kgwilson

The Chinese are not entirely stupid even though they have the same authoritarian style of regime but their economy depends upon trade with Europe and the US. If they start supplying Putin they risk losing a massive amount of this and with it their income and influence. Putlers only other real mate is Lukashenko & he is only there because Putler has propped him up. He would have been gone after the last election if Putin had not stepped in to save his skin when the pro democracy movement got the whole country protesting. He has recently had a whinge about Ukrainian military exercises near the Belarus border. Western intelligence suggests that if he sent the Belarus army in to Ukraine it is most likely that there would be a mass mutiny & they military would turn back on Lukashenko. There is already a Ukrainian regiment made up of Belarusian volunteers for them to join. One day to go before the 1st anniversary of the invasion. The long awaited Russian offensive is likely to be a fizzer given the antics of the last few weeks. Ukraine is doing what it should by telling no-one about what they have planned. They seem to be doing what Montgomery did at El Alamein in 1942. Build up men armaments and supplies until you have superiority in all fields. The waiting back then frustrated a lot of his Generals but he refused to budge. When he made the move, even with a number of mistakes he had the reserves to guarantee victory & the 8th army chased the Germans out of Egypt through Libya to surrender at Tunis. Hopefully this will happen again. The only Elephant in the room is Putlers nukes.

Never heard of him. The only one I remember was Donald Campbell and Bluebird back in the 60s or 70s

Wasps and Bees Sting. As far as I know none of them bite but sandflies and mosquitos do.

I made the mistake of allowing a pair of Welcome Swallows to nest in my Garage some 20 years ago. They built an elaborate mud nest high up the wall & I used to leave the roller door open about 100mm from the floor so they had access. They would fly in with the most amazing accuracy at very high speed. Once the 3 or 4 young fledged and left I removed the nest and cleaned the wall. The problem was that next Spring there were more than a dozen of them wanting to build nests. I had to keep the door locked but they kept on trying for weeks.

So true. The poor female Cop shot by the conspiracist nutters in Qld looked like a Teenager. Even her hat was too big for her.

Putin wouldn't even go for a run without a surrounding army of minders. Shirtless on a horse is about all he has ever been able to muster. Then he might have to confront Tony shirtfronting him.😁

Cops in NZ still don't carry guns either, even after the Christchurch massacre. They have what they call the Armed Offenders Squad, highly trained and more or less Commando/SAS types which now has a lot more units than when I lived there. Normal cops have ready access to firearms these days & I am told they always have firearms in patrol cars, they just don't carry them on their hip.

Tonights 4 corners on the ABC was a BBC doco with a Journo who spent a week or so with Ukrainian soldiers on the front line using drones, artillery & mortars & everyday Ukrainians who had joined the fight. It was just before the planned assault to retake Kherson. Well worth watching on iView if you missed it.

There are thousands of people posting these short Tiktok style videos these days all for their 15 seconds of fame, in this case 4 seconds and nothing is off the table including 100% CGI. Setup or fabrication, take your pick. Real? not likely.

And do you think Putin cares? He has got 140 million to choose from & none of them matter to him. He'll celebrate with a few vodkas & white wine for the 100 yards & not give the slightest thought to the 2000 dead soldiers or their grieving families.

Ursula Andress was a swiss actor and starred in the first Bond Film Dr No. She became a sex symbol after that and earned the new surname given by the press with the roles she played. She is now 85 & lives in Rome.

They're American. Of course they can be that stupid even without being blond. There are still 40 million who thing the election was stolen from Trump. It is an absolute setup though. The bloke could have said straight away this is an electric car so doesn't use petrol (gas) but he farted around checking other things and not making a simple statement.

This was all recorded by Ukrainian drones last Saturday and published by several Telegram and Utube channels. See my post from last Sunday. Because of the footage and publicity they were not able to deny it. It will have been banned from publication in Russia though but now with news getting through from satellite internet access to tech savvy Ruskies there must be more and more doubt of the official line creeping in to Russian society.

If the US really wanted to know how the F22 would perform in combat they should lend a few to Ukraine after training up some of their pilots.

I'd hardly call shooting an almost stationary, unarmed item the size of 2 busses a combat kill. What would have been news is if the missile had missed.

There was drone footage of the badly organised attack by the Orcs. It was over flat ground with no cover & they lost an entire armoured battalion of 40 armoured vehicles including 7 tanks. Again they drove in close formation rather than space out & zig zag. Ukraine occupies the high ground of 2 artificial hills by the coal mines so directing fire was easy for them. The Russians had 3 goes, each time losing armour and an entire platoon of men killed. Also Ukraine carried out a HIMARS attack on Melitopol airbase with apparently 7 direct hits within 40 minutes which included several ammunition dumps a warehouse of heavy equipment and a Russian barracks. The Russians also fired about 100 cruise missiles & Iranian drones at civilian infrastructure yesterday. 61 cruise missiles & 5 drones were shot down. Only a few got through and caused minor damage and no casualties. Ukraine is getting better at its defence every day with new equipment and well trained personnel, whereas Russia keeps doing the same thing and expects different results. At present the reports are that an average of 1000 Russian troops a day are being killed since they sent in extra troops using the Stalingrad tactic of overwhelming manpower. This worked at Soledar but Ukraine changed its tactics for more solid defence against hordes of infantry headed by some armour with devastating results.

He's got the hard right, the hard left, Wagners boss, & all the military heads he's sacked to keep eyes on plus most of the rest of the western world to look out for, not to mention 40 million Ukrainians.

For most Kiwis it is just a day off. I went to the 150th anniversary at Waitangi. It was very impressive with several warships in the harbour, thousands of people & Maoris in their best regalia lots of pomp & ceremony with local Maori kids jumping off the bridges into the water & others having a picnic with BBQs and hangis smoking everywhere. The best thing about the day IMO was the launching and re-enactment of Maori War canoes paddling out to greet the Brtish dignatories on the 4 masted sailing ships. The replica of the Endeavour was there as I recall. The biggest War Canoe (Waka in Te Reo Maori) is a double hulled ornately carved canoe hewn out of a huge Totara tree. It was built in 1940 to commemorate the centenary of the Treaty of Waitangi and is launched at the commemoration every year. It is 36 metres long over 2 metres wide, has 80 paddlers and can carry another 55 passengers. In the day these would have all been fierce, ruthless, blood curdling warriors. It's name is Ngātokimatawhaorua. Try to pronounce that. It's not Surprising at the time the Poms decided a treaty was a better option than trying to subdue them.

Great thread. We have progressed from politics and religion to boobs and silicon. I confess to admiring the female form with a nice pair of well proportioned natural breasts as an integral part of a womans beauty. Of course some are massive and some virtually non existent with size and shape seemingly concerning women more than men. There are also those who have breast reduction surgery as the size and weight can cause back and shoulder problems. A lot of women with a nice figure tell me that some men talk to their breasts not their face. That must be disconcerting.

They keep you busy and broke but not young.

LiFeP04 lithium batteries do not have the possible thermal runaway problem. These are being used in a a large number of EVs now. Even so standard Lithium batteries do not have this problem very much and as far as cars are concerned EVs are far less likely to catch fire that ICE cars. A study in 2020 found that fires per 100,000 sales were. ICE 1530, Hybrid 3475, and Battery Electric 25. It is not even close. EVs are far more fire resistant than anything else. Hybrids are the worst by a country mile. Having a volatile fuel around a lot of electrics is a recipe for disaster as it seems to prove. Once sodium ion batteries replace lithium the problem goes away as well as being at least 30% cheaper to produce.

I reckon it would buy me a few more nights with a 20 year old supermodel.

It's probably the only colour they have. Ordered for the Summer in Ukraine and delivered in the Winter to Moscow. About on par for Russian Logistics.

It would be OK for a picnic at the beach with 2 decent Esky's on the back.

No it isn't about the money but how and who spends it. Of the millions or billions spent so far a pretty large portion has lined the pockets of the so called aid organisations hierarchy and the amount allocated to government organisations who can not organise a p!ss up in a brewery let alone even understand the needs of aboriginal communities.