Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 17,338]

Cruise line offers four-year trip for Americans wishing to skip Trump’s second term

A cruise company is offering Americans a four-year escape from President-elect Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

Florida-based cruise company Villa Vie Residences recently announced the launch of its Tour La Vie program, allowing passengers to spend up to four years visiting over 140 countries – all while avoiding the United States.

 

independent news

[cosmicway 1,333]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

I looked at the current online edition

Post a screenshot of your information if you are not making shit up again

...oh look hes disappeared again

It is in their thesaurus of modern common expressions.
Not the dictionary itself. The dictionary is only about single words.

[Vesper 30,237]

5 hours ago, cosmicway said:

The old base commander is gone and the new commander is a bad tempered one who has come down from the mountains.
What can the rookie soldiers do ?
Rebel and join the ... communist revolution ?
 

Why are you perma-stuck in the 1950s Cold War?

[cosmicway 1,333]

16 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Why are you perma-stuck in the 1950s Cold War?

What I wrote is n't a perma stuck. Why is it ?
That's what they do with Trump.
Anyway the 1950s cold war is n't over by a long chalk. I have yet to meet a commie who says "it's over".
What is true about it is Russian bear no longer plays the game. Even if Putin threatens to nuke us one day, he doesn't count as cold war.
What is also true is that the Chinese are still up and running but who can speak Chinese ? 

[Vesper 30,237]

Welcome to the authoritarian weaponization of the state and waste of taxpayer $ on vanity crusades: Anyone whose work seems to criticize the leader or produce results that he does not like must be investigated.

 

[Vesper 30,237]

Just now, cosmicway said:

What I wrote is n't a perma stuck. Why is it ?
That's what they do with Trump.
Anyway the 1950s cold war is n't over by a long chalk. I have yet to meet a commie who says "it's over".
What is true about it is Russian bear no longer plays the game. Even if Putin threatens to nuke us one day, he doesn't count as cold war.
What is also true is that the Chinese are still up and running but who can speak Chinese ? 

The Chinese have morphed into an authoritarian form of oligarchic state capitalism

[cosmicway 1,333]

Just now, Vesper said:

The Chinese have morphed into an authoritarian form of oligarchic state capitalism

I would n't know.
To tell the truth I went to a Chinese restaurant with some Chinese three years ago.
My friend's wife appeared to be a loyal Chinese, not against Xi.
She was talking about business all the time and even invited the restaurant proprietor to our table to talk about some new business idea.
But anyways I don't think you would like it there. 7 o' clock every morning gymnastics.

[Vesper 30,237]

3 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

I would n't know.
To tell the truth I went to a Chinese restaurant with some Chinese three years ago.
My friend's wife appeared to be a loyal Chinese, not against Xi.
She was talking about business all the time and even invited the restaurant proprietor to our table to talk about some new business idea.
But anyways I don't think you would like it there. 7 o' clock every morning gymnastics.

I have been to China multiple times

I can assure you that 07 00 gymnastics is a thing for hundreds of millions of them

and eating at a Chinese resto is irrelevant to any discussion of Chinese macro-economics other than a nice anecdotal tale

[Vesper 30,237]

Millions may not have health coverage if subsidies return to pre-Biden level

Patients, medical providers and insurers fear a shake-up in the Affordable Care Act marketplace unless Republicans extend the subsidy expansion slated to expire next year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/17/marketplace-insurance-expiration-subsidy-trump/

Patients, medical providers and insurance companies fear a shake-up in the Affordable Care Act marketplace that could cause millions of people to drop their health coverage, after Republicans’ election wins made it more likely that ACA insurance plans will get more expensive.

Congress in 2021 increased federal subsidies for ACA plans, but that expansion expires at the end of 2025, and some conservative lawmakers have made clear that they oppose an extension.

“Instead of perpetuating a tax-and-spend agenda, we can and should work together to improve health-care choice, affordability and reliability,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who is slated to lead the Senate Finance Committee, said at a September hearing where he expressed his desire not to continue the expanded subsidies.

But eliminating the subsidy increase poses political risks. If subsidies fall to their pre-2021 level, experts say, many new subscribers would choose not to renew their coverage — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that 3.4 million more people would become uninsured — and many of them live in states that lean heavily Republican. Health policy research organization KFF said that if the subsidy expansion expires, premiums would more than double in 12 heavily Republican states — including Texas, West Virginia and Alaska — while rising less sharply in many blue states.

President-elect Donald Trump has not publicly taken a position on the subsidies specifically, and a spokesperson for him did not respond to an inquiry from The Washington Post on the issue. But Trump has disparaged the Affordable Care Act for years, and Republicans have said they will use their congressional majority to significantly change the decade-old health care law. The Republican Study Committee included ending the expanded subsidies in a document of their plans.Follow

The Biden-era enhanced subsidies have led to huge growth in the number of people who buy health-care coverage on the marketplace, booming from between 11.4 million and 12.7 million people each year from 2015 to 2021, to 21.4 million this year. The costs of health-care premiums are heavily subsidized for most people who buy plans on the marketplace, and more than 90 percent of those subscribers receive some level of subsidy currently.

“Very clearly, it has made the marketplace more affordable and attractive to people who would otherwise be uninsured, and also made the marketplace more attractive to insurers,” said Cynthia Cox, who leads KFF’s research on the ACA.

Health insurance marketplace subsidies come in the form of the Premium Tax Credit that was created as part of the Affordable Care Act. Recipients get the credit up-front when they sign up for coverage, but if their income at the end of the year ends up higher or lower than expected, they must pay back a portion of what they received or claim a larger credit on their tax return.

This year, the average marketplace customer pays $888 annually in premiums and receives $6,432 in subsidies, which would drop to $5,727 after 2025 under the current law, according to an analysis by KFF.

That lower subsidy would mean an increase of 44 percent in the average customer’s premiums.

With President Joe Biden’s support, Congress first expanded ACA subsides in 2021 and later extended them through 2025. Making them permanent this year would add $335 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“It comes at a cost to the federal government and taxpayers, and it’s not cheap,” Cox said.

Greg Fann, a right-leaning health policy expert, said he would favor ending the expansion of subsidies while boosting coverage in ways he views as more cost-effective, such as making premiums less expensive for younger people. But he notes “momentum” among Republicans for keeping the subsidies at their current levels to avoid a cascade of people losing coverage in 2026.

“I have talked to people that I wouldn’t say are in favor of them, but are also not really interested in taking them away before a midterm election,” Fann said. “I think any Republican change is going to be met with suspicion — the easy thing to do is to keep things as they are.”

Letting the subsidy expansion expire could affect the marketplace as a whole, not just individual consumers. If the issue remains unresolved by the middle of next year, some insurers might leave the marketplace, expecting fewer customers next year.

“That has an impact not just on those people but on the entire system,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Keep Americans Covered, an advocacy effort backed by insurance companies, doctors and health groups such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association.

During a Senate hearing in September, Theo Merkel of Paragon Health Institute characterized increased subsidies as an expensive giveaway to insurers that does not control costs or improve insurance plans.

“When the government pays plans instead of people, insurers have less incentive to design plans that potential enrollees find valuable,” said Merkel, whose organization has published numerous papers criticizing various aspects of the Affordable Care Act.

People below the poverty line are much more likely to be covered by Medicaid than the marketplace, which does not offer subsidies for families in poverty. For households earning one to four times the poverty limit, the ACA guarantees some level of subsidy.

The ACA caps premiums at about 2 percent of income for households just above the poverty line, and the expanded subsidies of recent years made their premiums free. The ACA has no subsidies for families above four times the poverty level, while the Biden-era rules capped spending for those households at 8.5 percent of their household income — a massive discount for many.

In states that have not expanded Medicaid, far more people have signed up for ACA plans in the Biden years, and their premiums stand to increase more. KFF’s analysis found that less than 6 percent of residents of Northeastern and West Coast states get their health coverage through the marketplace, while more than 10 percent of people in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and much of Texas do.

“The more modern populist Republican Party [is] probably going to be looking at — who am I helping and who am I hurting?” said Buck of Keep America Covered, a former staffer to Republicans John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan.

[Vesper 30,237]

Trump picks fracking firm CEO Chris Wright to be energy secretary

The executive has taken a defiant approach to fighting climate change by attacking policies that call for a shift from fossil fuels.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/16/energy-secretary-trump-chris-wright/

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has selected Chris Wright, the head of fracking company Liberty Energy and a skeptic of mainstream climate science, to lead the Department of Energy and to serve on a new National Energy Council.

In his announcement, Trump credited Wright as “one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution,” adding that “as Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape.”

Trump on Friday tapped North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) as interior secretary and as “energy czar” to oversee the new National Energy Council he announced. The president-elect said the council will comprise all agencies and departments involved in the production, regulation and transportation of “ALL forms of American Energy.”

In Wright, Trump has chosen a skeptic of the scientific consensus on global warming who argues the “climate crisis” is a myth.

The fracking executive runs a foundation focused on dispelling the conventional wisdom on climate change and promoting expanded fossil fuel production as a solution to many of the world’s problems, an approach others say would drive dangerous levels of warming.Follow

Wright is an MIT graduate who developed new techniques for fracking — extracting natural gas by creating cracks in the Earth’s bedrock — that helped advance the shale gas revolution.

“There is no ‘climate crisis,’” Wright said in a video he posted on LinkedIn last year, adding that “the only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”

Those assertions conflict sharply with the conclusions of the world’s leading climate scientists affiliated with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its latest report concluded the world is quickly running out of time to avoid catastrophic warming, and nothing short of a “quantum leap” in the energy transition would contain climate change to levels manageable by society.

Wright’s arguments that temperatures and sea levels are not rising quickly also clash with the IPCC’s findings. While other oil and gas companies acknowledge such findings and say they are working to reduce emissions, Wright is among the industry executives who take a defiant approach, attacking policies that call for shifting away from fossil fuels.

Wright has also attacked critics of the U.S. fossil fuel industry. In 2021, when North Face refused to make branded jackets for a Texas-based oil and gas firm, Wright made a YouTube video slamming the leaders of the outdoor clothing company as hypocrites, saying they rely on synthetic fabrics derived from oil and gas.

Wright emerged as a front-runner for the role of energy secretary at the behest of oil tycoon Harold Hamm, one of Trump’s closest allies. Hamm, who has been advising Trump on energy, told the publication Hart Energy that Wright is his top pick for the job and that “he is one of the most articulate people that I know of in energy and from our industry.”

Like Hamm, Wright ranked as a major donor to the Trump campaign.

After Trump asked oil industry executives to help steer $1 billion toward his campaign during an April dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Wright donated more than $273,000 to pro-Trump super PACs and the Republican National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Wright and his wife also co-hosted an August fundraiser for Trump at a golf and ski resort in Big Sky, Montana.

“It is not surprising, but still appalling, that Trump's pick for Secretary of Energy is a climate-denying Big Oil executive,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, who leads government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement. “With the nomination of Chris Wright, Trump is following through on the $1 billion offer he made to Big Oil at a dinner this spring.”

Wright’s appointment puts a strident opponent of clean-energy subsidies in a key Cabinet post as the Trump White House will be weighing whether to rescind billions of dollars in such incentives. Trump has repeatedly called for canceling the subsidies, which are helping to fund a range of climate-friendly endeavors, from consumers purchasing electric vehicles to oil companies investing in green hydrogen.

As energy secretary, Wright would be deeply involved in the allocation of such subsidies, as well as federal loan guarantees to energy projects. He would be in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and he would oversee the domestic nuclear energy industry when the sector is seeking to extend the lives of existing reactors and bring new reactor technologies to market.

Wright’s antipathy toward clean-energy subsidies and rules that penalize fossil fuel emissions contrasts with positions taken by Burgum. As governor of North Dakota, Burgum called for the state to become carbon-neutral by 2030, though he favored reaching this goal through nascent technologies, such as those designed to capture carbon dioxide and store it deep underground.

One of the biggest projects for capturing and burying greenhouse gas emissions in North Dakota is being bankrolled by Hamm. Such technologies, which environmentalists caution are not an adequate solution to climate change, rely heavily on federal subsidies.

Another big challenge Wright would confront at the Energy Department is the nation’s power crunch, as demand for electricity from data centers, the manufacturing boom and electric vehicle adoption strain the nation’s power grid. Large new power transmission and distribution projects are urgently needed but have been stymied by fights over who should pay for them, the emissions impacts of different types of power, and the rights of landowners who live in the path of proposed projects.

At the same time, the department is at the center of a major fight over exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The Biden administration in January announced a “pause” on approving new LNG export facilities, warning of their major climate impacts. Wright would be tasked with lifting that pause and getting permits issued for billions of dollars worth of the carbon-intensive projects.

Other oil industry executives cheered his appointment.

“Trump is dead set on reclaiming America’s dominance, and U.S. oil is our power play. Chris Wright brings industry experience to help roll out Trump’s energy vision,” said Dan Eberhart, chief executive of the oil-field services company Canary and a Trump donor.

Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm in Washington, said he hopes Wright immediately ends the pause on LNG approvals.

“We look forward to working with him once confirmed to bolster American geopolitical strength by lifting DOE’s pause on LNG export permits and ensuring the open access of American energy for our allies around the world,” Sommers said.

[cosmicway 1,333]

11 minutes ago, Vesper said:

I have been to China multiple times

I can assure you that 07 00 gymnastics is a thing for hundreds of millions of them

and eating at a Chinese resto is irrelevant to any discussion of Chinese macro-economics other than a nice anecdotal tale

It may be irrelevant because whatever business she was doing was in Greece, rather than in China.
But she had family in China and a brother in the army.
One thing was her Greek husband (a Maoist or former Maoist) was telling me is she was receiving telephone calls in her mobile from China's secret police. They wanted her to verify her address and other typical formalities from time to time.
Then she brought a friend along, a member of the military police of China on vacation ! Very pretty girl.
The title of the ruling party is always "the communist party" of course and they want to invade Taiwan and the Solomon islands.

Edited November 18, 2024 by cosmicway

[Vesper 30,237]

Just now, cosmicway said:

The title of the ruling party is always "the communist party" of course and they want to invade Taiwan and the Solomon islands.

China has no claim on the Solomon Islands

where are you seeing they want to invade them?

 

[cosmicway 1,333]

Just now, Vesper said:

China has no claim on the Solomon Islands

where are you seeing they want to invade them?

 

It's not far and it's the place from where you can take good aim at Australia.
The Japanese tried hard.
The Chinese at this stage are trying to talk the government of these islands into giving them some naval bases.

[Vesper 30,237]

13 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

It's not far and it's the place from where you can take good aim at Australia.
The Japanese tried hard.
The Chinese at this stage are trying to talk the government of these islands into giving them some naval bases.

in other words, you just made it up

China is NOT seeking to invade the Solomon Islands

and it IS far away from China

there are large amount of sovereign nations in between the two

 

the qualitative level of discourse on this forum at times is just horrific

falsehoods, obfuscation, non germane ramblings, and utter batshittery walk hand in hand with demonstrably proven facts and/or valid points that are actually worthy of debate, with all tossed out as equals, thus making a mockery of rational discussion

 

Edited November 18, 2024 by Vesper

[NikkiCFC 8,344]

 

Edited November 18, 2024 by NikkiCFC

[Vesper 30,237]

Musk appears to pressure Trump on Cabinet and tariffs, irking advisers

Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become Donald Trump’s “first buddy,” appeared to publicly pressure the president-elect on economic policy and a key Cabinet pick.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/16/elon-musk-trump-treasury-tariffs/

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire who has become President-elect Donald Trump’s “first buddy,” appeared to publicly pressure Trump on economic policy and a key Cabinet appointment Saturday.

In a Saturday morning post on X, the social network he owns and runs, Musk praised a foreign leader’s decision to cut tariffs — the same import taxes that Trump wants to raise to the highest level in a century. Several hours later, Musk posted that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s co-transition chair, would be a better choice than hedge fund executive Scott Bessent for treasury secretary.

“My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change,” Musk posted. “Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.” He encouraged his nearly 205 million followers to weigh in, too.

Musk’s endorsement of Lutnick is likely to exacerbate the substantial confusion and even fear in Trump’s orbit about the central role Musk appears to be playing in personnel and policy decisions for the new administration.Follow

The president’s allies were grateful to have had Musk’s financial and political backing during the campaign, but his growing influence has irritated some of Trump’s backers. Several people in Trump’s circle expressed astonishment Saturday that Musk would publicly push for his choice for a crucial economic role while the president-elect was still weighing his decision.

“People are not happy,” said one person in contact with campaign officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. This person said the statements suggested Musk was acting as a “co-president” and potentially overstepping his new role in Trump’s orbit.

Musk, who spent more than $100 million in support of Trump’s campaign, has been by Trump’s side since he was elected the 47th president of the United States, appearing on calls with foreign leaders, sitting in on transition meetings and appearing on the golf course with the president-elect’s grandchildren at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Musk has also spent substantial time with Lutnick at Mar-a-Lago in the days since the election.

Musk and Trump still appear to be close: Musk, Lutnick and several top Trump aides traveled with the president-elect from Florida to New York to attend a UFC fight at Madison Square Garden on Saturday evening. But Musk’s constant presence and increasingly public input have started to grate on transition officials who feel he is radically unfamiliar with the ways of Washington, according to people familiar with the dynamics.

Musk has publicly praised many of Trump’s choices. But his support of Lutnick before any public announcement — and his call to crowdsource opinions on the matter — marked a less deferential approach to Trump’s staffing decisions.

Bessent and Lutnick have been jockeying for the role of treasury secretary over the past week, with allies of each candidate potshotting the other to transition officials. Lutnick has asked Trump to pick him for the role, while Bessent met with Trump to interview for the Cabinet post at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, though no final decision on the appointment has yet to be announced. Bessent has reaffirmed his commitment to Trump’s agenda several times in the last week, publishing a Fox News opinion piece about the importance of tariffs and a Wall Street Journal op-ed bashing economists who doubted Trump’s record.

That behind-the-scenes maneuvering spilled fully into public view Saturday with Musk’s tweet and a follow-up X post from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for health secretary, supporting Lutnick. Presidential picks for Cabinet positions do not generally publicly weigh in on the choices for other posts before those decisions are made.

The backroom jostling between Bessent’s and Lutnick’s allies also continued Saturday morning, when Trump was presented with information that Lutnick was a major donor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.

A person familiar with Lutnick and Trump’s relationship dismissed any attempt to cast doubt on the financier’s loyalty to Trump, noting that Lutnick’s political donations have long been scrutinized and that his relationship with Clinton arose out of their work rebuilding New York City post-9/11, when Clinton was serving in the Senate.

“It’s a friendly joke between them,” said the person. “Howard’s friends with the Clintons and friends with Trump. I mean Tulsi [Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence] was a Democrat until yesterday. This isn’t a big deal.”

Still, the impasse over the senior economic position has led some Trump officials to speculate whether he may turn to a third candidate. Trump trade adviser Robert E. Lighthizer, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) and Apollo Global Management chief executive Marc Rowan have been floated as potential alternatives to the squabbling Bessent and Lutnick, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Although he didn’t expressly indicate that he was contradicting Trump, Musk on Saturday also publicly praised Argentine President Javier Milei’s decision to slash tariffs.

“Good move,” Musk wrote on X in reaction to a post about Milei “SLASHING IMPORT TAXES.”

Milei, a libertarian who has been embraced by other far-right world leaders, has also been embraced by Trump’s conservative circles. At a recent America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-a-Lago — where Musk and Trump were photographed with Milei — the Argentine president praised Musk, saying X is helping to “save humanity.”

Musk endorsed Trump shortly after the former president was wounded in an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, and spent the remainder of the campaign season investing heavily into helping him win the election.

After the election, Trump announced plans to create a “Department of Government Efficiency,” an outside body to advise the White House, led by Musk and entrepreneur turned conservative firebrand Vivek Ramaswamy.

Trump on Saturday announced that he’s picked Chris Wright, a fracking firm CEO, to lead the Energy Department. He also announced that he intends to appoint attorney Will Scharf to be White House staff secretary. Scharf was one of the lawyers who represented Trump in his presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court.

[Vesper 30,237]

1 minute ago, NikkiCFC said:

 

the full FT article

Biden allows Ukraine to strike Russia with US-made long-range missiles

Outgoing president makes big policy shift after North Korean soldiers are deployed in the war

 

https://www.ft.com/content/cc565d8e-e5c2-4b04-9b61-b05fb8edcb49

 

The US-made Army Tactical Missile System, which Ukraine is now expected to use on targets inside Russia © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

US President Joe Biden has authorised Ukraine to launch limited strikes into Russia using US-made long-range missiles, in a big policy shift before the end of his White House term in January, two people familiar with the decision said.

 

The move by Biden comes in response to the deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, and after a barrage of new strikes by Moscow on Ukrainian cities at the weekend.

 

Tuesday will mark the 1,000th day of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

 

The US-made long-range missiles are likely to be first used by Ukraine to target Russian and North Korean forces in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops seized territory during the summer, according to people briefed on the matter.

 

Biden has allowed Ukraine to use HIMARS — the American High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — to strike targets inside Russia.

 

But he has long resisted authorising Kyiv to launch strikes within Russia using US-made long-range missiles known as the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, on the grounds that it could escalate tensions with Moscow.

 

ATACMS missiles have a range of up to 300 kilometres, or 190 miles. He is now dropping those objections more than two months before he leaves office to make way for Donald Trump.

 

The Republican is sceptical of additional military aid to Ukraine and has vowed to bring a swift end to the war — without saying how exactly he would do it.

 

The White House declined to comment. The Pentagon declined to respond to a request for comment.

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday noted media reports “talking about the fact that we have received permission” to use American ATACMS missiles inside Russia, although he did not confirm Biden’s decision.

 

Zelenskyy has pleaded for months for the US and other partner countries to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of western-made, long-range weapons inside Russia.

 

He has argued that cross-border strikes with the American ATACMS, British Storm Shadow and French Scalp missiles were necessary to hit Moscow’s forces before they could launch new attacks on Ukrainian targets, including critical infrastructure.

 

“Two countries are against us, against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said on Friday, referring to Russia and North Korea. “We would very much like to be granted the ability to use long-range weapons against military targets on Russia’s territory.”

 

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defence minister, said the use of ATACMS missiles would allow Kyiv to set its sights on “high value targets” and “potentially disrupt Russian operations”.

 

“There are targets which can only be addressed by high payload missiles such as ATACMS or equivalent aerial missiles. This is, of course, a decision giving Ukraine troops a chance, though as with many previous decisions coming after a significant and extremely painful delay.”

 

Biden’s decision to allow the Ukrainians to use ATACMS missiles followed the deployment early last month of 12,000 North Korean troops to Russia.

 

This was the first foray into the war by a foreign military and a major expansion of North Korea’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

 

Pyongyang had previously provided Moscow with hundreds of ballistic missiles and millions of artillery shells. In exchange, Moscow has provided Pyongyang with military technologies to help with its missile programmes and money, a senior Ukrainian official said.

 

In recent weeks, Russia has massed some 50,000 troops, including 10,000 North Korean soldiers, ahead of an anticipated offensive in its Kursk region to retake about 600 sq km of territory held by Ukrainian forces since their incursion in August.

 

A Ukrainian intelligence assessment shared with the Financial Times revealed that North Korea has supplied Russia with long-range rocket and artillery weapons, including 50 domestically made 170mm M1989 self-propelled howitzers and 20 updated 240mm multiple launch rocket systems.

 

Some of these weapons have been moved to the Kursk region for the planned assault involving North Korean troops.

 

“Even if limited to the Kursk region, ATACMS missiles put at risk high value Russian systems, assembly areas, logistics, command and control,” said Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US think-tank.

 

“They may enable Ukraine to hold on to Kursk for longer and raise the costs to North Korea for its involvement in the war.”

 

Bill Taylor, former US ambassador to Ukraine, said Biden’s decision makes “Ukraine stronger and increases the odds of a just end to the war”. “The decision may also unlock British and French missiles. Possibly even German,” he added.

 

Russia has not yet responded Biden’s decision.

 

In September, President Vladimir Putin suggested Ukrainian use of western-made missiles against Russian targets would mean “the direct involvement of Nato countries, the US, and the EU . . . It would mean they are at war with Russia — and if that’s the case, we will make the corresponding decisions.”

 

Russian military bloggers close to the Kremlin responded on Telegram with fury and frustration to Biden’s decision.

 

Rybar, a channel with more than 1.3mn subscribers, said the threat of ATACMS missiles would force Russian command and control centres, air defences and airfields further from the front lines. 

 

When asked about the escalatory risk from Biden’s policy shift, António Guterres, UN secretary-general, told reporters at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro: “We have a very consistent position regarding escalation in the Ukrainian war. We want peace . . . in line with the UN charter and international law.”

[cosmicway 1,333]

26 minutes ago, Vesper said:

in other words, you just made it up

China is NOT seeking to invade the Solomon Islands

and it IS far away from China

there are large amount of sovereign nations in between the two

 

the qualitative level of discourse on this forum at times is just horrific

falsehoods, obfuscation, non germane ramblings, and utter batshittery walk hand in hand with demonstrably proven facts and/or valid points that are actually worthy of debate, with all tossed out as equals, thus making a mockery of rational discussion

 

It's not far.
They don't go there with channel ferries. They have carriers, nuclear subs.
Their first try is of course through political influence.

[Vesper 30,237]

Just now, cosmicway said:

It's not far.

false

no clue why you insist on clutching to this

London is closer to Kabul, Afghanistan than Shanghai, China (coastal btw) is to the Solomon Islands

 

[Vesper 30,237]

laughable that you think China is on for invading the Solomon islands

it was a false claim

you have offered zero evidence backing it up

and are now, as is so typical of you

trying to drag the convo off the rails with another false claim regarding proximity