WAR! What is it good for?

Risky though. They could devise an incredibly futuristic and ambitious plan involving the enemy buying boobytrapped pagers to minimise risk to themselves and civilians but it wouldn’t mean any less clutching of pearls.

The CST are mainly absolute dorks by the way. Like a modern day Pike from Dad’s Army.

 

Anyway, Russia are celebrating their developing relationship with Trump, who seems to be giving Putin everything he wants and guess what, it will be in return for a chunk of Russian rare minerals....



Instead of pressuring Moscow with the threat of even tougher sanctions and penalties, to get Russia to sign up to its plan, the US administration reacted by praising the Kremlin leader.

"We had a great call," Donald Trump told Fox News.

"I would commend President Putin for all he did today on that call to move his country close to a final peace deal," said Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff.

Not only did Moscow not agree to an unconditional ceasefire, President Putin set his own pre-conditions for peace.

They include an end to Western military aid to Kyiv and intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians, as well as a halt to mobilisation in Ukraine. Such conditions are widely viewed as a way of securing Ukraine's capitulation.

"We'd like to have more trade with Russia," said Donald Trump on Tuesday in his interview with Fox News.

"They have some very valuable things for us, including rare earth. They have a big chunk of real estate, the biggest in the world. They have things that we could use."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjevg23enggo

 

Yeah, there you go. Surprised the IDF hadn't already thought about that

I can imagine the CST being proper ****ing nerdy prefect types.

 

You can probably learn some quite cool stuff. Self-defence and that kind of thing but there’s a lot of attending courses and admin. Bloke at uni was well into it and he had that slightly inbred Golders Green look about him. If I was ever on it put me off.

 

He's just going to carve it up, like I said he would.

I think the EU and UK need to be savvy about this, and ensure our defence spending in the future matches what will be required to take on Russia without the aid of the US.

The carve up will give us a four year respite to get our military in order - It gives Russia equally the same, but from our perspective let's not fall asleep again. Let's get what we can out of this ****fest of a deal, we need to be more astute on our approach to all this.

Toy with Trump and let him think he's the hero, massage his ego while preparing for what lays ahead, four years will soon pass.

 

Putin is 72 now. Can he really be arsed doing this for another four years? Surely he’ll just do a Mugabe and see his time out in luxury at some point. Is anyone lined up to take it on?

His birthday is October 7th. Could be something in that.

 

Nowt a bullet to the head couldn't sort. I don't know who's in line behind Putin.

 

I just saw the bit where BWood said it's Putin's birthday on the 7th Oct....it ****ing is and all.

 

Retirement sounds really nice, especially with insane wealth. That bit where you’re still healthy and young enough to do stuff but don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. Maybe that’s why I send emails and present slides for a living rather than running a country but it just sounds a lot of effort.

 

I can't see him as a sort of person that retires, despite his ridiculous amount of wealth. Ex KGB, he just likes being in control, unless serious ill health takes him down, I can't see him going anywhere. He's got his ideology of what Russia use to be and he wants that back, we need to prepare and be ready for the next time.

 

My birthday is on 8th October. Maybe I should take over from Putin ...

 

Piskie saying they went too soon.

 

1 more day, and they still couldn't get it right.

 

Same day as Sadiq Khan. Share it maybe.

 

They never found him. Still alive and rumoured to be sharing a trailer in Montana with Elvis and JFK.

 

Sir Sadiq and Pinkski

Birthday boys running the Kremlin

 

Not before me ... same birthday but with seniority, junior...

 

Fair play Fosski

 

The key difference is that the UK didn't have its most right wing government of all time in power in the years leading up to Good Friday.

Which is why I make Welshie's reading of the situation absolutely correct from a pragmatic political point of view.

Right now two things are of paramount importance: the end of Hamas governance in Gaza, and the end of Netanyahu's collation in Israel.

These two things happening makes peace exponentially more likely, I doubt we'll disagree on that.

I will describe the situation in Israel to you over the past few months. I was there myself for a period in February and heard this from people firsthand.

The Ceasefire Agreement saw Otzmah bolt the coalition, leaving Netanyahu with a wafer-thin majority. Concurrently, Yair Lapid's popularity was sky-rocketing.

A few weeks later, the Attorney General reconvened the courts for Netanyahu's corruption trials, of which roughly half a dozen hearings sat during Phase One.

In other words, we have never been closer to getting rid of Netanyahu without a formal GE. One mistake, perhaps over the budget, or draft laws, or judicial reform and he'd have lost his majority, government collapses and a GE is decreed which he would almost certainly have lost.

All Hamas needed to do... literally all it needed to do, was to allow gravity to take hold and bring the whole thing crashing down to planet earth. They needed to do the one thing that wouldn't play into Netanyahu's hand and draw the far right back into government.

You dismiss the hostage parades far too easily. This was and is a national trauma for Israel and whilst we can sit here emotionally detached from those images, Israelis sat at home boiling with rage, even among the more moderate support base that makes up Lapid's electorate and therefore the most likely group to oust Netanyahu.

The funeral route of Shiri, Kfir and Ariel Bibas was over 60km and was attended by hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom hate Netanyahu as much as we do. Even the Queen didn't get a send off like that. That is how deep these scars run.

The parades confirmed in enough Israelis' minds that the priority of destroying Hamas is more important than the priority of rescuing the hostages. Not because they all want thousands of Palestinians dead, but because they watched those parades, listened to the speeches and saw the banners promising to repeat Oct 7th over and over again.

So now Otzmah is back in the fold and Netanyahu once again has a nice comfortable majority.