kgwilson

I rarely drink wine these days but I still brew my own beer & enjoy a nice cold home brewed IPA after a hot day. Also after a long day, or a frustrating day, or a great day or pretty much any day including today which is a rainy day.

Vlad will be pushing his luck if he moves past Donetsk and Luhansk where there are significant Russian populations originally due to Stalins theft of their grain, starvation of the locals & Russian resettlement in the 1930s. NATO can amass more than 3 million troops if it had to. He is banking on the West not shutting the money gate entirely as that will hurt them as much as Russia & everyone knows that in the US the only thing that talks and walks is money.

Well Putin has made his move & Biden & Boris have imposed their sanctions. Are we seeing a repeat of Hitler annexing Austria and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938. Nothing was done then. Hungary & Poland then took bits as well to ostensibly protect their ethnic minorities in certain regions. Within a year WW2 began.

My wifes family were from Donetsk. During the Bolshevik revolution her mother witnessed the murder of her parents who were Cossacks. Russia had dominated Ukraine for a long time and in the 30s took all the grain and starved the Ukrainian population. Then apparently the Eastern regions were repopulated by lots of ethnic Russians. Everyone was after their resources including Hitler during operation Barbarossa and that galvanised the Soviet republics to throw everything at him for the "Motherland". After the final demise of the Soviet Union and Ukraine finally gaining its independence and Russias influence severely depleted, Ukraine thought it had a new independent future. Part of the problem was the huge Russian population that had moved in to the Eastern regions from the late 30s onwards & Putins strong arm tactics and an insatiable desire to regain the Ukraine that he and many other Russians see as an integral part of Russia. Putin has been financing the Russians in the Eastern regions for decades & settling the skirmishes in 2014 & 2015 with the Minsk accord is just a minor blip with the real intention being total control. This whole episode is a massive gamble for Putin but he sees the West as weakened and unwilling to enter into a full on confrontation. The fly in the ointment is the massive wealth accumulated by the super wealthy Russian elite in the West that could be cut off entirely by the sanctions. If that comes to fruition Putin could be on very shaky ground.. Russians have never been afraid to go to war with themselves.

Not to mention a cop wearing sneakers.

The real problem is Political donations. Both sides get plenty from the fossil fuel industry & need their support or they won't be re-elected. They don't give a flying fig about the future beyond getting re-elected though they pretend to. They are still approving new coal mines. How does that equate with Net Zero by 2050. Meanwhile business with backing from banks are forging ahead with renewable energy projects at an alarming pace in spite of the dickheads we call politicians. 12 months ago I never thought I'd be able to afford an electric car. I now know that my next car (barring me falling off the perch) will be electric and most likely Chinese. That sector in China expanded by 286% in the last year. BYD is phasing out its ICE production altogether & of course many of the other players are EV only. The problem for the Chinese manufacturers is that local demand has outstripped their supply so there are very few available for export.

Electric vehicles are the future of personal transport and also for public commuting. I don't think that is in doubt. Hydrogen power is still a way off but that will become more viable as it is sourced from massive wind and solar generating farms currently in the pipeline. The 50000 hectare site in WA will produce more energy than the entire country uses currently from all sources (excluding transport). The development of battery technology in the past year has been staggering. BYD in China produce a new blade battery that has improved energy density dramatically, is guaranteed for 500,000 km and should last for up to 2 million km. When its output degrades after the car is worn out at say 500,000 km it can be used as energy storage for your home charged via your rooftop solar. A number of BYD, NIO, XPENG & other Chinese EVs now have a 1000 km range. CATL is the worlds largest battery manufacturer and now supplies TESLA with batteries for its EVs. CATL is also Chinese. There are 300 Chinese EV manufacturers producing more than 700 different models from basic boxes to ultra luxurious top of the range limousines. The argument about EVs using more fossil fuel to produce only make sense to those who look backward. Obviously everything being produced now uses materials made with the assistance from fossil fuels and existing steel making technology. This is also changing. Green steel has already been produced in Germany using no coal at all. Plastics are almost all recyclable so the argument is largely from human dinosaurs. China is now the worlds factory. Politics aside their technology is mind boggling and their infrastructure projects over the last 20 years are just astonishing. The projects happening in Australia are also mind blowing. Just check https://reneweconomy.com.au/ A Melburnian, Sam Evans has a youtube channel called The Electric Viking. He puts out several videos a week covering electric car developments around the world. There are hundreds of Videos on all things Electric Cars. Have a look. The development in just the past year is incredible. The cheapest Electric car in China is $US4,000.00. The BYD Dolphin a Corolla sized hatchback is to be released in Australia this year. The price in China is around $US20,000.00. It looks good, very high tech, has the new blade battery with a 1/2 million km battery warranty.

Like the US Chief said when they left heaps of equipment in Afghanistan. It doesn't matter if the Taliban get their hands on it. It is all so unreliable that it will all brek down in a short time & they will have no spares to fix it.

Perottet has at least distanced himself and disagreed with Gladys who found Pork barrelling an acceptable process in government. But now he is showing his true fundamentalist catholic sentiments. He has a mother with terminal cancer who is in accute pain & would like to die but No as far as he is concerned compassion is all he should give. Assisted dying is not an option al all so he is prepared to sit there wringing his hands while she dies a slow and agonising death. Complete religious nutter IMO.

Religious nut jobs make good politicians because they believe in something that they cannot prove and have no evidence that it even exists so they create rules around fantasies and call them laws.

I always understood a trust had to be registered so therefore it must have a trustee so why can't they find out who it is?

It amazes me that the US left so many aircraft including helicopters there even though they disabled them. It is only 125 NM to Peshawar in Pakistan easily within range of anything. Maybe they tried but Pakistan refused. The Taliban now have billions worth of US hardware & even though much of it needs a lot of maintenance I'll bet they will work out ways of keeping it going.

Medal tallies don't mean much until the games are over. China is going to do well as it is right next door as well as having a lot of people with disabilities in a nation of 1.4 billion people to choose from. Based on gold medals only at this stage Australia has 7 Gold and China 36 & on a per capita basis with Australia having 7, China should have about 390. This is of course absurd. There probably aren't that many awarded in the entire games.

It's a 2 stroke as well. Imagine if it could be turbocharged to get say 150rpm. The ship ,might get up to 40 knots 😁

I still live in hope that he'll be in jail by 2024.

I don't really know why Morrison got the title "Scotty from marketing" because he wasn't any good at that at all. In 1998 he became the director of the newly formed New Zealand Office of Tourism & Sport. He left under a cloud (well he was basically fired) in 2000 a year before his contract was up. At the time he claimed to be the creator of the highly successful 100% Pure NZ campaign but in fact had nothing to do with it. Then he was appointed Managing Director of Tourism Australia in 2004 overseeing the totally disastrous "Where the Bloody Hell are you" campaign & he was fired in 2006. Politics is the only thing he has been any good at because he is a consummate greaseball, liar, ruthless operator & religious nut job happy clapper. Crikey he can't even get anyone to willingly shake his hand. The problem is we don't have anyone who can take his place. Half of his Minsters have involvement in various scandals & his main internal rival is close to being a neo nazi. Labors Albo has the charisma of a dead duck but he has no-one challenging him. Personally I wish that Penny Wong or Tania Plibeseck would put their hand up. They at least appear have some decent morals

This is some of what the US gave the Taliban. Between 2002 & 2017 the US gave the ANA $US28 billion worth of weaponry most of which is now in Taliban hands. 2000 armoured vehicles including many $300k Humvees 40 aircraft including blackhawks & drones. Originally they gave 208 aircraft but many were used by ANA pilots to escape, others were in maintenance or inoperative. 600,000 military weapons including M16 assault rifles 162,000 pieces of communications equipment 16,000 night vision goggles https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/planes-guns-night-vision-goggles-talibans-new-us-made-war-chest-2021-08-19/ "Ironically, the fact that our equipment breaks down so often is a life-saver here," said one US official So as time goes by a lot of the stuff especially aircraft will be discarded as they have no means to keep it operative. I guess that is one benefit of making unreliable stuff.

Why not?

I thought now what happened to ..... and then the penny dropped.

If the Taliban have changed as a number of media reports indicate they want to be recognised as a legitimate government with other nations and have promised not to begin a murderous round of reprisals & protect the rights of certain individuals and women as well. They still will have some pretty strict Sharia laws but they have learned something in the last 40 years of conflict. The problem is, can their political side keep their terrorist side at bay. The old regime was excessively brutal with numerous public executions and torture. They need to make an example of some of their murderous lot by bringing them to account for their actions now that they have declared peace if they go on the rampage again. If they can do this, then the change will be good for Afghanistan. It will have some pretty draconian and strict laws but the level of killing should disappear. Upwards of 200,000 Ahghanis have died since the Americans invaded compared to 2,500 Americans and 1000 from other nations. At the moment there is just chaos and fear. The rapid takeover is an indication that there is a resigned acceptance of the Taliban. The people are tired of 40 years of war but above all tired of foreign influence. Only time will tell if this change is for the better..

The yanks may well have secured the airport but it is surrounded by Taliban with plenty of rockets to fire at arriving or departing aircraft. I notice they mostly have US HumVees and US armaments other than their ubiquitous AK47s. The US needs to set up a dialogue with the Taliban political arm to try and ensure they can get people out without the rank and file mob armed to the teeth going crazy.

Apparently we have sent a C17 & refuelling tanker to get people out, NZ is sending a Herc, the Brits are already there along with Italians & Germans & the yanks have secured the Airport (according to them anyway). We certainly have a duty to support those who helped us even though we should not have been there in the first place. It will be interesting to see how long they have to wait in detention or whatever before being granted visas or some form of residency given our pathetic record on such issues, eg the Tamil family from Biloela. Given that 90% of the ANA trained by the US walked away or were Taliban sympathisers, I wonder how many had infiltrated the ranks of Western helpers?

The US secretary of State has said "This is manifestly not Saigon". Well with Kabul in Taliban hands, the President and government Ministers fleeing the country, US helicopters landing in the embassy grounds evacuating staff, civilians and Afghans who worked for them, and US officials frantically burning documents, it looks exactly like Saigon in April 1975 to me with one exception. That is they have bases close by to evacuate to rather than ships offshore.

The fact that the Taliban is the organisation that is taking over is irrelevant. They are Afghanis and everyone else who has been there for the past 20 years is not. The Yanks have spent a Trillion dollars and trained Afghanis who had no commitment to anything they stood for. When I was there in the 1970s they were a proud people and very friendly and had no animosity to anyone. I was welcomed everywhere I went, even up into the mountains and the poppy fields. Most Afghanis just want their country back. The Taliban may be headed by a few religious nutters who want to turn time back 400 years but many of them are ordinary Muslim Aghanis. Sure they will have some repressive conservative fundamentalist laws but it is their country & we can not impose our so called democracy on them even after 20 years and a trillion dollars. The latest news is that the Taliban have entered Kabul and a spokesman has told Al Jazera news that they are setting up a meeting with the existing government for a peaceful transfer of power. All the while US helicopters are ferrying people out. Shades of Saigon 1975 absolutely. They got rid of the British, the Russians and now finally the Yanks and their lackeys which includes us. Since 2001 there have been about 3500 coalition deaths but there have been about 64,100 deaths of the Afghan military and 111,000 civilian deaths. To Afghanis the Taliban is not the enemy WE are.

I got my 2nd AZ shot yesterday & have had no effects at all. Nothing, didn't even feel the needle. First shot 12 weeks ago I had a mild headache & woke up in the night with the chills but that was it. The effectiveness reports are confusing as each new one seems to be different. The latest effectiveness reports against hospitalisation put AZ at 92% & Pfizer at 96% after 2 shots. Now a study in Europe of 1.3 million people has shown there is virtually no difference between Pfizer and AstraZeneca in developing blood clots. It now seems the new MRNA (messenger ribo nucleic acid) vaccines lose their effectiveness over 4 - 6 months & the Israeli study shows the Pfizer vaccine only 39% effective against the Delta strain. So who and what do you believe. Media hype, sensationalist and variable health reporting, political bullshit, anti vax crap and Sky News is enough to confuse anyone left who is still sane. My wife & I were out in the front garden & a couple in their 80s who live up the road came by. They are unvaccinated and aren't getting vaccinated. Why I asked. Answer because we don't know what's in it. I asked if they'd had a Flu shot. Answer Yes. Question do you know what's in that. No answer. Then we changed the subject. There will be lots of people with these sorts of completely irrational views because of what seems to them to be coronavirus white noise. They have tuned out & don't want to know. Well Delta reached Armidale today after Newcastle yesterday. It is on the march & is now probably unstoppable.