Talk about today

There are 877 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 93,424 times. The latest Post () was by GlasgowJohn.

    After one hell of a day yesterday I'm taking things easier today. Finishing off my lunchtime glass of vino tinto with a smoke in my 102 year old Sasieni pipe. This is the pipe I purchased on ML for 600 pesos last year. I've since been offered US$1000 for it but wasn't interested in selling.


    20210124-123315.jpg

    Quote from Rice

    What beautiful wood!

    Indeed Rice it has spectacular grain in it. I knew nothing about the pipe when I bought it. It wasn't until I posted it on a pipe forum the Sasieni experts got very excited when they saw it. Seemingly the shape is called a Prince after it was made for Edward the Prince of Wales.


    edward-vii-8.jpg

    Are we going to WWIII?

    Please see this article appeared in Infobae yesterday:


    With sticks and stones



    Beatrice Rangel


    January 24, 2022


    Member of the United States Council on Foreign Relations


    We are witnessing the slow but sure displacement of the geopolitical framework that since the 1970s has been protecting the world from a nuclear holocaust. So the much-feared third world war could materialize in this decade. And of course, as Einstein pointed out when asked what weapons would be fought with in World War III, "I don't know what weapons would be fought with in World War III, but I assure you that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones" . Because we mortals will manage to put an end once and for all to the little blue dot that hangs in space and that has been our home for time immemorial.


    The layer that is moving has to do with Russia, with NATO and with China. In the 1970s, after overcoming the missile crisis in Cuba, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics thought they had ensured their non-extermination by getting the United States to deactivate the nuclear warheads placed in Turkey.


    Years passed and, in another no, less dramatic episode, Henry Kissinger negotiated an agreement with China that prevented that nation from becoming an ally of the Soviet Union. This formula led to the admission of China to the West and allowed progress in the negotiations regarding the non-placement of warheads in the territorial vicinity of the USA or the USSR and produced stability, peace and economic prosperity. Indeed, nuclear weapons were put under strict controls and some were shelved while China became the world's cheapest consumer goods factory allowing the middle classes of the world to improve their standards of living.


    But when the Soviet Union collapsed and the West believed the story of the end of history, they began to violate the agreements reached in those historical moments when the Berlin wall came down. The first was to delimit the growth of NATO. Neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact were supposed to change its boundaries. Thus, a sort of neutral zone was established between Europe and the former Soviet Union. But when the Warsaw Pact collapsed, NATO saw the ground cleared for its growth and settled in border nations of the Soviet Union that were Czechoslovakia (today the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Finland, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Romania and Turkey. . Also in a single maneuver Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia joined NATO.


    In Russia, Boris Yeltsin was succeeded by Vladimir Putin, for whom the priority is to codify Russia as a world power. And in Beijing Xi Jinping ascended, for whom being the first economy in the world is the priority. Both understand that their place on the world power scale depends on how they deal with the West. And COVID-19 arrived. China was singled out as the source of the evil while Russia suffered an economic setback as world energy demand collapsed. China AND Russia began to think that they should unite to confront the West. China is supplying the supply chain with a dropper. Russia will deploy all of its disruptive capabilities, including sending nuclear warheads and troops to places like Cuba and Venezuela, where they may try to repeat the 1970s episode by forcing the US to freeze NATO growth.


    But this time the move can cause a holocaust. Because Cuba and Venezuela can perfectly use the maneuver to give transnational organized crime access to nuclear weapons. And if that were the case, Putin would lose control of the game. Under such circumstances, an unexpected detonation could well occur, giving rise to one response and this to another. In the end, there will only be, as Einstein rightly said, sticks and stones.



    *Internationalist; Master in economic development, member of the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States

    That is a very well-written analysis. If there is a Third World War, will there even be sticks left?


    She seems to agree with Putin’s claim that NATO has encroached on Russia?


    (If Russia is allowed to grab Ukraine, then China will be emboldened to take Taiwan, and….)


    It is clear that European NATO countries should be very threatened, and at first I was surprised that it was the US, again, that was standing up to the bully instead of countries that could be his next targets. But I wasn’t thinking about how dependent on Russian crude oil and natural gas Germany, France, and others now are.


    I believe this is a good first step toward helping break this dependence:


    View in browser | nytimes.com
    The New York Times

    BREAKING NEWS

    The United States plans to arrange alternative fuel sources for Europe, in case Russia cuts off gas and crude oil supplies.

    Tuesday, January 25, 2022 2:14 PM EST

    European allies have been cautious in public about how far they would go in placing severe sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine.

    Germany has been especially wary; it has shuttered many of its nuclear plants, increasing its dependence on natural gas imports.

    Quote from Splinter

    What are the specs daniel ?

    Splinter ...

    It is running a 3rd gen i5 cpu, Asus P8Z77V-LX that has no tpm port, UEFI and secure boot have long been disabled, DOS/MBR 1tb Samsung SSD, with one 500GB partition for Windows. I know

    MS could and probably will plug this hole, but I did nothing wrong, in the way I did this, I am still only running one Windows OS, on the same digital license that W10 had. I only

    exploited certain features with the W10 and W11 ISO,s.

    I see this as a complete farce, as to the W11 system requirements, it isn't, that W11 will not or can not, run on other hardware, but our big brother MS, wants users to throw away

    perfectly good machines and purchase something new. Makes no sense for users that have supported MS through the years to have to jump through hoops, like I had

    to, just to install an updated OS from MS. W11 actually reminds and looks more like Linux Deepin or a Mac, more than anything.

    I posted on Jim Canfield article on how and what I did to install W11.