Talk About Tennis 2.0

Isn't that precisely the point? The best presidents are the ones of countries that do not make the news. I have no idea, for example, of who the president of Switzerland is. Of the Swedish PM, or any Scandinavian politician.
Sure, we know Zelensky now, but it seems that prior to this ordeal, he was doing well. We never heard any problems from Ukraine, other than the buildup for this war. I will take that over having a famous monkey for president, like my curse with Venezuela.

Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Mar 29, 2022 5:17 pm I agree that Zelensky is a good leader, but it also makes me think how much people are made by events. Would any of you know who Zelensky is if Putin had not attacked or threatened to attack? Sometimes events meet people and people are found lacking the right stuff. Hard to say which other leaders would perform well under the circumstances and which would not.

I think we here in the States first heard of him when Tiny was trying to shake him down and yet even then if anyone had said he had this kind of steel in his personality I for one, because of Tiny, wouldn't have believed it.

I don't think that's always true. One could have a pleasant person, but doing the wrong things. Sometimes not even apparent in the short term. For example, as the result of this war I have changed my views on Angela Merkel. She didn't steel and wasn't stupid, but actually not a good leader. Stagnation came in her time - Germany became more and more dependent on Russian energy, foreign policy was tepid, nuclear power stations were closed down and so on.

Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Mar 29, 2022 5:17 pm I agree that Zelensky is a good leader, but it also makes me think how much people are made by events. Would any of you know who Zelensky is if Putin had not attacked or threatened to attack? Sometimes events meet people and people are found lacking the right stuff. Hard to say which other leaders would perform well under the circumstances and which would not.

^ I hope we never find out.

Again who knows if this is true. There's so much stuff floating around. This account has decent folks following it so it may be true.

Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Mar 29, 2022 5:47 pm I don't think that's always true. One could have a pleasant person, but doing the wrong things. Sometimes not even apparent in the short term. For example, as the result of this war I have changed my views on Angela Merkel. She didn't steel and wasn't stupid, but actually not a good leader. Stagnation came in her time - Germany became more and more dependent on Russian energy, foreign policy was tepid, nuclear power stations were closed down and so on.

Of course. I would also be re-calculating my opinion of Merkel were it not for the fact that I already have, and all you say are negative points for her that I already took into account. And we could find examples of other countries from where no news ever come out, yet are terrible places: we have stopped hearing news from Myanmar, but that does not mean it is a pleasant place to be in, or we never hear from Laos, a verifiable dictatorship.
But overall, I will say that that formula works. If your country is not making the news, something good is going on. We hear very little from N.Z., or Costa Rica, or such places.
Zelensky seems to have been doing well, which I would not know, because so little news came out from there. Until January of this year.

... And then there is Yemen - one of the poorest and most dangerous countries to live in right now. In addition to the 7 year long war and unprecedented levels of famine, they must also deal with a huge cholera outbreak and COVID-19 - without the necessary money and health resources.

In Yemen, the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet is happening right now - and it is being largely ignored by the rest of the world...

"In Yemen today, every 75 seconds a child dies because they do not have access to food or water, according to the World Food Program's director in Yemen"

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/3/16/ ... manitarian

"At the same time, we’re hearing very little about the world’s worst humanitarian crisis unfolding in Yemen, which is now seven years into the Saudi-led war and blockade, backed by arms sales and technical assistance from the United States and its allies, including the United Kingdom.... More than 17 million people in Yemen are in need of food assistance, with high levels of acute malnutrition among children under the age of 5."

This PBS 'full film' is only 10 minutes...



This one is only 7 minutes...

Found on TW with a caption "Russian retreat from Kyiv"

Also reading that due to the way Russian tanks store ammo they're uniquely vulnerable to drone or missile attacks from above. Once a charge penetrates from above it's game over as the entire ammo explodes.

I was in Uzbekistan. We had a series of small trucks made in Russia, and they started catching fire. Short story long: they had the fuel filter ON TOP of the engine block. The Iranian company we were supervising changed the filters and bought some cheap chinese PLASTIC ones, so they melted and dropped the fuel on top of the engine, which would them catch fire.
Yep, never was impressed by Soviet engineering. So I completely believe what you say.

The battle for Kyiv is now definitely over with Russians in full retreat. I suspect that as many predicted recently most of the fighting will now move to Donbas and the Black sea coast.

I voted firmly that Russia would get to Kyiv in just days and take over with very little effort. Needless to say, completely wrong.
Now my question is: does Putin survive this mess, politically, back home and abroad? Abroad he has become a pariah to the west and more specifically, Europe. European nations will bolster their armies and I really don't see how they cannot NOT make plans to switch their energy reliance as early as this year, prior to next winter. He may try to forge an alliance with China, but he has so very little to offer them other than oil and gas, and a ideological support for dictatorships as a functioning way of ruling.
And internally: wars have a cost, literally. How much money was spent on an unsuccessful invasion, and what happens when the soldiers come back home and news spread not via social media but by word of mouth? No soldier will say "I blew it, we blew it", meaning the fighting forces. The blame will get pushed up to the top, and he IS the top in Russia. Does he survive the incoming mess, with all the economic effects that will linger for a while (or for long), and nothing to show for after the invasion?

Merkel and many in the West are certainly guilty of enabling Putin over the years.