in Syria involved them bombing the hell out of cvilians in support of that murderous dictator Asssad. This incidentally is why I have little time for those who have taken by the cause of Gaza but don't give a damn about what Putin was doing in Syria and what he's doing now in Ukraine.

Language usage is interesting, isn’t it ?

When Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine, it was described, correctly in my view, as an “invasion”.

Now Zelensky has given Vlad a taste of his own medicine by sending Ukrainian troops across the border into Russian territory, it is being reported as merely an “incursion”.

I think there is a subtle difference, but I’m not sure what it is, or indeed why it is.

Ukraine isn't trying to invade Russia, is he? "incursion" suggests to me go in,, do your business and get out.

An invasion is a permanent occupation and takeover whereas an incursion is a military tactic that breaches another country’s borders. No one believes Ukraine has the resources to launch an invasion of Russia even if they wanted to.

I was off on "holiday" so a bit late to the game.

The benefits of the incursion appear to be:
1. Massive internal refugee crisis in the Russian side, diverting resources to feed, transport and re-house form the warfighting effort.
2. Putin cannot defend the sacred Kursk salient, where Stalin's lads (and lasses) broke the back of the German army groups.
3. Troops who've largely fought on the defensive (I'm told it's demoralising after a while), get some "going forward" taste of victory.
4. Putin left looking like a tit.

WTF does he know?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... d-war.html

It's the same mentality that sees England finish top of their group in the qualifiers and predicts they're going to win the World Cup.

Yet almost everyone in Johnson's world is a Trump supporter who, if he wins, will pull the plug on Ukraine and hand it to their mate. I don't get it.

It's win-win for him. If Ukraine wins or forces Russia to withdraw, woohoo. If they lose, too bad, impossible odds, if only I were still PM.