Your discussion made me question whether there are other NGOs still on the ground in Ukraine that directly support the troops in the field, whether to ease logistics or provide some safety.
Another area that I have not been able to get any information about is the status of the soil in the region. It is difficult to think that Europe can be so laid back about the status of the black earth in the region which makes Ukraine Europe's breadbasket. The earth is losing soil and losing any black soil is an ecological crime.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks for the podcast. It was worth waiting for, btw. :)
About Biden... A lot is being made about his interview airing tonight. Even if he does extremely well, the presidential term is for four years. What will he be like four years from now? I can tell you that being elderly myself, a hell of a lot can happen and not in great ways in mere weeks ... but four years?
"Bridges to the future" have been a specialty of Democrats since the Clinton administration. Trump had regular "infrastructure weeks," too, what fun those were. There are always some ambitions which cannot be fulfilled right away and politicians love to wave hands at them. In the rare event that someone actually builds something, every politician wants to be seen shoveling dirt and cutting ribbons.
It would be great to get your thoughts (either on the podcast or in a newsletter) on the power situation in Ukraine. Power is critical for the population, industry and economy of Ukraine. My uninformed perspective is that Russia has had success in their air campaign against Ukraine's power stations and rolling blackouts are now common. What is the situation? And what can they do (e.g. connect into the European grid, get some temporary power stations up and running)?
I have to agree with you - the idea that any country could be ‘too corrupt’ to join NATO is preposterous - corruption is now the very point of NATO. It’s now just a method of laundering money from the populaces of it’s various ‘partner’ states to a decreasing number of corporations who in-turn circulate some of it back to the political and military elites of those states.
How else can you explain the hundreds of billions of dollars (and very much more importantly, British Pounds) wasted on the garbage of the F-35 – a staggeringly fragile and already out-classed platform that the member states are queuing up to buy? What of the aircraft carriers, the Litoral Combat Ships, the Zumwaldts, the Ajaxes, the Morpheus radios, the T-11 parachutes, the US uniforms, the mis-firing Tridents, the KC-46s, the Anthrax vaccines and the pretty much everything elses? This is the NATO whose key members are being humiliated in the Red Sea by the forces of one of the poorest countries on Earth.
No, Ukraine wasn’t kept out for it’s corruption – it’s current predicament, and the yarn spun around it, means it’s facilitating quite enough of the money laundering already. It’s at war and so it’s needs appear obvious. Why risk the reputational harm to the carefully managed image of the probity of NATO when it’s so effectively performing it’s tax-payer-rinsing duties whilst outside?
F-35 was expensive to develop for the US but is in high demand worldwide because it is a great airplane. For instance, there's not a single Russian aircraft that could touch it. It has a 1000km + range.
Nope, not at all - it's junk - and its single engine means its already outclassed. You need to read beyond the brochures - it's too fragile, too complicated and too low-flying. Even in peacetime it has a full mission availability rate of just 30% with no spares and planes often returned to the maker with faults. It's groound-attack performances isn't even up to the A-10s. it's supposed to replace. NATO is putting all it's eggs in this shoddy basket. And if you ignore the F-35s then what of the rest in my list of failed systems?
They’re not comparable…F-35 is not primarily for close air support. I’m not defending the F35 as I know nothing about it, just pointing out faulty logic.
But the whole F-35 project was sold as a multi-purpose aircraft, capable of performing all sorts of roles on land and sea. Because of this it's got problems with all of them. Take a look at the reports at POGO I've linked above. It's a scandalous waste of money - I wish it wasn't, really I do - I wish all the hundreds of billions NATO had spent had given us a serviceable aircraft, but it nowhere near capable enough, breaks down too quickly and is far too difficult to repair when it does. It's just another example where the West takes the expensive high tech route to gain op-paper advantages, but ignores cheaper alternatives. So they use phenomenally expensive coatings to acheive 'stealth' that end up taking hours and hours to remove and replace for simple repairs, when the RF & Chinese use fibreglass and other materials and achieve similar results at a fraction of the cost.
Your discussion made me question whether there are other NGOs still on the ground in Ukraine that directly support the troops in the field, whether to ease logistics or provide some safety.
Another area that I have not been able to get any information about is the status of the soil in the region. It is difficult to think that Europe can be so laid back about the status of the black earth in the region which makes Ukraine Europe's breadbasket. The earth is losing soil and losing any black soil is an ecological crime.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks for the podcast. It was worth waiting for, btw. :)
About Biden... A lot is being made about his interview airing tonight. Even if he does extremely well, the presidential term is for four years. What will he be like four years from now? I can tell you that being elderly myself, a hell of a lot can happen and not in great ways in mere weeks ... but four years?
"Bridges to the future" have been a specialty of Democrats since the Clinton administration. Trump had regular "infrastructure weeks," too, what fun those were. There are always some ambitions which cannot be fulfilled right away and politicians love to wave hands at them. In the rare event that someone actually builds something, every politician wants to be seen shoveling dirt and cutting ribbons.
It would be great to get your thoughts (either on the podcast or in a newsletter) on the power situation in Ukraine. Power is critical for the population, industry and economy of Ukraine. My uninformed perspective is that Russia has had success in their air campaign against Ukraine's power stations and rolling blackouts are now common. What is the situation? And what can they do (e.g. connect into the European grid, get some temporary power stations up and running)?
I have to agree with you - the idea that any country could be ‘too corrupt’ to join NATO is preposterous - corruption is now the very point of NATO. It’s now just a method of laundering money from the populaces of it’s various ‘partner’ states to a decreasing number of corporations who in-turn circulate some of it back to the political and military elites of those states.
How else can you explain the hundreds of billions of dollars (and very much more importantly, British Pounds) wasted on the garbage of the F-35 – a staggeringly fragile and already out-classed platform that the member states are queuing up to buy? What of the aircraft carriers, the Litoral Combat Ships, the Zumwaldts, the Ajaxes, the Morpheus radios, the T-11 parachutes, the US uniforms, the mis-firing Tridents, the KC-46s, the Anthrax vaccines and the pretty much everything elses? This is the NATO whose key members are being humiliated in the Red Sea by the forces of one of the poorest countries on Earth.
No, Ukraine wasn’t kept out for it’s corruption – it’s current predicament, and the yarn spun around it, means it’s facilitating quite enough of the money laundering already. It’s at war and so it’s needs appear obvious. Why risk the reputational harm to the carefully managed image of the probity of NATO when it’s so effectively performing it’s tax-payer-rinsing duties whilst outside?
F-35 was expensive to develop for the US but is in high demand worldwide because it is a great airplane. For instance, there's not a single Russian aircraft that could touch it. It has a 1000km + range.
Nope, not at all - it's junk - and its single engine means its already outclassed. You need to read beyond the brochures - it's too fragile, too complicated and too low-flying. Even in peacetime it has a full mission availability rate of just 30% with no spares and planes often returned to the maker with faults. It's groound-attack performances isn't even up to the A-10s. it's supposed to replace. NATO is putting all it's eggs in this shoddy basket. And if you ignore the F-35s then what of the rest in my list of failed systems?
https://www.pogo.org/search?query=F-35
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/f35s-3of10-mission-capable-unacceptable
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/f35-low-altitude-drawback-above
Also check out pogo.org for loads of (horrifying) dives into the Pentagon's own reports on it.
Adrian is well known for spewing nonsense in the comments section…”already outclassed” :D
Same guy that says Bucha didn’t happen.
Try this for size.
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/f35-low-altitude-drawback-above
It's already outclassed by, wait for it, a decades old aircraft it's supposed to replace:
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/f-35-and-a-10-close-air-support-flyoff-report
They’re not comparable…F-35 is not primarily for close air support. I’m not defending the F35 as I know nothing about it, just pointing out faulty logic.
But the whole F-35 project was sold as a multi-purpose aircraft, capable of performing all sorts of roles on land and sea. Because of this it's got problems with all of them. Take a look at the reports at POGO I've linked above. It's a scandalous waste of money - I wish it wasn't, really I do - I wish all the hundreds of billions NATO had spent had given us a serviceable aircraft, but it nowhere near capable enough, breaks down too quickly and is far too difficult to repair when it does. It's just another example where the West takes the expensive high tech route to gain op-paper advantages, but ignores cheaper alternatives. So they use phenomenally expensive coatings to acheive 'stealth' that end up taking hours and hours to remove and replace for simple repairs, when the RF & Chinese use fibreglass and other materials and achieve similar results at a fraction of the cost.
So what you are saying is that you don't like NATO? How do we get out of the terrible mess you described?
It'll take decades I'm afraid and will take a complete restructuring of our military industrial priorities.
in the meantime we need to wind our necks in and realise out short comings.