Rayvin

Yep, hard to argue with that.

As a political entity I agree. I think it's all about the humanitarian cost and the risk of having major powers facing off against each other. Trump's plan seems to be to publically humiliate North Korea into doing something stupid or shutting up. If they give him an excuse, he wipes them out. China accepts this and we're all good. I think if you can do it without collateral damage (which you can't, but for the sake of the moral argument let's assume you can), there would be no reason not to take them out. They're a repressive rogue state that is persistently aggressive to its neighbours and a destabilising force on the global arena. It's as cut and dry as it comes IMO. If you can do it without collateral damage.

Actually you're right - it's not a blinder if scenario 2 comes to pass as far as the human stakes are concerned, I meant more in a strategic sense - in terms of victory, Trump wins either way. If they North Korea settles down and doesn't fire, Trump has made a statement that has had to be choked down by one of the most unstable nations in the world. A statement that Putin and the Chinese will note. Whatever you might think about the guy, if North Korea back down here, it's probably a more significant diplomatic win over them than anything Obama managed. It's high risk though because obviously, if we end up in a war, that's not good.

I think most people are fine - I don't share this notion that we need to be systematically horrifying to different groups based on unchangeable physical attributes. It used to be that this was considered a liberal thing to think, but these days it seems not so much...

The Guardian strikes back! All men are lazy and don't work as hard as women. We sit at our desks playing poker and then ask for more money. I don't know how they worked it out, but the wimmenz are finally on to us, apparently. In my case they're right, tbf https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/11/salma-hayek-feminism-inequality-men-women Compare this with the article they were losing their shit over from that software engineer...

See, you could have cut that post down by 2/3rds and conveyed exactly the same meaning. You're a lost cause, man.

Is Trump actually playing a blinder here? Saying stuff like this basically forces NK to respond - if they don't fire a missile at Guam now, they're going to look ridiculous and like they're empty on their threats. If they do fire, the US will obliterate them and China will let it happen. Is this becoming lose-lose for NK?

Coutinho has handed in a transfer request, of course. Liverpool have rejected it though. Looks like Barca and Real are going to have a harder time poaching players from the PL now... £90m sure as shit would have done it last year.

You're right on strengthening ahead of the CL for sure. I dunno then, maybe he's hoping for the same thing as Ashley - that prices start to fall running up to the end of August.

Well I was thinking more about the management team on the whole. Spurs don't come across as only in it for the money at board level, I genuinely think they want to win things and to be successful. Even the board. So why would they just 'not spend' unless they felt that they had a decent chance anyway.

Ok so, why aren't they strengthening? Levy hasn't been averse to spending previously. Presumably they've figured that they're already happy with the current team and don't want to unsettle it. It'll not be for the same reasons as Ashley.

Interesting post, thanks.

Maybe, maybe not. Their main strength is the size of their standing army though, whereas the Americans have strength in technological ability. As you've said, none of this is going to come to pass anyway. I rather fancy the US and China have a number of backchannels in place for keeping everything under control.

So what? They had a great team to begin with.

I think I'm missing this, what is going wrong with Spurs at the moment? Beyond Danny Rose whinging about his pay?

Aye, Manquillo does at least have PL experience already.

I think Ashley has worn people down over time Troops. If Rafa goes I expect there'll be little to no discernable reaction. Maybe a few matchside protests, but it'll die down and we'll all just start hoping for the best again.

Sounds about right. The thing is, does landing a missile 30km off the coast of Guam count? Would the Chinese stand for that if someone did it to them? Maybe they would, but the margins for interpretation are intriguing here. If China gets involved in the war then nothing will be resolved. The US will be repelled at the cost of some 2 million dead Chinese and things will rumble on much as they have been for some time. Having said that, this briefing I suspect indicates that NK aren't going to do anything stupid. China has flat out said here that they won't support them if they attack first - so they won't, IMO.

sounds like the planning for this has been exemplary if Birmingham and Villa are considered to be different regions.

From RTG: "...Come on these threads and you can always bet there's a mag making a tit of himself and the fish typing his pointless essays that nobody reads" They're onto you...

The alt right have nothing to do with this.

I'm just bored at work. As I said earlier, if we have a nuclear war, the only concern I'd have is making sure I'm in the blast radius of the first range of nukes. Prefer a quick death, ideally. Beyond that, I have little interest in this beyond its ability to distract me from my emails. So frenzy may be overstating it. Overthinking it, possibly

We could just do nothing about that, and rely on MAD. Not sure I agree with that approach, but it's Renton approved at least.