kgwilson

My money is on the Prig. Putin has been able to manage the Russian media and the older ex Soviet population but the cracks are now quite visible. Wagners could quite easily generate a coup in Belarus as Lukas military is reportedly not that flash. The fact that it only took a few hours from Putins threat to arrest the Prig and his men to "alls well" and no action will be taken is a pretty good indication of the Prigs influence. Lapdog Lukashenko is desperate to maintain some sort of relevance with his involvement. Not only that the Oligarchs are reputedly flat out recruiting their own armies. This has to have an effect on the Russians fighting in Ukraine especially after the Prigs statements that the whole thing has been a charade. They are already being beaten back in the initial skirmishes of Ukraines counter offensive and their softening up strategy of major disruption of Russian logistics. Prigozhins motivation is money and power and he seems pretty pissed off about Russian corruption. He won't stay long doing nothing in Belarus & he won't be going back to Ukraine. Africa & money beckons but so does his Russian loyalty and desire to weed out corruption despite the fact that he was once a theif. And of course the only benefactor is UKRAINE.

The good thing is that dissent in Russia is growing. More and more ordinary Russians now have friends or relatives that have been killed of wounded in the war. The problem is still that most of these do not come from the upper and middle class Russians who live in the St Petersburg or Moscow areas. How many top quality troops has Prigozhin actually got left? Most of the recruited criminals got killed at Bakhmut. He said himself that Wagners lost 20,000 there.

Today Trumps former attorney general William Barr who was once a staunch supporter stated if even half of the indictments are true and can be proven (should be easy as they found the stuff at his house) Trump is Toast. Trump retaliated by calling Barr a "gutless pig" and some of the ultra right wing, mindless, gun toting, nut case, MAGA supporters are calling for civil war. This is getting interesting & would be hilarious except some of these nutters are serious even extending to a Republican Arizona Congressman stoking the fire.

It is only a temproary problem. The water will recede within a week or so and things will get back to normal except no water storage, no water for Crimea, and no electricity from the Hydro plant.

As endorsed by D Trump Esq.

His ego would probably get the better of him but that sure would put the cat among the pigeons.

I'd like to get my hands on an original Mini Station Wagon. When I worked in London in 74-75 as a Sparkies mate it was just the best thing for getting around the city & there was plenty of room for all our gear, switch boards & reels of cable etc in the back & ladders on top. I think it was just a van as the Countryman was a bit more up market as I recall.

Putting aside reliability and build issues the Landrovers I drove when I was in the Army in NZ back in 69-70 went everywhere without problems and impressed me greatly at the time. The Defender which was the last of the utility Landrovers has been discontinued but the baton has been picked up by a UK Billionaire and the Ineos Grenadier has been born. It looks like a Defender but inside and underneath it is all new and a pretty good utility 4WD though doesn't come cheap at 100k for the cheapest option. Soon to hit the Australian market.

There are so many apps for phones, mostly android that you should never throw your old phone away. There are apps that can enable your phone to be used for just about any sort of camera you like. So long as wifi is still operative you can use it as a web cam, dash cam, security cam, a magnifying glass, distance measuring device & all sorts of special effects. There are far fewer apps for Apple devices as the OS is proprietry & Apple always wants its cut.

Blackadder has the best explanation

In 1982 I was the Meet Director for the NZ Hang Gliding Champs & one of the sponsors was the local Lada Dealer & I got a new Niva to drive around in. The takeoff point was at the top of the Kaimai range of mountains & there was a pretty steep winding track to get there. The Niva was a very capable 4WD & outperformed most other 4WDs of its day. The problem was the interior was made of cheap plastic and had terrible fittings, seats etc. Within a couple of days both the interior door handles broke off, the rear view mirror fell off and a lot of other things crapped out but it never stopped. The Dealer didn't make any comments when I took it back with bits missing and things not working. That was just normal for a Niva.

Wagners have finally taken Bahkmut after about 10 months and the loss of around 70,000 troops. The word is that after securing some trenches they are going to move out. This whole saga is completely crazy. The entire city has been reduced to rubble. Nothing is left so they have gained nothing but a bit of ground. When the counter offensive happens the Ukrainians will most likely just go around it and cut off whoever is left there (probably Russian army conscripts) defending a complete wasteland.

The Belarusian batallion of the Ukraine army is a lot smaller than the Belarusian Army in Belarus, but is better equipped and better trained. If Lukashenko went & Putin wasn't able to prop his lackeys up I reckon there would be a lot of desertion of Belarusians across to the Ukrainian side. Either that or the opposition that really won the last election would form a new democratic government & Putin would become even more isolated.

The West has supplied a lot of equipment to Ukraine but at one stage, I think after the offensive last Summer, Russia was the largest donor of military hardware to Ukraine. It was very handy too as Ukraine already had trained personnel to use it.

Who was the idiot who designed that suburb?

The failure rate of a lot of the mass produced stuff was massive. Car companies were building planes and barely or partly trained people were doing the work. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Over 15,000 US airmen were killed in training in the US alone during WW2 partly attributable to poorly made aircraft. The German war production was amazing as they produced more aircraft in 1944 than ever before. Of course they had enslaved millions from the conquered countries including hundreds of thousands of engineers and skilled manufacturing personnel. For the Nazis it was Total War and anything goes. The allies couldn't and wouldn't emulate this so went for overwhelming production of everything where Quality Control was not a major consideration. During the Battle of Britain none of this was in place and the British produced twice as many aircraft then as the Germans did.

Yamamotos "Sleeping Giant" quote never happened except in the movie Tora,Tora,Tora. The film director reckoned he found it in Yamamotos diary but was never able to produce the diary, nor can anyone else, American or Japanese, recall it or find it. As well the screenwriter from the movie "Pearl Harbor" readily admitted he copied the line from Tora, Tora, Tora. But as they say never let the truth get in the way of a good story especially one that bolsters the American ego.

He and others have conned the gullible religious nutters that inhabit the southern US states and laughs all the way to the bank. The US has hundreds of these and are all bouyed bythe main stream religions who run the country in the guise of political parties. They are so obsessed they print "In god we trust" on all their bank notes.

NZ is a lot like Tassie. Surrounded by sea it rarely gets very cold near the coast where most people live. Frosty mornings in Winter but not enough to freeze water pipes. It has been said that NZ is caught in perpetual Spring. The mountains in the South and surrounding areas get snow and there used to be natural ice skating lakes but they have not frozen over for a long time now. The huge land mass here makes for some big extremes in temperature right up in to the tropics

Prigozhin has announced the Wagner group will be leaving Bakhmut on 10 May due to his ongoing feud with the Russian military who have not been supplying him with the ammunition he wants. He is screaming at Shoigu & Gerazimovin in a video uploaded to Telegram that shows bodies of his Soldiers behind him & in another he has a paper in his hand apparently for Shoigu advising of the withdrawl with about 50 Wagner mercenaries standing behind him. We'll see if this is true. Also in anticipation of the Ukrainian counter attack Russia has begun to evacuate civilians from the Zaporizhzhia area around the nuclear power plant This is a big concern for the international nuclear energy watchdog as many of these people are required to keep the plant running.

You don't need a lot of power to run fuel pumps. The amount of sunshine they get out West makes it the perfect place for solar power generation. A good sized battery pack will run the pumps, shop and roadhouse over night without too much of a problem. The diesel would then just be used as a backup. My friend who owns Palmers Island airfield near Yamba runs his house, farm sheds, and airfield from his solar system he put in over 10 years ago. It cost less than getting hooked up to the grid & that includes his backup diesel generator which incidentally he only ever has used to make sure it still works.

100% a false flag event. The desperation seems to be worsening daily.

Well documented history only spoiled by abominable pronunciation of Maori names. I think they use a Chatbot to turn text to language hence that terrible pronunciation & American accent.

In Trumps conception all of the sperm that got there were dumb. The smart ones bailed out when they figured out what the end result would be.

In 1915 the population of NZ was only 1.1 million & 10% served overseas, way more than anywhere else. There are some wonderful stories of the Maori boys at Gallipoli who always performed a Haka before going in to battle. Scared the crap out of the Turks but they got shot to bits like the rest of our lot due to the crap idea and tactics employed. The Maoris invented guerilla warfare but were prevented from using such tactics there.