Barebones drafting

 US debt is different in kind to the likes of Greece which was accumulated via IMF, WB and EU infrastructure loans + balance of payments digouts all necessitated by the shoddy state of its fundamentals; high unemployment, bloated civil service etc. Debt to GDP ratio was 170pc compared to the US current 100pc. Plus Greeks had no control over monetary policy unlike the US who can print their way out of a bind. Also, high US debt is if anything an index of confidence in it's long term economic prospects as the debt is issued in T-Bills voluntarily purchased by investors ... if the BRICS decouple from the dollar or a black swan meteor hits the US economy then maybe panic buttons could be hit...but at the moment I don't think anyone in Washington is losing too much sleep over "the debt". Thucydides trap is real though and American power is declining COMPARATIVELY .. so

China was actually given a major helping hand by the West after Kissinger's turnaround leading to heavy FDI and integration into the globalized economy. Taken with India they've raised a billion plus out of poverty so they've nothing to complain of in terms of how the global system is "rigged". The  clash as I see it is between autocracy and democracy.

You don't think Russian aggression is a problem then..?. By the way , that framing of the world order as 'dog eat dog' transactionalism without ideological ties is a Trumpian innovation ...let's see where it brings us!

Putin is a dictator and when he dies some other KGB muscleman will replace him...the means to control the population are forever wars either in Chechnya, the Middle East, Africa or more recently Ukraine. There is a Russian speaking proportion of the population which may want re-integration in the Donbas etc but sorry the shutters have closed on territorial land grabs ... Ukraine is moving inexorably towards EU integration and democratistion ie modernity, and Putin's autocracy belongs in the dustbin of history.

Whole purpose of US foreign policy is to protect it's national interests ...preventing the spread of autocracy in Eastern Europe certainly comes under that banner

In the large scale of things .. the Nord Stream "event" is irrelevant, as of course Europe needs to wean itself from the Russian teat ..maybe it was a calculated sabotage greenlighted by the US, maybe it was done by any number of exasperated actors who have been advocating for energy independence and the inevitable complicity that will follow from closer integration with an oligarchic petro-state. Who knows? Point is, as always ...autocracy is a creeping disease which can fell democracies far quicker than we can implant out like seed (open honest voting) in their domains. Trump is an historical dupe, buffeted entirely by his own self-interest, perfectly happy to see the Republic he was reared in burn in flames around him.

Spineless pragmatists more like tacking to avoid a Trumpian wrecking ball. All ten leaders b4 the election said they'd support Black's Bill as it currently was ..now it's deemed unacceptable from multiple angles and the whole lot will be scrapped for a new bill more in accord with EU law and the Irish Constitution as though objections on these grounds weren't thoroughly analysed and deemed non-detrimental b4 hand. Harris said umpteen times he'd support it as did Martin; all that's changed is the reality of Fuckbreath in the White House .. and the dawning possibility that to pass it in it's current form would amount to slitting our own throats. Prostration before the Malign Tumor will be practiced in earnest b4 the great Paddy's day supplication itself ..best not trip our lines. Cowards dutifully obeying their mandate as they see it to act in the nations best interest. Wholly democratic, wholly craven

Of course they did...Israelis are steaming, shut the embassy etc. What can we do other than register support for the ICC decision, recognize Palestinian statehood and have the Occupied territories billed in the public discourse for this long....it enrages the Zionist fundos beyond measure that we're not towing the line.

How many other Western countries have a history of colonisation? Irish are predisposed to sympathise on account of our unique history ..it's as simple as that

Americans view the Israeli situation as an integral part of their WW2 narrative ...they helped the Jews recover from the Holocaust and pledged to support them defend the new state of Israel come hell or highwater. Right and wrong aren't absolutes   but perceptions muddied by disposition, created in large part by the Grand Narratives of your country 's historical trajectory.

 nocents just because an Israeli woman was killed in a border skirmish earlier that week. You'd think that type of barbarity would have destroyed his career but in fact it's what put him in the spotlight ...there is  the type of guy we want patrolliIsraelis have always responded with bloody disproportionate reprisals .. Sharon in the 60s torched an entire village killing 70 plus inng the wall...! It's a besieged mentality.

Even Chatgtp scolded me on my anti-Israel articles. It's actually funny as it applauded my Pro-Mugabe pieces as exposing the hypocrisy of the West colluding with privileged white farmers to maintain the status quo of skewered land ownership patterns by forming the MDC and pretending it's a grassroots black led pro-democracy movement but when I called West Bank settlements as a form of Star of David apartheid reminiscent of Nazi controlled Warsaw ..it tells me this view is highly controversial and "offensive" in some quarters! Guess Altman carefully screened it's reading material

I think the Abrahamic God is at least one source of all the misery unfolding here ... Yahweh was pretty gung ho and explicit after all as regards the Promised Land. Amazing how a local storm deity clamouring for genocide and ethic cleansing back in the goat-herding Bronze  Age has been raised to such an exalted height by the world's believers

My cousin Paul from Birmingham worked in an abattoir for 20 yrs. His job every day was to deliver the fatal shot in the head to the animal; each and every cow was perfectly aware of what was coming he says and they were terrified. They'd get skittish on the plank path entrance and do their best to bolt.  He couldn't even bare to look in their eyes at the start but then it became the routine...he'd come home with the apron soaked in blood & a niece of his told me the sight of him like this turned her Vegan when she was eight. He once brought us over about 30 T- Bones when they were banned here in the 90's, we had to buy an extra freezer just to store them in the garage.

Have their own buzz going on with the Weimar + in Paris. Germany sidelined with elections but Merz sounded at least solid enough on the issue of raised spending. Will EU have time to actually "recommit" in the event of abrupt US withdrawal of support? Is it politically feasible for Zelensky to simply cede the four captured oblasts? Ukraine, France & Poland all talking strong but how much support can they get from the rest. Need a "point man" to speed things up - EU Commissioner maybe. US aren't putting boots on the ground to secure a peace so Europe will have to be included at some point - massive drive to justify doubling military expenditure incoming + Ireland's neutrality now on the table seriously for the first time. Big changes potentially.

Yes, body bags coming back from the meat grinder almost guaranteed a Republic; Redmond & Dillons life's work was left in tatters & Brutal still weeps to this day over the tragedy of it all.

Whole culture of the EU would change if the post WW2 peace dividend underwritten by American largesse were to evaporate. To make amends for the expected US deficit EU countries would have to raise commitments to 4 PC of GDP, double the average today. In such a scenario, Ireland would be instantly frowned upon as not "pulling their weight" despite recognition of our venerable tradition of staying "above the fray". New realpolitik will leave little sympathy for such a stance.

Sure, wars are grotesque but that doesn't mean pacifism in all cases becomes an acceptable option. If you can't draw the line & be able to enforce it your going to get squashed eventually. Carrying a large truncheon usually ensures you won't have to use it. If the EU can't defend it's own territories with an emboldened Putin given fresh oxygen by Trump then it deserves to be over-run. The good news is that the EU unlike Ukraine actually has time on its hands. There is zero chance that if the US cedes Russia the four Eastern oblasts & Ukraine is forced to accept this on account of European inability to make good the withdrawal of US military support, zero chance that the EU major players won't ramp up military spending + equip an army to boot, possibly scrapping NATO altogether for a whole new arrangement. Like it or not, this will probably happen .... despite your personal objections.

Of course it's absurd. An utterly scandalous waste of life and potential. Nothing on earth disgusts me more than reading about the needless slaughter in the trenches of WWI. The trail of Gunpowder for that can be traced directly back to European colonialism carving up the globe and the Germans simply wanting what they regarded as a reasonable share of the pie. So Kaiser Willhem launched his fateful programme of building a navy to rival the British so they could actually compete on the world's seaways ....but lo and behold tensions were immediately raised, mutual suspicion set in and Gavrilo Princep only had to light the match.

What you appear to be  missing in this analysis is the fact that occasionally in history a complete CUNT walks onto the stage and will not stop taking and taking until he's literally stopped dead in his tracks with an axe in his head. Chop chop, we've seen it all before ...  nobody is so detached from reality that they cannot imagine a warped autocracy like Russia driven by revanchist mania & spurred on by his mirror image in the White House, shackled albeit for now by the rapidly withering chains of democracy & accountability, NOT taking another bite and another bite and so on ad infinitum until he's put an end to. No politician can stand up on a podium and argue for "appeasement" in Europe after this

Of course, just what Weimar + are discussing right now. How to make good the technology deficit caused by abrupt US withdrawal + boots on the ground - Starmer only just made a commitment to this effect a few hours ago.

On the plus side the four oblasts taken are the very ones naturally that have large minorities of self-identified ethnic Russians & in some cases majorities of those who regard Russian as their mother tongue. Putin will draw breath and luxuriate in the victory Trump has handed to him ...but there is nowhere near this level of Russian identification in the rest of Ukraine. However, he will be feted forever in the Russian annals on account of this opportunistic landgrab and that in itself will have consequences ...it will steer the course of the Russian state for another generation, and not in a good way.

You talk about patterns - how about the German Chancellor wishing to rescue the poor put upon "Deutsches volkes" suffering discrimination outside the protective bosom of the Fatherland in the Sudetenland, in Austria, in Poland & the unreasonable aggression of the rest of Europe not to see the Anschluss as a preordained justice from on high to unite these scattered disabused peoples into a glorious Third Reich. How does Putin sell this bullshit at home - he says the Ukrainian state since independence has systematically denied freedoms to Russian speakers and he regards the Ukrainian language as nothing more than a bastard dialect of the mother tongue ...   epically inaccurate as they' ve been cleaving separately linguistically since the fall of Kievan Rus in the 14th century ...a complete distinct culture which he has already provided the rationale for absorbing. And then there's the buffer zones ...how thick would it have to be to protect current and future gains? Our German Chancellor wasn't satisfied merely with Paris, he took it all the way to Moscow.

Should study the sequence of events leading to the Maidan protests then. Yanukovich (a Russian speaker from the Donbas) had promised a bill guaranteeing further integration into the EU. Putin slapped on tariffs, embargoes and he climbed down, outraging the vast majority who naturally embraced the prospect of eventual EU accession. He thought he could hold firm, sent out the army to stop the crowd protesting, ordered them to disperse but eventually just like Egypt and Syria the generals hadn't the stomach to do what was required and the whole shabby edifice was upended. People power, pure and simple ...no evidence for any CIA plotting ever uncovered because it would have been ludicrous to put their fingerprints on a runaway freight train that couldn't be stopped in any case.

It's not a question of hating anybody over what happened in the long distant past ...just a question of understanding how history can be abused to justify present day predations. If Putin's narrative of the past diverges so ludicrously from what actually happened what is the intent behind the whole smokescreen of lies; of course when people can't be arsed uncovering the basic facts about this history as though they are irretrievably lost in the fog of war, or dusty incomprehensible archives then his job is already half done.

out my anti-Israel articles being scorched by Chatgtp ...well, whatever .. no I don't believe any one is squeaky clean but I do come to conclusions based on reading around the particulars of any conflict. Guatemala was screwed by the West in the   50's, Iraqs Mossadeq in 54 for having the audacity to nationalise their own oil, Chile in 73 where Pinochet was happily installed and the worst of all when Lumumba was assassinated to give union miniere concessions in Katanga all under the direction of Eisenhower and Dulles. Iraq in 2003 saw the hydrocarbons Bill bail out tightening US energy ....and so on . You don't really do shades of grey do you?

the CIA had absolutely nothing to do with the Maidan protests of 2014. This the key event as up to this point Putin was buttering Yanukovich lavishly with oligarch wealth in the hope he remain on the leash & keep Ukraine within the Russian sphere of influence ie somehow scupper the Bill the Ukrainian parliament had approved the previous year to integrate more fully with Europe. When Yanukovich complied and refused to sign the resultant legislation in November 2013 the country erupted in protest, triggering a three month standoff between pro-European Ukrainian protestord and it's own bought and sold pro Moscow stooge government. Elsewhere called the Revolution of Dignity it is regarded as the largest pro-democracy mass movement in Europe since 1989. 108 protestors were shot dead by security forces - it simply would not go away & the worst violence began on the 18th    of February until realizing the game was up Yanukovich fled to Moscow on the 21st. Within two months Russia had invaded Crimea and the two proxy separatist Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk were set up in the Donbas. So, this is the actual triggering event which has shaped the contours of everything that has happened since. In real terms it is the beginning of the war in Ukraine ...yet the earliest evidence this reporter can find for CIA collusion with the Ukrainian govt. is three days b4 Yanukovich hightailed it - and with a sympathetic partner within the state apparatus  who knew "the game was up". Why would it surprise you that the CIA, witnessing the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas and with their remit to monitor closely any and all geopolitical tremors that may have consequences for "US national security" not forge relations with a country attempting to protect it's democratic Revolution from aggressive attack! So the CIA deepened ties with the post Maidan Ukrainian government which is under attack from all sides by an aggrieved nuclear armed former superpower ..sounds to me like they are doing their job. The Maidan protests were the turning point - Putin got physical thereafter as his vassal stooge was toppled ..Ukrainian people and no-one else wrestled this power from him ..and that's why they'll be damned if they ever let him get it back . CIA backed coup my hole --- people had to stand face to face against truncheons, tear gas and eventually bullets for three whole months ..I watched the drama unfold with millions of others on live TV for what seemed an eternity. ..Paul Manafort had massaged Yanukovich 's accounts to facilitate the wealth transfer - the perfect CV in Trump's mind to make him his campaign manager just two years later. As I said earlier, go figure.

When you include those buried under the rubble likely an underestimate. The straight face of IDF apologists telling you these are untrustworthy figures provided by Hamas would sicken your soul when the whole world can see the brutality being unleashed here ..Norman Finkelstein & many others have documented the ultimate reliability of these estimates as they've tracked the correlations initially projected and actually demonstrated death tolls via analysis of the three previous Israeli incursions into the Gaza strip ..Cast Lead in 2008, Pillar of Defense in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Where did the brutality of Hamas come from on Oct 7th ? Most of the perpetrators would have children on these dates when their world crashed down in flames all around them. You reap what you sow..

Badge of honor these days as the bar for this slur has been lowered to anyone critical of the blatant slaughter of innocents by an out of control Israeli state. Finkelstein, the author I mentioned above who is the most widely cited academic on Gaza death tolls over the years is the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors. His mother survived the Warsaw ghetto and Majdanek concentration camp while his father was in Auschwitz. Guess he's an antisemite too.

Not going to happen in Egypt. When Mubarak was toppled and they held elections Muslim Brotherhood controlled the government & started introducing Sharia sending alarm bells off everywhere particularly, in Israel's mind, their close ties to Hamas. The army struck back with Sisi at its head and arrested the lot of them leading to outcry all over the Middle East with Al Jazeera at its head covering the detentions 24/7. You think Israel want that scenario reproduced were it to release a million Hamas supporters into Egypt. Within a generation they'd control the country. Jordan is even more precarious, about a third of the population are either Palestinian refugees or descended from them. The monarchy was almost toppled on account of this instability in the past and they've no intention of repeating the experiment. Is Trump nevertheless capable of shoving it down their throats ....possibly... but even the Israelis must see the long term negative consequences of this drastic solution.

Well yes ...of course..one of the many absurdities of the whole transplantation myth which is basically the last great act of settler colonialism orchestrated by the British Empire ...to think the integrity of genetic pure lines can be maintained over two millenia is delusion. Those who accept this would counter that it's idea of Zion itself and that there's is a cultural and religious affiliation above all else..stirred by a profound faith in God's covenant etc

Just maybe consider it's never about ALL ONE THING ..maybe we need in all instances to look at multiple inter-related factors on a case by case basis some factors more prominent than others dependent on the context. That's the real world. Not compressing everything that's happening into a convenient thought bubble that helps your mind move from one region to the next connecting dots & forming linkages that only tangentially exist in reality, if at all.  Multiple interconnecting parts all moving rapidly is the reality ..our minds compress & simplify of necessity so we don't collapse exhausted and throw our hands up in despair.

Watched the Oliver Stone documentary ...  dreadful bilge. Made heavy play of Bandera as though there were a red thread linking Neo-Fascism to the Maidan; there wasn't,  Svoboda the right wing party was the fourth largest in the 2010 elections and probably had  ten PC support. Militant fascists made up tiny fraction of the protestors. No tough questions to Yanukovich .. why were you so corrupt might have been a start? The shaded map shown constantly suggested the country is evenly split between pro-Russia and pro-Europe whereas it's only the Eastern half of the four oblasts captured since 2022. The idea that the Ukrainians needed US support to master social strategies is laughable. The expert on CIA coups was the most plausible contributor but his models based on previous colour revolutions were inapplicable in the context of Ukraine .. they mentioned the 5 billion secured to promote democracy initiatives as though this were something nefarious + then didn't even attempt to explain precisely which organisations were doing what or even where the bulk of the money went which were so detrimental supposedly to Yanukovich. The one piece that looks like a nail gun in the heart and seems to outright demonstrate US meddling - the phone call between Nuland + Pyatt the US ambassador - was first of all edited to highlight the seemingly most incriminating part but is also a straightforward misrepresentation of what was discussed. It's all very sloppy sixth grader shite designed to hook the vaguely interested + convince them the US is basically at fault for the entire conflict ..but of course incredibly effective, Maga have been running with this precise narrative for years now and even Jeffrey Sachs believes it. So hats off to Stone I guess, putting Putin's warped nonsense on screen and making it semi believable for the comatose. Hope he got well paid for his troubles.

I checked this out b4, you have to go to the 2001 census which had two direct affiliation questions: What is your mother tongue? and What do you regard as your ethnicity? There was no room for ambiguity, you couldn't choose Ukrainian AND Russian even though you were bilingual (which most Ukrainians in the East are) and even if you had a Ukrainian mother and Russian father who grew up in the same street you still had to choose one or the other A or B. Ridiculous to compound complex identities into a box like that to begin with but anyway the results were interesting - the four captured territories since Russia invaded are the only four of the fifteen Ukrainian regions where there is an even split of Russian - Ukrainian speakers based on what respondents said was their mother tongue ...but as regards ethnicity in these 4

19/02/2025, 20:01 - Bob: ... in these regions about 25 PC on average regarded themselves as Russian first

Just dredging 4 these exact figures for those Eastern regions ...Donetsk- 38.2 PC Russian, 56.9 PC Ukraine ..Luhansk 39pc Russian, 58 PC Ukraine -- Zaporizhzhia 25 PC Russian, & Kherson 14 PC Russian.

19/02/2025, 20:41 - Bob: Rest of Ukraine excluding these four and Crimea is 10 PC Russian

19/02/2025, 20:48 - Bob: To self-identify as Russian in Ukraine ten yrs after Ukrainian independence is pretty hardcore loyalism you have to say..

Just on the point of holding territory alone you need a population that can be managed without having the headache of a constant guerilla war on your plate ...3 other regions in Ukraine could satisfy for the Russians on those grounds.

This is the era of zero accountability. Multipolar, whatever, it's dog eat dog now, nakedly & blatantly. UN complete shambles.

Old colonial powers Britain and France would never relinquish the privilege ...China, Russia, US fair enough ...Africa, India, Brazil no chair, not even rotating. Cracked system,creaking at the seams replaced now by fluid bilateral back channels & opportunistic alignments ( dog eat dog) ...least the old world had aspirational documents; human rights, ICC etc... now there's nothing but what the dear leader says ...hurtling towards global autocracies unless the brakes are applied somewhere, somehow.

Fuck Yu Yama, in short.

US aligning with Russia to give leverage against China + creating divisions within Europe to make bilateral trade deals. EU will beef up, more centralized - Foreign Minister, more powerful president and an army incoming.

Just occurred to me that's what he was up to last night when I heard Rubio wax lyrical about restoring embassies and the great "opportunities ahead" + Vance going to the fdf, butchering the Romanians, ongoing feting of Orban etc....Sachs is such a cretin, suddenly relevant by default after 25 yrs in the wilderness sobbing about spurned advice on the post glasnost structural reforms + the abandonment of his template to end global poverty by the Bush administration to pursue the jihadists....not a word from him about the dismantling of his love child USAID either or of course Putin's complete destruction of the democracy in Russia ...US didn't help of course, which was his point.

Sorry saga - Congo Free State privately owned by Leopold, the Belgian king & secured at the Berlin Conference 1885 by a publicity blitz which convinced the world he'd protect the area for philanthropic & humanitarian purposes - but Leo had his eye on the new born auto industry & realized he could net a fortune if he converted his 2 million square mile domain into a forced labour death camp. When British journalist E.D. Morel noticed the ludicrous profits with manacles & guns going in, rubber coming out, he exposed the whole charade ...no real consequences for Leo, kept his profits & forced to sell to the Belgian state who naturally continued the exploitation by other means. Lumumba, the first elected native leader denounced these past atrocities on inauguration in 1961 and was eventually "taken out" within two years as he wished to nationalise Union Miniere's mineral concessions in Katanga. US gave Belgium the green light then had Mobuto installed who was left free to rape the most resource rich country in Africa for the next thirty years ...all under the pretext of preventing the spread of communism. Heart warming tale ...when Mobuto died the place erupted in chaos as dozens of opportunistic warlords poured into the country to exploit its riches ..leaving an estimated 5 million dead in the space of a decade. And still it goes on...John Redmond's war cry to the Home Rulers in 1914 was we must defend the rights of "plucky little Belgium" + our poor Catholic brethren overrun by Germany (themselves engaged in genocide in Namibia). Casement rolled his eyes having worked earlier with Morel exposing the abuse of the Congo.

Yes, the bloodthirsty comedian and not Putin the Poisoner is the real villain of the piece here ...the next re-write is to declare Roosevelt & Churchill dictators for abandoning war-time elections. Mike Pence & a handful of little Republican squirrels in the Senate are providing "pushback". Bravo brave newly bebackboned souls pathetically belated now that it doesn't matter a damn. Rubio has a whole catalogue of speeches denouncing Putin's "unacceptable aggression". Pathetic.  

 Without a shred of evidence either. I've heard him say the same thing umpteen times over the years on cuddly "anti-West" podcasts where his views are never challenged just like the love fest rolled out by Tucker. He never elaborates because he can't; the evidence just isn't there. Sachs doesn't do "debate", he lectures. He's been embittered for a long time, shut out from a close advisory role to which he rose high and fast. A brilliant economist I'll grant you, I used to buy all his books - but he has embarked on an extensive slur campaign of the entire  US foreign policy orientation since the end of the Cold War ever since his final and most galling slighting by Bush. Left out in the cold he's been brooding on his grievances ever since and has decided to blame "them" for everything, the state of the world, his personal failings. Notice the complete lack of balance in everything he says ...astonishing. Basically just a shill for Russia and China these days. His mammoth NATO whinges are drawn directly from Mearsheimer and the repetition of this simplistic tunnel visioned narrative ad nauseum has at least drawn him back into the orbit of consequence which at the end of day is all he really cares about. Cretin.   

Epistemological nihilism? 😁 .... Sure, why not !? But that's a space we can only inhabit fitfully;  behind closed doors and in the privacy of our own thoughts wondering how such a mad constellation of molecules as our good selves could ever fruitfully reflect on anything of consequence being as we are such a peculiar extension of the universe's very own atoms. The very same! Melt into the coherence of the wave function and the pitter patter wakenings drip dripping from the Omphalatic Matmos. Atemporal. Amoral. Alert. Awakened.

Jesus ..point to me the exact second in that clip where Duss acknowledged  it was "a CIA coup". You're putting words directly in his mouth which he never uttered. Blatant unabashed distortion FFS man. What he DOES say is that it ALMOST WHOLLY the Ukrainian people themselves who upended the government. I wouldn't have even used that phrase myself but it is his way of acknowledging that they received outside support naturally in terms of US donor money to fund pro-democracy NGO's : pen and paper activism, operational bases for coordinating protests no doubt, coffee sandbos whatever ....but this influx of aid delivered by Nuland (US point person) was concerned entirely with soft power influence peddling, not delivering weaponry or coordinating protest tactics with a view to violently storming the Palace. The massive tranche of aid from the US was secured AFTER Yanukovich blocked the EU integration bill in November 2013. Duss is being overly polite here and extending Sachs a latitude his argument doesn't merit because it's outright fabrication ...No CIA involvement whatsoever is Duss's case, but he acknowledges assistance in the form of US pro-democracy cash injections. It's a crucial distinction as describing the Maidan as a "Coup" robs the Ukrainians of agency, suggests they were dupes of a foreign power and completely missed the point that even if they didn't secure a dime from the US what happened would have happened anyway. It was their revolution, the peoples and no-one else ...108 protestors were killed ..each of them are regarded today in the same we used to look at Pearse, Connolly etc  in 1916 . They call them the Heavenly Martyrs ..it's the actual date of independence, the moment of truth for Ukrainians when they finally threw off the Russian yoke, in the form of Yanukovich who attempted to keep them in the Russian orbit. Calling it a Coup spits in the face of all of this ...depicts them as pawns in a geopolitical game ...while there is obviously a lot of validity to this viewpoint as they are in fact being de facto pushed from one end of the board to the other ...  what THEY want and what THEY have been fighting for is their own independence. ..and that's exactly what did they did on the Maidan for three whole months before they succeeded.

USAID, which is a cover for the CIA, invested five billion dollars in financing these riots (Euromaidan - Ed.). These riots lead to a coup d'etat against the democratically elected Government of Ukraine. It was a government that refused to choose sides and declare that we would side with the West. That's why we wanted to remove them," Kennedy said in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson.

 Soft power influencing like a St. Petersburg bot farm. Meaningless ...a Coup is like Guatemala, Chile, Iraq and the Congo ...foisting a government atop a people by violent means without their consent. That isn't what happened here...the complete opposite.  

Your using RFK jnr. as a "source of authority"? On the Maidan. In 2014. The guy is a full-time occupant of the twilight zone in post truth central. Give me a professor of history or something FFS.

All water thin speculation &  conspiracy peddling. An avalanche of disinformation and distortion all using the same silly arguments but none of them with a smoking gun, nothing concrete. Just horseshit up on horseshit ...thing is once it gets spun into the internet jungle it gathers a life of its own...due to the basic importance of the stakes involved. It's pro- Russian propaganda not respectable unbiased fairly assessed and peer reviewed research.  

None of the sites I posted are Russian or even have Russian influence..

FOIA will show us later...

21/02/2025, 00:48 - Bob: It's a characterisation of the material itself and the purpose it serves regardless of who peddles it.  

He once packed five lies into one sentence;  he eats sleeps and dreams distortion. Did you see him reading out the DOGE figures on social welfare scammers over 150 + years old? Losing the plot too if he actually thought they were real scams and not Elons crack team simply misinterpreting the data ...

Still have a soft spot for him despite the shenanigans, rhetoric, baiting - he's playing Trump like a Stradivarius is what I really believe. Can't say I blame him, if I had as much to lose as he has I'd want to get as close as possible to the levers of power too. Musk has a sense of humor too, goes a long way ....I think overall  he's a positive influence considering how bad Trump gets when left to his own devices.

Much of the reaction against Trump has nothing to do with his policies but with his character and personality. Even were he to leave America in the best shape it's ever been half the country would breathe a huge collective sigh of relief just to see the back of him. He's cashed in on two incredibly unpopular opponents - Clinton in 2016 and Biden/Harris 2024. Main thing though is that he's exploited peoples cynicism over politics, tapped into a negative dark energy - suits him perfectly ..loudest rally  cheers are when he's dishing out abuse to "crooked Dems" or wayward Republicans not towing the line. A religious experience for believers who share the same mutual enemy; the Washington swamp or whatever. But it's all cardboard cut crude caricatures of reality ..it's a festival of promised carnage and mayhem ..Bannon, Flynn etc are literally foaming at the mouth promising heads on sticks. Macro level it's Thucydides trap, the dying wasp desperately trying to restore its prestige, the instrument of white hot rage needed to carry it through is Trump himself ..necessarily kicking down barriers in an effort to get it done. But America will keep on declining COMPARATIVELY regardless of what he achieves which makes you wonder whether the nuclear option of electing him is worth the risk at all. He has all the necessary personality traits to cut a scythe through the system ...vain, obnoxious, hateful, vindictive, petty, self obsessed, grandiose ..and in his softer moments when he attempts to schmooze about as funny as an arrow through the neck with a gas bill attached. Reminds me of everyone nervously laughing at Joe Pesci in that scene from Goodfellas for fear of being the next punchline or the next one to get tossed in the woodchucker.

An imperfect tool, as Bannon calls him .. sound assessment I'd say for the task at hand

I also asked it to run with the notion that USAID was a cover for covert operations and it also came up blank; couldn't find a single shred of evidence. Now, this of course doesn't mean it wasn't - it just means that there's no credible evidence in the public domain that suggests it was a coup. Not of course that this inconvenient absence of any evidence stops misinformation merchants like Sachs and RFK jnr from flapping their mouths off and wilfully spreading harmful lies. The next question of course is how long will we have fair and balanced AI calling it pretty much as it is? Anyone use the Chinese AIs yet - are they equally reliable when it comes to assessing geopolitical events?

Parliament exploded 20th Nov with opp.parties hurling abuse at govt.for not signing EU bill ..21st Feb Ukrainian Pres. flees to Moscow following increasingly violent clashed between security forces and protestors in the Maidan. Three months (and a day) to be precise is the relevant timeframe. 19th Nov the law is on the statute awaiting to be ratified as most expect, next day it isn't. One foot in the EU one day ..next day condemned to servitude labouring under the Russian yoke. How pissed would you be? Any ...it's a clearly defined timeframe. If the CIA/USAId/Nuland remit to keep Ukraine within the Western sphere ...this is the date they need to get the finger out and get "creative".

Lot of layers to it, an infinite onion of subject positions. Can assume any side of an issue and assess it merit-wise with faultless logic. If you introduce a new factor it couldn't have known it immediately reappraises  & summarises the new reality noting how this now changes previous assumptions x y z. For all intents and purposes it's "thinking". Anyway, a zillion times more efficient than Google or Yahoo as it hones in on the specificity of a particular question and doesn't shower you with adds while offering up a thousand non-relevant further search options. For a journalist doing background research it's indispensable, complete gamechanger. Stockbroker  cousin tells me he gets his shit done in literally half the time using it.

 Problem with Open AI and the LLM model was the cost of running so much data through it ..Chinese Deepseek produced at a fraction of the cost + Deepmind now scrambling to get a version out ..plus half a dozen viable silicon start ups in the pipeline. Things being as they are the consumer is going to be offered choice here and if standards slip, functionality declines or Govts get an Orwellian foothold then consumers can simply vote with their credit cards & take their business elsewhere. If everything looks like a hook you'll never take the bait, course you'll never have a refreshing dip in the ocean either!  

Another way of looking at it is that someone in DOGE fed Trump those ludicrously implausible vampire stats to make him look like an idiot,  which he did, reading them at length (yawn) as part of his after dinner riff with sundry donors & sycophants. Big credibility downer for him when he discovered he'd been joking at his own expense the whole time. Who stitched me up? He's perfectly capable of going on a paranoid rampage for a few days, weeks, months even years...if he sniffs a single disloyal atom stinking up his Nirvana. As long as Musk & Trump have a common enemy to pummel the bond should stay firm. Dei & trans rights alone could do the trick, but inefficiency, waste & over-regulation Musk loathes with the passion of a thousand burning suns so he's in this for the long haul I'd imagine. Immigration is part of it, support networks for refugees in Europe is incomprehensible to them  so Musk & Vance tagteamed to blitz the Munich Conference with high profile reach outs to AFD just two weeks b4 the German election hoping to give them enough of a bump as to make coalition forming a headache for Merz, the next German Chancellor. If Germany come out with a weak and unstable govt. Monday there'll be no need to pay any attention to Zelensky - Trump can feed him to the dogs then and there ... along with a peace deal on Russian terms but thankfully the two pronged assault hasn't seen any huge bump in the polls for the far right ...so the firewall remains intact (for now) for Germany, Old Europe and Ukraine. I don't know what it is about Musk, I just can't bring myself to actively dislike him - the likes of Gates shorting Tesla stock to the tune of 4 or 5 billion at a time when his projections are telling him he's on the brink of folding - I mean there's a real ghoul with his faux piety & rigid bon a fide safe humanity philanthropic badge trying to destroy the only shot well have to decarbonise transport ...yet stood to make untold billions if Tesla flopped. If Musk has reached some apogee of cynicism about the human condition such that he's  prepared to literally put up with anything, including buddy bonding 24/7 with the most obnoxious turd the earth has ever foisted upon us .... I mean I just have to believe he's got a deeper design here, there can't not be.

No doubt which side Trump would prefer to fight on if it came down to it ..I mean he's openly contemptuous of elected leaders while praising autocrats everywhere simply because they are the mirror image of how he views himself; a powerful unaccountable leader commanding complete obedience. Imagine that, all he sees is weak and feeble democratically elected leaders who have to consult with coalition partners, cabinet members weigh up public opinion, their actual mandate...blah de blah...how much more efficient could the world be run if it was only left to half a dozen Khans to divide up spheres of influence, positively oozes contempt for democracy; it has the unmistakeable whiff of weakness and servitude in his mind ...a "servant of the people" ..as if. Lucas is right about the photo-op with Putin..Trump is so vain, grandiose & contemptuous of democracy and the history of the struggle to achieve it that he is openly contemptuous standing shoulder to shoulder with weak accountable leaders and beaming with inner pride when he does the opposite; stand shoulder to shoulder with professional killers with nothing but a trail of corpses and the smouldering ruins of potential to recommend them.  

Also, on the military front for the first time in US history a lieutenant general (3 star) has been nominated to the rank of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff bypassing 37 higher ranked active duty four star generals ..if passed by the senate retired LG Dan Cain (more accurately described as a venture capitalist these days) will now chair and coordinate weekly JCS meetings without ever having ever attended one himself ...they being the exclusive reserve of four stars. Seems like ancient history now but I remember reading an Atlantic article last year  pondering whether it was possible for Trump to assume a direct stranglehold over military appointments ....wouldn't there always be at least a reliable four star veteran appointed to the JS? Well, there you go, apparently not.

Yet again, your logic confounds me ... 😂I post a video of an interesting commentator with a useful bit of mind food and that automatically implies I endorse every sentence that they have uttered, every comment they've made, every stance they've taken ....anyway yes I posted it as a check to the notion that Trump can be characterised as 'Hulk Smash' driven entirely by naked transactionalism as in Lucas assertion that mineral wealth shakedown was the primary driver here ...as Varoufakis warns the mainstream tendency is often to dismiss out of hand the idea that Trump isn't capable of strategizing with any depth; patently true as he's now won two elections & has seasoned European politicians crying into their cornflakes over the unfathomable unexpected cruelty of it all....the sacred trans- atlantic alliance torn in tatters with relish right in front of them. I guess it takes a direct punch in the face to finally realize what's been happening in America the past 10 years.  

 I am just making the point that a lot of people see the CIA fingerprints on this Ukraine thing.

23/02/2025, 22:16 - Bob: Of course they do as it's energized from multiple angles; radical leftists wishing to delegitimise neo-imperialism, MAGA activists as it promotes the narrative that Trump will be peacemaker & abandon the shady practices of the past, those who promote EU division and is it shows an utterly corruption, pro-Russian propagandists as it implies the Ukrainian were perfectly happy to stay neutral until the West forcibly sucked them into their orbit ..it's actually one of the most pivotal instances of contested propaganda in our day...which is why I at least think getting down to the nuts and bolts of is an important exercise.

how a singular event becomes a deeply contested battle zone for different interest groups for entirely different reasons ..Jeffrey Sachs, Margory Taylor Greene, Vladimir Putin, RFK jnr.and (unlikely bedfellows; radical Marxists) all espouse the same view on the Maidan - that it was a coup simply because it serves their purpose to say so ....not because there's any evidence they've exhaustively excavated...as if.

Yes it's a fascinating suggestion that the buffer provided by being default currency gives you such a headstart in a tariff war, cutting the trade deficit, strengthening the dollar, attracting FDI ...then the implication of widening the net and affecting a generalized global trade war with multiple countervailing tariffs leading to industrial unrest, strikes, instability and a capital flight to trusted safe havens : Uncle Sam's Treasury bills. Of course, short term maybe this would yield benefits but long term it would lead to widespread decoupling. BRICS have anticipated this & Trump rounded on them in a flash. It's an obvious weak point and he makes no attempt to hide it.

 Zelensky is just trolling Trump back. Sad, but there you have it. In a conflict where over a million lives have been lost this is what Ukraine's leader is reduced to ...mimicking the only form of expression that Trump has truly mastered; the schoolyard taunt. As Zelensky knows Russia will never except Ukrainian membership of NATO as it would prevent them from taking further bites of the country in the future - in fact the first demand from Russia when it comes to talks is ironclad guarantees that Ukraine should never join NATO. Bucharest summit 2008 Ukraine were promised to be fast-tracked, our old friend Yanukovich pulled them out under Putin's behest in 2010 and the post - Maidan pro European governments have ever since tried to revive the push for membership ....  to which jittery NATO allies have backtracked considerably in light of Russia reabsorbing Crimea and the Donbas. Shit was real, after all. Are we going to be the wee musketeers here and do "all for one, one for all" when our latest applicant has the misfortune to be neighbours next to a psychotic renegade nuclear armed superpower?

Nope, so NATO membership for Ukraine will never happen & Zelensky knows this ful well and he also knows that Trump it ...so it's funny insofar as it actually appears to be a magnanimous gesture to step down to probably half the world who aren't paying any real attention anyway....but Trump will be pissed just the same as it gobbles up his limelight in which glare he must remain at all times.

24/02/2025, 06:19 - Bob: It's also funny because Trump has had his piggy little snuffling snout stuck sniffing all that mineral wealth which his minions insist should belong to any "security guarantee" in the event of a "deal" , which Zelensky quite rightly has been stalling until he can have a proper chin wag with the new German Chancellor.

24/02/2025, 06:27 - Bob: So, basically it's Zelensky way of telling Trump to go f+++ himself, for the time being at least. The other tragi-comical dimension to all this, aside from a US president openly raping the prostate victim of a predatory dictatorship on the doorstep of Europe is the fact that there can never be any credible security guarantees without the United States stamp of approval (as EU currently can't provide that on its own, such a stretch resource-wise) and the NATO framework is a non-runner ..,

24/02/2025, 06:32 - Bob: So it must come via a bilateral commitment outside NATO by The Trump administration but a treaty of this sort isn't worth the paper it's written on because, as we are all aware Trump is a moral vacuum liable to shred any agreement as soon as it becomes inconvenient for him to honour it ...given that the Russians are also aware of this, the entire procedure is simply a can kicking exercise awaiting the vigorous renewal of full on hostilities.

24/02/2025, 06:41 - Bob: In a sense the mineral deal is the only one that makes sense as it can be structured to provide the blackmailer (the US) with a drip drip proportion of the buried wealth keeping US companies on the ground and functioning as our  new gangsta Prez's  extortion fund. Serious Nobel Peace Play here from the Don ..,

24/02/2025, 06:44 - Bob: As long as the US maintains a presence on the ground extracting the wealth indefinitely this alone will prevent the Russians from interfering as they too will no doubt have a joint operation in tandem with US mining companies to extract from formerly Ukrainian land, now happily Russified.

 Just breathtaking to see the astonishing stream of Newspeak from post truth central in the Oval there with Macron. They (Ukraine) owe us 350 billion ..actually they only owe 8 billion tops as this the amount of the loans through WB etc ..rest of the total estimated 175 billion in military and direct financial support was given as GRANTS ..not expected to be repaid. Macron can only giggle at the naked effrontery. Art of the Steal - pgs 1-350.

25/02/2025, 01:50 - Bob: Not that the American tax payer has been bled dry here preserving a bulwark of democracy in Eastern Europe ... outlay over the time period concerned 22-25 as a percentage of total US federal spending.... ?

25/02/2025, 01:52 - Bob: Point Zero Two Five per cent ......! .025!

25/02/2025, 01:54 - Bob: Point Six Three of the annual federal budget ...! .63! Trump wants 5OO billion in mineral reserves  in return..! You have to laugh.

25/02/2025, 02:30 - Bob: That's your "security guarantee" right there. Russia will want in on this perpetual gang rape of Ukraine presumably. Better than a permanent nuclear winter, I guess. Yay. Peace in our time! 🙏

25/02/2025, 02:39 - Bob: "Right" is only a question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.  ------Thucydides.

Vaturi can always be relied upon to flap his mouth off and spill the beans. The SA genocide case against Israel has a whole briefcase of his verbal vomits. Israelis had one common goal, he said " erasing the Gaza strip from the face of the earth".

All the networks are running with the news that Macron "pushed back" on Trump on the question of money given to Ukraine ( that moment when he grabbed Trump by the army mid-sentence to correct him) - but what was he correcting him on ? Only on how the EU loans, grants etc.. were structured ...not on Trump's absurd claim that the US were owed 350 billion! So, if he allows that to stand it's not pushback, but capitulation, pure and simple. Course, it's not Macron 's problem strictly ...just the Ukrainians.

Bully boy Trump isn't even bluffing with the 350 billion claim....everyone in his circle, in Zelensky s circle, in Europe all know it's nonsense ..it's flat out 175 billion all of it bar 8 billion is in non-returnable grants ...yes, that's the way Biden set it up. The vast bulk, 167 billion was GIVEN ...Zelensky legally actually and morally is under no obligation here ....and yet the price of the Savage's intervention is the perpetual rape of the country's resources. Why? Simply because he can. He has the ace of security guarantees up his sleeve & an enfeebled Europe can do nothing about it as it has been sleepwalking the past decade assuming the post WW2 peace dividend would last forever. Have they not been paying attention? Like WTF ...Putin taking Crimea should have been the wake up call here.  

Kim Lane Scheppele ...very busy woman these days; probably the best expert on these type of transitions. Lot of work done on Orbans capture of the bureaucracy, judiciary & media in Hungary based on support from a populist right wing base. Some parallels with Putin's handling of the oligarchs before consolidating & Trump's apparent reigning in of big tech. Zuckerberg's  instant acquiescence by reversing long standing policy and sacking fact checkers for instance. Truth being a useless commodity in the pre-planck twilight zone where reality itself is warped in upon itself. New laws are spat out every day obeying no precedent or structure other than the desire to see Will met.

All I see is a man consumed by his own id. ..whatever it wants the shell of his ego must provide. Ravenous, worse than Putin. Democracy died Nov 5th .,...what's happening now is irreversible. What precise form will it take though?

 Trump is literally the ONLY problem here. Everything has already been co-opted under his umbrella. None of those company heads have the slightest influence in terms of actual power projection.

Trump is beholden to no-one dude...entirely his own show. Constitutionally incapable of being anyone's lap dog. If only it were so, then there would be the prospect of some tiny modicum of restraint ...ain't gonna happen. This is a whirlpool.

25/02/2025, 16:46 - Bob: Inescapable vortex ....everything's lined up. Approaching the event horizon.

25/02/2025, 16:49 - Bob: I was holding out some hope for Musk, Vance or Gabbard ...maybe they still have time. Depends how it plays out ...Trump will be prepared so they have to be careful, extremely.

"Hand your power over to me, only I can save you" -- actually true from all the accounts I've read. Yeltsin had been compromised on so many levels, he was reluctant to yield the reins. Putin showed commendable loyalty to his corrupt boss in the  Petersburg mayoralty on account of which his KGB handlers, busily funneling state assets into offshore piggy banks in the midst of a privatisation riot for a pooled fund to save Mother Russia in the late 90's

26/02/2025, 04:26 - Bob: .....identified Putin as a reliable pair of hands to affect a peaceful transfer from the failed democratic experiment overseen by Boris into a more centralized, autocratic regime which could rein in the oligarchs and kickstart the recovery from the shameful embarrassment of Perestroika and Glasnost in which...

26/02/2025, 04:34 - Bob: Western capital markets were allowed to fillet the Russian state at fire sale prices.....for bona fide Russian nationalists,  democracy as they experienced it and how it was introduced was simply the absurd exploitation of their natural resources, the rise of obscene wealth differentials & a Duma hobbled at the onset by insane levels of corruption.Oligarchs rapidly tied up the media too ....so Putin wasn't so much a strategically deployed "plant" as a fellow believer in this old KGB nationalist revivalism ...the idea that Gorbachev betrayed the motherland, the Soviet Union, the Empire.

26/02/2025, 04:39 - Bob: He had a mind of his own, astonished his handlers by his vigour in prosecuting the war in Chechnya ...and eventually came to dominate the inner circle of old KGB nationalists & the bank accounts of squirrelled state assets to which they had access...Within four years it was all wrapped up on the domestic front...polishing off remaining irritants like accountability, the weary exercise of empty elections, dissenting internal voices ...hatchet after hatchet.

26/02/2025, 04:45 - Bob: They seem to depict him as just a gangster thug here which is ludicrous ...completely misses the point. Probably about as useful a celluloid biography as the recent Trump one which managed to capture precisely nothing ...not that that stops CNN from promoting it 24/7 undermining it's own credibility daily.

Trumpocalpyse

26/02/2025, 10:11 - Bob: Bremners a doves dove, an investment strategist in the ear of hedge funders looking for nice sober stress free returns. Global chaos torments his soul, he yearns for ubiquitous safe havens & novel destabilizing elements like Trump 2.0 throw his forecasts into the blender ...so, difficult for him not to be downbeat ..but even he sees the need for a beefed up EU military. Starmer announced it last night ..it's inevitable.

 In that sense he has some issue. Why keep fighting a war that is at best a stalemate...

26/02/2025, 13:52 - Bob: Err ...as when you stop fighting you get over-run and enslaved. Had the alternative been plausible, sure down sticks but as should be apparent by now Putin doesn't have an off switch; he can afford to lose a thousand soldiers a day without a single demonstration in Moscow  

Hear is prediction on the EU election cycle that we're only lagging four years behind Trumpism ...far right could sweep the board, with Elon & Trump's selective tariffs raining down..

Stalin twice Time person of the year.....like Zelensky. That's what really gets Trump's goat.

Person of the year is ridiculous didn't Hitler win that

26/02/2025, 14:07 - Bob: Yes twice

26/02/2025, 14:07 - +353 87 341 9496: Pfft I bet you any money Trump will win it again

26/02/2025, 14:09 - Bob: Trump had a framed photo of his Time man of the behind his desk in Trump Tower ......he never won it, thing was doctored.

26/02/2025, 14:11 - +353 87 341 9496: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36e71wg7z9o

26/02/2025, 14:11 - +353 87 341 9496: The bbc is lying to me

26/02/2025, 14:12 - Bob: Hitler won it twice in the 30's as he brought Germany out of the Great Depression, no more popular leader in Europe for several years .

26/02/2025, 14:14 - Bob: No, I meant for years before Trump even got into politics he had the framed Time man of the year photo hung up in his office even though at that time he had never won it....who does shit like that?

Lots of people... it is a vision board... it is channeling.. you are changing reality by imaging something...

Course others might say your narcissistic and delusional. Some people obviously have a lot of time for that crap, think it's great motivational juju ...I just think it's demented, like this is the measure of success ...twisted & shallow.

See Clyburn the leader of the black caucus with the Dems in Congress is saying Trump firing the black CJCS was racist ....this is why they are clueless...Trump couldn't give a damn what skin colour his toady is wrapped in. An irrelevancy ...instead of pointing out the nominee has leapt beyond 37 four stars and attacking it on that ground they've created another lose lose scenario....just like that Maine gov. slashing hr own throats for a cause already defeated. Identity politics , when we got them there and distracted we take them to the cleaners on the real issues...Bannon told them what the playbook was and they still insist on drowning themselves.

These tax cuts are insane ...DOGE will have to throw a few million onto the streets to pick the oranges the immigrants can't when they're tossed back over the border...civil unrest is deliberately being sown here....Carvill just wants everyone to calm the fuck down & resist being teed up.

He has an interesting blend of respectability & psychotic fire breathers ...the latter have been nicely revved up for the show trials of Cheney, Kinzinger et al.. 

I guess if your Sinn Fein you can denounce the legitimacy of the Free State & I suppose from a purists perspective there's a certain logic to it ...Proclamation wasn't talking about a truncated Republic ...but here we are anyway consistently in the worlds top 20 global human development indicators, thanks to our limited flawed democracy. Dominance of the big parties shattered and now working in tandem ...but yes, still a democracy & a pretty healthy one too, comparatively. Course this is a low bar, given what other countries have to put up with.

27/02/2025, 17:50 - Bob: Not to Britain & Europe he isn't ...the ostensible purpose is to get a security guarantee but I'm guessing they'll be talking about other things ...as everyone's aware Trump's "word" is a dead letter. The man least likely to keep his word in documented history ...does render the exercise kind of futile. Still, it's the spin which will be interesting

Dog eat dog, he only respects power & what's in it for himself ...wonder about the Big Tech influence on dreaming up this mineral deal..& how much Vance & Co were committed  

Adam Bolton is gas:  " I think it's quite remarkable that there's someone ( Trump) who is so puerile that they'll respond to flattery in that way (invitation by Charles)."

Yeah it's good, not great. Too much high octane roaring & farcical fluting around nonsense to take it too seriously. She chases the rainbow with gusto to lift herself out of her shitty life & Igor the supposedly knucklehead henchman is her honest eye throughout, seeing the futility of her struggle yet awestruck by the energy and ingenuity she commits to the whole hopeless sorry chase. Sees through all her charades including her last pathetic gambit at grifting him in the car. When she realizes she's not fooling anyone but herself she breaks down allowing the truth of her condition to be shared with a sympathetic soul for the first time. In Campbell's terms it is apotheosis, the slate has been wiped clean (literally the windscreen wipers chugging away) and a new life may be begun on an honest secure footing with the very witness to her whole transformation. Actually not bad at all.

All this talk about Musk & Bezos being the richest people on earth is a nonsense ...the four wealthiest SWFs ( top ten anyhow) are all ME Arab dictatorships shadily controlled by autocrats: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar & Kuwait. With almost 4 trillion in liquid assets rebuilding Gaza between them would be like squeezing out a pip. Anything for the regional stability they crave & require to continue free holding off oil & gas revenues.

05/03/2025, 19:24 - Bob: Most Oscar winners lately have been unwatchable bilge, almost like a kiss of death these days. Anora broke the trend away from mawkish sentimental slush carrying an ultra PC "heartwarming message". A common as muck but gritty & resourceful Brooklyn hooker trying to tap the gravy train of a useless parasitic dipso nonce son of a Russian oligarch is the perfect tonic to the avalanche of toe curling schmaltz lately.

Godfather is apt as they are all literally unaccountable gangster states controlled by a single family whose head (MBS, MBS etc) has complete control over these SWF's. It couldn't be further removed in principle from the way in which the Norwegian fund is managed with multiple layers of oversight and transparency.

The pretence if anything is the other way around - Abu Dhabi Investment Authority sounds like a pooled kitty for the UAE but it's directly controlled by MBZ,  head of the AL Nahyan family via his brother Sheik Tahnoun who also happens to be UAE National Security Advisor. For Saudi Arabia, the clue is in the title ...a single family, the Sauds, control the lot: lock, stock & barrel. C'est moi, l'etat.  Personal, familial wealth indistinguishable from national wealth. Fed can't buy stocks and shares, real estate or bonds issued by other countries and it's chairman is rotated out of office. Strictly concerned with monetary policy, interest rates, purchase of US T-Bills etc ....market power is indirect.

Neither Poroshenko or Tymoshenko would do anything much different from Zelensky; Putin is probably insisting on "regime change" to Trump as a precondition for ceasefire talks & Trump just hates Zelensky because he refused to dig up dirt on the Bidens for him leading to his first impeachment. Trump can't be dealing with fundamentally honest people with their country's best interest at heart; it must make his skin crawl. Also, Zelensky is a genuine hero, one of the few left on earth of indisputable character, lauded universally within the EU and much of the world beyond ....occupying in fact precisely the place Trump himself would love to be ...by dismantling this image of Zelensky he believes he can somehow capture some of his gold dust ...not going to happen...no matter how many of his minions he dispatches to those ends.

07/03/2025, 08:45 - Bob: Besides, Zelensky has said he'd do the deal, read it out in his marathon lie fest to Congress..

07/03/2025, 08:59 - Bob: Lindsey Graham running around like an hysterical undead zombie calling for Zelensky's removal, he's been assfucked so long and so often by Trump he's lost all independent volition; he just vomits his masters jizz when he opens his mouth these days. Great thing about Trump is that you get to see the truly steaming pile of shit politicians out there for what they are ....like an Augean stables clean out will have already been performed by Trump himself as a magnet for corruption.

The ape has to do that as that's what every Pres. signs in March....look at him with his Gulf of Amerikaw cartoon map too. Had an AP reporter tossed from the WH as they still refer to it as Mexico. Petulant man-baby.

He's going to be a disaster for Ireland; what Simon Harris team is trying to do is to ensure it's not a catastrophe.

07/03/2025, 19:57 - Bob: Proposed corporate tax cuts for US companies now going from 21 to 15 percent ...our 12.5 won't last forever so will be no real incentive to locate here in future. April 2nd d- day for across the board tariffs of 25 per cent in all EU exports ...Ireland almost the most vulnerable in the EU in a trade war with US

07/03/2025, 20:00 - Bob: If they could work exemption for US MNCs based in Ireland that could mitigate but it would be counter to WTO rules and create a separate shit storm within the EU. Probably unworkable as too complicated to seek special exemptions like this.

07/03/2025, 20:27 - Bob: Even were Trump to exclude Ireland from the more punitive 25 percent rate based on 'special relationship' this wouldn't fly as per single custom union rules where EU negotiated as a single indivisible bloc...Harris repeated that this was the case and that he fully supports the EU in this. Trump would prefer obviously to pick & choose,  divide & conquer.  ..but the ball is less in his park than the EU's if he intends to proceed apace with across the board tariff hikes on the 2nd.

07/03/2025, 20:41 - Bob: Course if he tightens the net to exclude everything bar steel, cars, aluminium etc. then we may avoid the worst effects ...but EU will reciprocate and this is where the pain kicks in downstream as more and more items are included in the joint insanity...at least services aren't on the current radar, just industrial products. Overall aim is to repatriate US MNCs so we have to radically reshift here...

Trump's plan is a non-runner as no ME country can take on the burden, not a financial one but political - too risky & destabilizing. Arab summit convened by Egypt drew up a rebuilding project recently so that's what's going to fly unless Israel go scorched earth & let the headbangers in the war cabinet get what they want. Trump obviously would have no difficulties with that...so really I'm just wondering what's holding them back?

10/03/2025, 18:10 - Bob: Imagine the British back in the days blowing up the Square Tallaght shopping centre and Tallaght hospital killing 4,000 innocent shoppers, doctors, nurses and patients but declaring the operation a success as they wiped out an active IRA unit "sheltering" behind "human shields"?

But it's senseless on its own logic. You can't wipe out armed resistance to occupation by simply culling off the radicals while at the same time killing innocents at a proportion of ten to one - all your doing is radicalising the next generation. Where did the current crop of Hamas come from if not from the brutal reprisals Israel has dished out in the past. If you saw your brothers, sisters, parents or children blown to smithereens as part of collateral damage to an Israeli incursions, which is the case for tens of thousands of Palestinians in the last 15 years, how senseless would you become, what lengths wouldn't you go for even the slightest chance of drawing blood, just one opportunity for revenge. The radical uncompromising mindset feeds directly on this thirst for revenge and Israel have never been found wanting in providing all the justification needed to create new recruits. 

 What the Palestinians need is a strong honest arbiter capable of stepping in and presenting their case with sufficient clout that the Israelis have to pay it attention. Domestically they can't rally behind anyone; Palestinian Authority has never been more unpopular and Hamas is being actively decimated. The US is hopelessly compromised here & will never be an honest broker while all the Arab "ally states" are run by dictators. The only thing that can solve this is a reconstituted UN ; ie an actually functioning rights based international order. But, of course, we're in the midst of watching the whole pretence of international law and norms unravel all around us. So, really, there's nothing at all to prevent the Israelis simply going mediaeval .... there's literally no accountability whatever on the horizon apart from guaranteeing itself international pariah state status for the majority of the globe forevermore.

They don't care about the Palestinians, just maggot acting in the UN as usual. For example the Africans just do whatever the highest bidder tells them to do.

Imagine an absolute shithole nation like South Africa where thousands of people are murdered every year l, the last president was a rapist etc. taking Israel to court, laughable.

10/03/2025, 20:31 - Aengus: China wagging fingers at Israel too after extinguishing Tibet and doing the same to uigherland today.

10/03/2025, 20:43 - +353 87 341 9496: this point makes no sense... everyone has to be perfect...

because they are not the Israelis can keep killing innocent women and children

none of it should be tolerated obviously

10/03/2025, 20:45 - Bob: SA has problems no doubt but maybe it's own apartheid past is the crucial ingredient here, not it's crime rate or the failings of its leadership. You could have mentioned Russia along with China, even more hypocritical. But what of the censure of countries like France, Norway, Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Spain etc... + you can't ignore the overwhelming majority ...the only ones who voted with the US & Israel to oppose the motion are tiny Pacific territories aligned with the US and Argentina & Hungary. A major abstention , India, is in favour of a two-state solution.

It's a pathetic haul that the US and Israel can only find 12 other countries to oppose a motion that straightforwardly condemns the occupation & treatment of Palestinians ..... Palau, Micronesia, Nauru & Tuvalu  are all COFA beneficiaries relying on US for direct aid, defence, visa free access etc..Malawi & Papua New Guinea are heavy recipients of US aid etc.

BDS movement keeps all the issues on the radar but hasn't gained critical mass like the anti-apartheid struggle. Abraham Accords roped Arab Muslim dictatorships into trade alliances with Israel contrary to majority public opinions in those countries that Israel should give up it's claim to post 67 land grabs.

10/03/2025, 21:36 - Bob: 35 US states have passed anti-BDS laws + Trump now threatening deportations & imprisonment for "anti-Israel" protestors

 Yes, I heard Obama that time & notice the way he doesn't view the debt as an outstanding problem ...it's a problem, needs to be managed & it's unsustainable in the long run but it is nowhere near the existential crisis that the Trumpistas are depicting it now in order to justify their tax cuts, gutting the federal govt, cutting Medicare, social security etc ...the "debt" doesn't even register in Obama's mind as a significant factor because it largely wasn't.

It's not the problem it's being projected as for ideological reasons ie trickle downers who want small government & friction free capital for the rich and corporations. There is no cliff ; it's a phantasm exaggerated by the rich to further remove them from accountability & immiserate the rest of us. Friedmanite shite. The US debt is INVESTMENT and the payments are dividends paid to INVESTORS who continue to INVEST in the entity known as the USA. 70 per cent of it is owed to domestic savers and so when paid out it is recirculated within the economy. There are a million other measures that can be adopted here to offset the interest payments rather than taking a chain saw to it ....it's a smoke and mirrors hocus pocus narrative deployed to justify massive social engineering ...

You keep looking at US debt as a consequence of delinquency like Argentina, Greece etc ....US doesn't need conventional loans, it owes so much money because it's a triple AAA investment; rock solid, a sure thing; if there was even the remotest chance of a default nobody would be pouring trillions of dollars into the US Treasury. It "borrows" in dollars it controls the printing of while 60 percent of foreign reserves are held in the currency it controls. It's mathematically impossible for default unless it's for strategic political reasons ...all the economy has to do is grow by 4 percent to eliminate the interest payments; they can be reduced sanely and rationally without the need for chaotic tariffs wars, social cuts, tax cuts for rich and corporations etc... US isn't a penniless vagabond with zero credit rating like me...ffs

Ten trillion annually invested in US T-Bills; in terms of confidence or perception as a safe haven return no economy can match it. Japan has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world yet virtually no-one believes it will default because it controls the yen; Singapore too, it's high debt is an index of its success, not it's failure.  ...there are two types of debt, that which drowns you because you've no option but to acquire and that which you ride to ever greater heights  exploiting well founded investor confidence.

10/03/2025, 23:50 - Bob: Trump & Co are doing the usual alarmist Republican fiscal conservative Friedmanite rap to ratchet up their gini stretching wet dreams ....simple as  It's a percentage point above the 80s and 90s ...can be wound down with usual level of sober fiscal prudence.

Messaging from The Malign Tumor - freak out about the debt therefore EVERYONE must freak out about it ...it's horseshit, you can't default with the Fed and Treasury on your side. Trump himself had no bother putting two trillion onto the deficit in 2017 with his tax cuts.

spurs!? Wnails Trump's sordid anti-Zelensky stance. To think the hero of Kiev had to send a letter of apology to bone orld  Precisely the problem. Society of the spectacle. Are you not entertained? Maybe he should put on a clown costume and juggle a few knives while he's at it? Much better fun to stay glued to Nero's dumpster fires - logic & accountability being so tediously antiquated in post-truth central.  This Strumpet coin is the perfect vehicle for anonymous backhanders from petrified governments trying to avoid tariffs ...Trump will be richer than Croesus by the time he never leaves the WH.

He's a PR specialist concentrating on ensuring continual funds for the ongoing war effort. Literally his job entails making rousing speeches to sundry Parliaments via video link & presenting the Ukrainian case in the best light possible....what other modern figure can you think of who has managed to rally such unanimous cross the board support, apart from within Maga?

12/03/2025, 20:33 - Bob: Russians are still dying, Ukrainians still dying ...technically & actually that literally means the war is ongoing. What part of "calls for a ceasefire" rhetoric over the past few weeks do you not get?

12/03/2025, 20:38 - Bob: If Ukraine had lost, Kiev would have been swamped by Russian tanks & a pliant Putin picked puppet stooge government would be busily Russifying & "de-nazifying" the remnants of resistance.

12/03/2025, 20:44 - Bob: Zelensky as "fundraiser" has been a runaway success ...had he been corrupt, a gangster figure, a shallow self-interested creature transparently on the take ...none of the resolve to protect Ukraine would have lasted a couple of months as why shed so much gold to protect a regime which is so rotten to begin with....Maga aligned spin merchants have attempted this very distorted narrative along with their ideological counterparts in Moscow ...but it hasn't worked in Europe and it hasn't even swayed majority Republican thinking.

Just roll over and die then, allow yourself to be sucked into the maw of a soul destroying autocracy ...then sit back while he reconstitutes the Soviet Empire. Not an option.

12/03/2025, 20:57 - +353 87 341 9496: Trade is better than war

12/03/2025, 21:00 - Bob: Of course it is but Russians in the Donbas aren't selling vodka they're pounding the shit out of Ukrainian front lines ...if Putin stopped attacking agreed to a ceasefire and talks Trump would ensure he'd get the four Eastern oblasts and Zelensky wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. Up to Russia as things stand.

12/03/2025, 21:02 - Bob: Crimea is gone but not forever, Ukraine should never relinquish their claim either to that or the Eastern areas .

If you straightaway discount all politicians as corrupt chancers on the make your opening the gates of hell as it's tantamount to admitting we are incapable of governing ourselves ...we actually need and require a dictator, a strong man, an autocrat to take the reins of power. It's a senseless, mindless, corrosive cynicism which has no concrete solution other than throwing your hands up and saying  "I'm done, please enslave me". The very attitude Trump has exploited to get to where he is today, on the precipice of flipping over the entire system of checks and balances.

 Ball is in Putin's court. Ukraine have agreed to a thirty day ceasefire. EU are vital as they're beefing up fast. US are the ones who will be irrelevant in the long term as they continue on the track to self-sufficiency, disengagement and disinterest leaving behind the world order they built. Unless MAGA blows up in their face so spectacularly they are forced to reverse course

I was talking about Chris Murphy raising the obvious concerns that anyone who cares about Trump's attempts to bypass accountability and centralise power would have ....how he's daily undermining the foundations of democracy? It seemed to me you were more interested in dissing the Senator drawing attention to this rather than the actual arguments he was making? Why believe him, isn't he just another politician ...what could he possibly have to say that isn't laced with self-interest? 

You'd give a fuck I presume if you were lifted out of your house and shut away for a decade without access to phone, email or any means to talk to your family. Just spirited away in the dead of night without habeas corpus, without a free press to investigate, without a judge to uphold a law that may have protected your rights and without a single voice capable of defending you for fear of themselves or their organization being rounded up in like fashion. Seriously, are you so blind you can't see how much worse things can get without the basic freedoms and protections provided by an open democratic system?

Canadians have a quality of life the envy of most of the world, like we have here .....Africans would give their right arm to have a shot of it. Try living in Russia for 20 years or North Korea. How about a collapsed state like Haiti stuck in the cross hairs of rival drug gangs? Fucking unreal you see no distinction here.

Instant bestseller if you made up a half plausible argument. Present it as a stunning new revelation that will shock all true believers to the core ....dates align perfectly. Shakespeare at the height of his powers is secretly commissioned by new King, James, to do a rewrite  ...or at least assist the puritans at the Hampdon Court Conference of 1604. From this meeting the Book of Common Prayer (1607) and the new King James Bible (1611) emerged .....Measure for Measure, King Lear & Anthony & Cleopatra were written 1604, 1605 & 1606-08. Then he published the sonnets in 1609 but they were material already written over years. So he slowed down over the relevant period & published old work. 1610-11 he's back knocking out three plays. So, a definite lull in output. Why wouldn't James secretly employ along with ecclesiastics & puritans the most renowned writer of the day to produce a work which was immediately noted for it's " Majestye of Style"...!?

13/03/2025, 16:36 - Bob: Fun fact ...Psalm 46 the word "shake" appears 46 words from the beginning and "spear" appears 46 words from the end...!

13/03/2025, 16:39 - Bob: Also, Shakespeare would have been 46 in 1610...

13/03/2025, 16:45 - +353 86 609 3043: And he was only 4'6"

13/03/2025, 16:45 - +353 87 341 9496: Last night I thought... I found something... The thing is although we find a similar sentences lots of them like you know thousand plus similarity within the sentences doesn't hold up across multiple measures so

13/03/2025, 16:47 - +353 87 341 9496: There's no evidence Shakespeare knew Hebrew or Greek and the guys who did the translation of the Bible or mainly the clergy so it could be difficult to sell the idea that he was a part of that deal

13/03/2025, 16:51 - +353 87 341 9496: Yeah just a load of people believe this right they believe that he was actually commissioned The reason they believe it is there wasn't that many people at the time that would be capable of you know writing at the level that would be required

13/03/2025, 16:53 - Bob: John 2:20 the Jews tell Jesus ...." It took forty and six years to build this temple" ie Herods Temple. Jesus then prophesies it's destruction & references his body as the new temple. ...".in three days I will raise it up" a reference to his own bodily resurrection ....46 chromosomes in the human body! Coincidence? 😄

13/03/2025, 16:56 - Bob: James couldn't have someone who wasn't steeped in theology do the translations as that would be a scandal but he could pass the translated work onto a secret collaborator for correction and amendment....then pass it back to the theologians. Simple. All evidence of this would naturally be destroyed

13/03/2025, 17:05 - Bob: Sry, just reading your blog now...didn't realize you had the Psalm 46 stuff already there!!

Democracy to ochlocracy: demagogues manipulate masses mob rule replaces orderly democratic processes

Ochlocracy to kingship: chaos leads to desire for strong leadership cycle begins anew with virtuous monarch

16/03/2025, 16:30 - Bob: These were all Aristotle's terms used in his Politics to describe three correct forms of government ( ie those that were 'workable') .Each had a deviant or corrupt form such that monarchy could collapse into tyranny, aristocracy switches to oligarchy and democracy tended to devolve into mob rule or ochlocracy. Aristotle didn't propose cycles as Polybius did but simply noted the three forms and the manner in which they decayed ..to be replaced by either it's original form or by one of the other two. Polybius rejigged Aristotle to suggest a systemic cycle of regimes .. Anacyclosis....Monarchy - Aristocracy - Democracy - Mob Rule - and back again. But Polybius was writing mid 2nd century BC at the height of the Roman Republic and was saying something a little different here. He was in awe of the Roman Constitution with its balance of powers between consul (executive/monarchy), Senate (aristocracy) and popular assemblies/ tribunes (people). Rome had in other words the capacity to blend the best elements from Aristotle's correct forms of governments without the danger of collapsing as each element held the other in check. As long as the Roman Republic held fast to its trusted institutions, it's civic virtue or mos maiorum "way of the ancestors" then it could indeed break the cycle of endless regime change - Republic had stood for 360 years at this point when Polybius wrote his Histories and he pretty much saw it as an eternal masterpiece of constitution making capable of absorbing all manner of internal & external shocks and disruptions. It would all fall apart a hundred years later of course ...but 18th enlightenment thinkers were steeped in the classics and knew Polybius well which is why his concept of a balanced mixed constitution with multiple checks and balances dominated their thinking in Philadelphia in 1787.

Trump is like a gorilla trying to break free from a cage built 238 years ago (US Constitution)...think it's well to understand what  it's strengths & weaknesses are and how fit for purpose it is today. He's already loosened a fair few bars ...but can the whole remain intact over four years of constant pressure? Framers wanted to contain democracy, so the Senate & Executive were designed as a check to "the enthusiasms of the mob" - 18th c thinkers were horrified by what they saw as the excesses of the direct democracy of Periclean Athens so the US Senate was conceived as a branch of government controlled by rich aristocratics. They also had a very sober appreciation of human nature believing that in time an utterly venal & corrupt individual could become President. ....hence all the checks & balances. Trump behaves as though he's Caesar, time will tell whether that's true ...prosecuting Jan 6th committee could be his Rubicon (Cato's refusal to drop charges determined the Ist crossing) ....could Vance be his Augustus?  

Er....become an ostrich, pretend it's not happening, like. Leader of the free world is a wannabe dictator who's scrambled the post WW2 world order and now aligns openly with Russia. Sry, this is compulsive viewing & not in a good way    

Merrick Garland should have appointed Jack Smith two years b4 hand....too little too late, all we got was the Jan 6th committee...then the call was let the electorate decide...another dumb move...let the law decide, always.

 Yes, his EOs are only binding temporarily but this was Orbans approach to flood the judiciary with appeals while the actual machinery of accountability was dismantled before it's eyes at a pace which the bench couldn't keep up with...U SAID wind down now being reversed by Federal judge but so much damage already done...DC Federal judge openly lambasted, Roberts intervenes only for the third time in 20yrs...biggest check in Trump's mind was Laura Ingraham on Fox directly confronting him on challenging judiciary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngstown_Sheet_%26_Tube_Co._v._Sawyer.  Predict we'll be hearing a lot more about this case in the future ...SC ruling set upper bounds on POTUS powers during an emergency.

Just another subset of the larger constitutional struggle; whether it deserves to be dismantled or not is irrelevant, the point is it's a federal department that can't be wound down without congressional approval. Executive keeps pushing the limits of its power, something has to break soon.

Rowan Dean, Sky Australia ...amazing rancid bile. Did it ever occur to him that the independence struggle here led many Irish to sympathise with anti colonial movements all over the world particularly India and Africa. And when has Irish independence come to mean a repudiation of multiculturalism? Best thing to happen in this country in the last thirty years are higher levels of non-EU immigration and collapse of the power of the Catholic Church imo. On this one issue northern Protestants were correct; Home Rule meant Rome Rule. Dubliners by Joyce written before 1916 and in the midst of a fevered Irish nationalism saw ahead and glimpsed the swapping of masters from the British political to the Roman religious which is why each story was a celebration of multiculturalism and an illustration of the stultifying  death's claw of Catholicism ..." a nicely polished looking glass held up to the Irish" and a " first step towards their spiritual liberation".

Totally disagree, you had 60 anti-immigrant platform far right heads running for the last Dail ....and all we have is four Independent Ireland TDs who arguably wouldn't even describe themselves as far right and probably wouldn't support McGregor either as there's such a whiff of sulphur off him. Point is the Presidency is highest symbolic office in the land ...why shouldn't the peoples democratically elected representatives get to choose who should go forward? He wouldn't have a hope anyway, simply because all he is peddling is bile and hatred of what the country is ...and knows nothing about anything else by the looks of it. That would go down like a lead balloon in a debate, just wind up making a fool of himself ....so maybe he should run and expose his ignorance for all the world to see?

22/03/2025, 12:32 - Bob: It's like anything else, you need to run the numbers and see if it's feasible to continue providing supports, if it's not then questions need to be asked about how long current trends can be sustained ... it's not racist to see how obvious this is needed if your managing public accounts, why would it be? It's irrational for any country to take on excessive burdens ..."racism" is an abused term thrown around too easily to discredit an argument or a person to the point where it's ludicrous to even bring it up.

22/03/2025, 12:38 - Bob: I'm speaking personally, just from living with Africans here. I feel a lot better for the experience, having understood and appreciated what they've gone through to get here, witnessing how much they support their families back home and seeing how hard they work to get their kids into college & how they manage with limited funds to make the best of their lives here. Genuinely inspiring, but there you go, not everyone gets the insiders glimpse. Instead they get exposed to alarmist bile like the sort McGregor and Murdoch's Sky Australia throw into our faces.

Irish Times had a two page discussion of this very issue this morning....it's all in your head the idea that's there's a censorship. Minister for Migration, Colm Brophy gave an interview to Sorcha Pollack as regards the false alarmist claims of McGregor then there was an article backgrounding his Washington visit and another piece on his claims that Ireland was being overru  

 Times is left of centre and accommodates all viewpoints, sources everything. The very opposite of a government mouthpiece; unlike the many genuine shitrags out there. Long live quality independent critical journalism. 10,000 travellers could never set up shop "next door" as there are only some 30,000 in the entire country, 8000 live in accommodation secured by their own means, 20,000 in local authority and only about 1200 in unauthorized halting sites. Travellers overall only represent about .6 per cent of the population. Keep your hair on...there's no danger of inundation here, an absolute minority with very little political power.

Commonly held view in Ireland, heard it a thousand times and I've seen it myself in action...but I've also noted other things about them, strength of family bonds, passion for boxing, fishing, outdoor pursuits, live for their mammies, respect for their women...plus to be fair their own prejudice against settled folk . Don't hate them, half envy their freedom of spirit if I'm being honest....also always been partial to that raggle taggle gypsy folk song by Planxty.

 I don't pay any attention to him; he just sounds like a blowhard gobshite who's probably a rapist too. He means nothing to me, don't follow MMA but I know Trump does and I know it's huge in the US. So what, he's got a following here like the way the Monk has, not insubstantial, but not  enough to cross the threshold and garner enough support to qualify for office ...because ultimately he's a toerag spouting bile about a country he doesn't even understand, let alone have genuine views on...I'm sure he's being honest in what he says in so far as he understands the situation to be ....trouble is it's ill thought out nonsense. Pure garbage that has no grounds in reality.

Migration was high after financial crisis 08 but since 2013 numbers leaving have been falling every year since up until last two years. Here's the figures: 2008 - 45,000 left. 2010--70,000 left, 2012 - 90,000, 2014- 80,O00, 2016- 78,000, 2018--55,000, 2020-58,000, 2022- 60,000. and now trending slowly upwards again to 70,000 mainly due to a housing shortage exacerbated no doubt by immigration from Ukraine etc...But there's an attempt to address this via more housing and reduced rates for Ukrainians...not enough in my view but it's still tackled just like they did in Canada .... This is way too complex to describe as policy, a third of immigrants are Irish returning having previously left in the past ten years going to make a better go of it. Your description of Canada as having being destroyed is just hysterical; they're one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Trudeau's govt had to tack to change policies and they did just like the Irish government here.

I'm the opposite, just find different cultures intriguing. A gang of gurriers on a street corner regardless of what culture they are is going to be intimidating. I remember being the only white guy at an African wedding and not laughing at this guy's jokes simply because I didn't find them funny and immediately getting a mad unwelcome vibe which managed to get sorted out only by the intervention of my Cameroonian missus. Integrated globe is far safer than non integrated homogeneous blocks fueling each other's paranoia ....globalisation rocks for future peace tracks, more countries share of each other's populations the less likely they are to engage in nationalistic warfare ....likewise this should be done within reason without swamping a small countrys native population.