The Israeli Political and Security Cabinet decided tonight to Deduct all further Funding to the Palestinian Authority which is meant for the Gaza Strip and to also Cease all further Contact with Gaza Officials; it was further stated that now No Palestinians from the Gaza Strip will be allowed to Work in Israel and those who were in Israel at the time of the Hamas Surprise Attack will be Deported back to Gaza.
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
Some see the fight against the English as similar to the Palestinian struggle.
"Two People, One Struggle", as the banners at Celtic Park say.
And to put it at its kindest, Irish Republicans are not Jew-friendly.
So this ‘new’ Beatles track is the ultimate anti-climax?
I thought it was okay.
I mean, I don't know what anyone expected. It was written in the late 70s by Lennon, so well after the Beatles era really, and there's no real reason to expect it to be on a par with their biggest hits.
I'm not the target market anyway, as before my time and I've never particularly enjoyed them (not in a contrarian way of saying they were sh1t - I can see why they were successful but there is no personal resonance). But, for big fans who remember avidly waiting for every release in the 60s, I can see why it's exciting regardless of whether the actual song is a classic - which it isn't but it's fine and recognisably Beatles.
It was enough to get both BBC News and Sky News jizzing themselves into a frenzy. I suppose there isn't much news to report on today.
The last Beatles single - Free as a Bird - was rubbish too.
25 years ago, I think!
'The supreme gift of an artist is the knowledge of when to stop.' Sherlock Holmes. (The Norwood Builder). Curiously Richmal Crompton attributes this quality to William Brown. But lots of far greater people - Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Wordsworth and lots more - lacked it.
A bit unfair on Dylan. His record has been patchy since the glory days but Rough and Rowdy Ways is a pretty good addition to the canon. And, in fact, most of the post-2000 output has been worthwhile and fitted well with his self-styled persona as an ageing ornery troubadour. He continues to be quintessentially Dylan.
Indeed. Since Time Out of Mind (97) he hasn't made a poor album. And all the stuff during his fallow period before that had at least one corking track nobody else could have done. (And for a while at least several more left off the final cut).
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
I said that a nuclear escalation, at one point, was uncomfortably close. I believe I was right
I also said the Ukrainian offensive was going nowhere, you kept saying it was about to succeed; turns out I was right, you were wrong
I wouldn't want me running a military campaign either, I am far too excitable and easily bored. I'd probably drop that nuke when I was in a bad mood, for larks. But I wouldn't want any PBers running military analysis and strategic planning, nearly all of you are lamentably useless
Every year I forget, kind of. Then every year late autumn comes along and WHAM, and with the sure and certain knowledge that winter lurks beyond
Strictly on the telly, Christmas in the offing - and it's my birthday month! What's not to like? February is my least favourite month, but at least it's short.
February is fine if you date the start of spring from the first flowering of crocus.
This follows the 40 days of Christmas starting on 25th December (the mistake is to start early and thus end it on the 25th), ending on 2nd February. Loads of people have diary space to do relaxed winter/Christmas fun things in January which they don't have in December because they are too busy not enjoying themselves.
Good evening
Just wanted to say that both my wife and I continue to struggle with our health issues, which in my case may continue a while
And to add to it our 15 month granddaughter ended up in A & E last night, with a 5 hour wait before seeing a doctor who prescribed antibiotics for her.
It is fair to say I have lost all appetite for the political to and fro and am greatly saddened by the middle east war, (and Ukraine).
Re February, as a leap year baby I will have had just 20 birthdays next Feb 29th, meaning that for 60 years nobody knew what date I should celebrate it. !!!!
My Mother said I was born in February and my Father said it had to be the 1st March.
Hence I had two birthdays and confused everybody, I bit like some of my posts on this forum !!!!
All the best to my fellow posters
Get well soon G
Thanks Malc
My wife's covid has been worse than her two other previous experiences and the irony is we both had our 7th covid vaccine plus flu just 2 weeks before
My DVT is quite extensive and they have discovered other issues which need managing but I do have an excellent dedicated hospital team plus medical centre
And we are so grateful for all our blessings, not least when you see what is going on in the middle east
Super to hear from you. Best wishes to you both for a speedy recovery.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
Some see the fight against the English as similar to the Palestinian struggle.
"Two People, One Struggle", as the banners at Celtic Park say.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
A few thousand - or even tens of thousands - of Hezbollah and Lebanese soldiers are not going to be able to militarily defeat Israel.
Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "2006".
Yes, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Invading is hard, as Russia has discovered.
The idea that even tens of thousands of Hezbollah/Lebanon troops could successfully invade Israel is utterly ridiculous.
Who said anything about invasion?
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets (and God knows what else - eg drones- if this spectacular has been long in the planning)
It is commonly thought that an all out assault with those rockets would overwhelm Iron Dome. So then Israel has to invade Lebanon to stop the missiles. Or rely on the US to attack Iran and Lebanon on its behalf. Complicated
I agree a frontal Hezbollah invasion of Israel would be much more difficult and highly unlikely to succeed. Jews would fight for every inch of their nation. So they probably won't try that
That would be, ummm, you:
"Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?"
I would have thought Nazareth would not be an Iranian target. It is 69% Muslim.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
A few thousand - or even tens of thousands - of Hezbollah and Lebanese soldiers are not going to be able to militarily defeat Israel.
Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "2006".
Yes, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Invading is hard, as Russia has discovered.
The idea that even tens of thousands of Hezbollah/Lebanon troops could successfully invade Israel is utterly ridiculous.
Who said anything about invasion?
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets (and God knows what else - eg drones- if this spectacular has been long in the planning)
It is commonly thought that an all out assault with those rockets would overwhelm Iron Dome. So then Israel has to invade Lebanon to stop the missiles. Or rely on the US to attack Iran and Lebanon on its behalf. Complicated
I agree a frontal Hezbollah invasion of Israel would be much more difficult and highly unlikely to succeed. Jews would fight for every inch of their nation. So they probably won't try that
That would be, ummm, you:
"Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?"
Evangelicals would demand it did, as would many Roman Catholics
Who cares what lunatics think? We don't have President Trump to worry about.
If Nazareth, the boyhood home of Christ, was attacked by Iran I suspect the majority of the US population would demand US support for an Israeli military response, Biden could not ignore that either
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
A few thousand - or even tens of thousands - of Hezbollah and Lebanese soldiers are not going to be able to militarily defeat Israel.
Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "2006".
Yes, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Invading is hard, as Russia has discovered.
The idea that even tens of thousands of Hezbollah/Lebanon troops could successfully invade Israel is utterly ridiculous.
Who said anything about invasion?
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets (and God knows what else - eg drones- if this spectacular has been long in the planning)
It is commonly thought that an all out assault with those rockets would overwhelm Iron Dome. So then Israel has to invade Lebanon to stop the missiles. Or rely on the US to attack Iran and Lebanon on its behalf. Complicated
I agree a frontal Hezbollah invasion of Israel would be much more difficult and highly unlikely to succeed. Jews would fight for every inch of their nation. So they probably won't try that
That would be, ummm, you:
"Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?"
I would have thought Nazareth would not be an Iranian target. It is 69% Muslim.
Judging by the behaviour of Hamas - eagerly beheading Thai guest workers, and shooting up Bedouin - they don't really care about the precise colour of their targets in Israel. If you're peacefully living in Israel, you are a target
Look at this superb quote. The journalist must have been aware as he wrote this
"According to four sources close to the company, Hunter Biden regularly attended Burisma’s twice annual board meetings – all of which were held outside of Ukraine"
Having somebody on the board who can bring the "good time" doesn't come cheap....
Hunter is a mess, but it does make me think.
Of course Joe worries and supports his wayward son. Perhaps some tough love earlier in life would have made a difference, but perhaps not. Addicts are like that.
A father who lost one son, and tries to protect the other from himself is not a bad person, just a human being.
And yet, somehow, I feel you would not extend such sympathy to Donald Trump
No, I completely understand why Trump supports his children, giving them government jobs and contracts etc.
Indeed his support for his family (not including ex wives) is one of the few positives about Trump.
I think actually Trump remained on pretty good terms with Ivana. I'm not sure about his first (?) wife.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
A few thousand - or even tens of thousands - of Hezbollah and Lebanese soldiers are not going to be able to militarily defeat Israel.
Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "2006".
Yes, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Invading is hard, as Russia has discovered.
The idea that even tens of thousands of Hezbollah/Lebanon troops could successfully invade Israel is utterly ridiculous.
Who said anything about invasion?
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets (and God knows what else - eg drones- if this spectacular has been long in the planning)
It is commonly thought that an all out assault with those rockets would overwhelm Iron Dome. So then Israel has to invade Lebanon to stop the missiles. Or rely on the US to attack Iran and Lebanon on its behalf. Complicated
I agree a frontal Hezbollah invasion of Israel would be much more difficult and highly unlikely to succeed. Jews would fight for every inch of their nation. So they probably won't try that
That would be, ummm, you:
"Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?"
Evangelicals would demand it did, as would many Roman Catholics
Who cares what lunatics think? We don't have President Trump to worry about.
If Nazareth, the boyhood home of Christ, was attacked by Iran I suspect the majority of the US population would demand US support for an Israeli military response, Biden could not ignore that either
It would be proportionate. I could see America striking some second tier Iranian city in response to a serious assault on Nazareth
But America would not wipe out Tehran in response, which is the precise wording of my original point
This has all gone a bit 0-100 since i popped out....i think i will just go and check that nuclear bomb at the bottom of my garden is still operational....
Look at this superb quote. The journalist must have been aware as he wrote this
"According to four sources close to the company, Hunter Biden regularly attended Burisma’s twice annual board meetings – all of which were held outside of Ukraine"
Having somebody on the board who can bring the "good time" doesn't come cheap....
Hunter is a mess, but it does make me think.
Of course Joe worries and supports his wayward son. Perhaps some tough love earlier in life would have made a difference, but perhaps not. Addicts are like that.
A father who lost one son, and tries to protect the other from himself is not a bad person, just a human being.
And yet, somehow, I feel you would not extend such sympathy to Donald Trump
No, I completely understand why Trump supports his children, giving them government jobs and contracts etc.
Indeed his support for his family (not including ex wives) is one of the few positives about Trump.
I think actually Trump remained on pretty good terms with Ivana. I'm not sure about his first (?) wife.
Or, indeed, how well he gets on with his current wife.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
A few thousand - or even tens of thousands - of Hezbollah and Lebanese soldiers are not going to be able to militarily defeat Israel.
Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "2006".
Yes, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Invading is hard, as Russia has discovered.
The idea that even tens of thousands of Hezbollah/Lebanon troops could successfully invade Israel is utterly ridiculous.
Who said anything about invasion?
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets (and God knows what else - eg drones- if this spectacular has been long in the planning)
It is commonly thought that an all out assault with those rockets would overwhelm Iron Dome. So then Israel has to invade Lebanon to stop the missiles. Or rely on the US to attack Iran and Lebanon on its behalf. Complicated
I agree a frontal Hezbollah invasion of Israel would be much more difficult and highly unlikely to succeed. Jews would fight for every inch of their nation. So they probably won't try that
That would be, ummm, you:
"Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?"
I would have thought Nazareth would not be an Iranian target. It is 69% Muslim.
Look at this superb quote. The journalist must have been aware as he wrote this
"According to four sources close to the company, Hunter Biden regularly attended Burisma’s twice annual board meetings – all of which were held outside of Ukraine"
Having somebody on the board who can bring the "good time" doesn't come cheap....
Hunter is a mess, but it does make me think.
Of course Joe worries and supports his wayward son. Perhaps some tough love earlier in life would have made a difference, but perhaps not. Addicts are like that.
A father who lost one son, and tries to protect the other from himself is not a bad person, just a human being.
And yet, somehow, I feel you would not extend such sympathy to Donald Trump
No, I completely understand why Trump supports his children, giving them government jobs and contracts etc.
Indeed his support for his family (not including ex wives) is one of the few positives about Trump.
I think actually Trump remained on pretty good terms with Ivana. I'm not sure about his first (?) wife.
Human beings are very good at remembering their accurate predictions, while conveniently forgetting the things they got wrong.
Indeed, the whole gambling industry relies on it.
Funnily enough, I have just looked back and found this exchange, from February of this year. Between me and you
"Leon said:
I disagree. Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice"
"rcs1000 said:
"I don't buy it: remember, the invasion is usually the easy part, and it's the occupation that kills you.
And Korea was North Koreans fighting for their country against foreign invaders.
The Russians do not have an endless supply of young men and artillery shells. Now, if the Chinese step up and start arming the Russians, that would change things. But right now, the Ukrainians are being resupplied by the West with ever better equipment, while the Russians are begging the North Koreans for artillery shells, and have seen a number of their best new units utterly destroyed."
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
Some see the fight against the English as similar to the Palestinian struggle.
"The Brits partitioned MY country too, you know!"
The Labour Government partitioned YOUR country too, you know....
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yes, I believe you bravely left the protection of the city and went into deepest Wales as the Covid pandemic struck.
Human beings are very good at remembering their accurate predictions, while conveniently forgetting the things they got wrong.
Indeed, the whole gambling industry relies on it.
Funnily enough, I have just looked back and found this exchange, from February of this year. Between me and you
"Leon said:
I disagree. Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice"
"rcs1000 said:
"I don't buy it: remember, the invasion is usually the easy part, and it's the occupation that kills you.
And Korea was North Koreans fighting for their country against foreign invaders.
The Russians do not have an endless supply of young men and artillery shells. Now, if the Chinese step up and start arming the Russians, that would change things. But right now, the Ukrainians are being resupplied by the West with ever better equipment, while the Russians are begging the North Koreans for artillery shells, and have seen a number of their best new units utterly destroyed."
Human beings are very good at remembering their accurate predictions, while conveniently forgetting the things they got wrong.
Indeed, the whole gambling industry relies on it.
Dopamine wants a word. The majority know they are likely to lose but willing to pay for the dopamine. Those who think they are better than the market and go on to lose are a much smaller group.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yes, I believe you bravely left the protection of the city and went into deepest Wales as the Covid pandemic struck.
But I went to Ukraine, didn't I? Voluntarily, with a commission from the Gazette. You didn't. I did
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
Some see the fight against the English as similar to the Palestinian struggle.
"Two People, One Struggle", as the banners at Celtic Park say.
And to put it at its kindest, Irish Republicans are not Jew-friendly.
Somewhat ironic that the most famous Irish literary character of all time - Leopold Bloom - is Jewish.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
That folding, fwiw, probably happens after Putin accidentally falls out of a window.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Its probably going to take years, but a total Ukrainian victory definitely is on the cards as a real possibility.
Just because you're so incontinent you need everything to happen now or you'll wet yourself with fear, doesn't mean its odd that wars take time.
Russia are all-in and Ukraine are all-in, that only ends if one or both sides decide to stop being all-in (which can lead to an exhausted armistice) or it ends after years with a culmination.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
Well in the end the entire universe will expire from heat death, or be reborn in a white hole exploding into another section of the multiverse, so yeah Putin is in trouble
Whatever. The best we can do in geopolitics is, surely, short-medium term stuff
My predictions of a Ukrainian stalemate are proving better, in the short-medium term. You can ask me for my secret via DM
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Point of Order: I know a lurking PBer that makes me look like a frequent poster that went there substantially earlier.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
Well in the end the entire universe will expire from heat death, or be reborn in a white hole exploding into another section of the multiverse, so yeah Putin is in trouble
Whatever. The best we can do in gepolitics in, surely, short-medium term
My predictions of a Ukrainian stalemate are proving better, in the short-medium term. You can ask me for my secret via DM
They're not remotely proving better in the medium term, Russia is running out of men, money, tech and equipment at an unsustainable rate - and for what?
The fact you're too blind to see the big picture doesn't change it.
If anyone from the Ministry of Defence, Mossad, the CIA or the Kremlin is reading PB and wants to hire me as a strategic analyst and military futurologist, I am available for 3,000 shekels an hour, but I remember I am based in south east Asia in January, in the Hooter-Hooter Bar, 19 soi Cowboy, BKK
Unclear why "calling for a ceasefire" is so controversial? I could call for an end to plane crashes, but it would be as much use. Neither side wants one, so it ain't happening.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Point of Order: I know a lurking PBer that makes me look like a frequent poster that went there substantially earlier.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yes, I believe you bravely left the protection of the city and went into deepest Wales as the Covid pandemic struck.
But I went to Ukraine, didn't I? Voluntarily, with a commission from the Gazette. You didn't. I did
We all see through you. You went on a paid jolly to some safe areas in Ukraine. Don't try to make out you're Kate Adie in disguise.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Point of Order: I know a lurking PBer that makes me look like a frequent poster that went there substantially earlier.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yes, I believe you bravely left the protection of the city and went into deepest Wales as the Covid pandemic struck.
But I went to Ukraine, didn't I? Voluntarily, with a commission from the Gazette. You didn't. I did
We all see through you. You went on a paid jolly to some safe areas in Ukraine. Don't try to make out you're Kate Adie in disguise.
I was actually in a bombed town, with air raid sirens going off as bombs landed about 1-2 miles away, getting nearer. I doubt you've ever been that close to bombs, it is quite scary, the ground shakes
But whatever, you do you, eh. You like to insist I'm a coward because in some bizarre way it makes my undoubted but justified arrogance less intolerable
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
Unclear why "calling for a ceasefire" is so controversial? I could call for an end to plane crashes, but it would be as much use. Neither side wants one, so it ain't happening.
Its controversial because its insane and wrong to call for one.
But firstly, do you mean Israel or Ukraine conflict?
Israel: Hamas are holding hundreds of Israelis hostage. The military has been able to rescue some of them, but there's still hundreds outstanding. Calling for a ceasefire now is disgraceful, call for the hostages to be released and then possibly there could be talk about a ceasefire but until Hamas have been eradicated I'd oppose one anyway but at least then there could be civilised talk of one.
Ukraine: Russia is occupying vast swathes of Ukrainian land, there should not be a ceasefire until all of it and the people living there have been liberated.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yes, I believe you bravely left the protection of the city and went into deepest Wales as the Covid pandemic struck.
But I went to Ukraine, didn't I? Voluntarily, with a commission from the Gazette. You didn't. I did
We all see through you. You went on a paid jolly to some safe areas in Ukraine. Don't try to make out you're Kate Adie in disguise.
I was actually in a bombed town, with air raid sirens going off as bombs landed about 1-2 miles away, getting nearer. I doubt you've ever been that close to bombs, it is quite scary, the ground shakes
But whatever, you do you, eh. You like to insist I'm a coward because in some bizarre way it makes my undoubted but justified arrogance less intolerable
You should get some help for those deep insecurities.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
Just logged in and saw this
I decided to vote for Blair month's before the GE and wasn't really a don't know . Indeed I voted for him again
Can I also put a counter question. We all assume some degree of swing back, but what if there is NO swing back.
This is not what I believe actually will happen, but let's go out on that anti-psephological limb for a moment and consider the possibility.
Why might there be no swing back?
1. A protest vote requires the possibility that something might change as a result - May's Brexit deal, Boris's and Truss's end days promising better soon. What better can a Tory minded voter hope for by protesting? So, why bother? Maybe the by-election results don't have much element of protest in them.
2. Worse than that the Tories might be shored up by a natively Tory sympathy vote. Yes, we know change is needed and will deliver at the GE, but no need to kick poor Mr Sunak in a by-election, you know.
FWIW, I believe we will see some pretty normal swing back and that neither of the above hold true, but there is one scenario that could quash swing back totally.
That is a leader change that leads to a honeymoon wind down election. Exhibit A would be GE2017, exhibit B, which would be more akin to Sunak being ditched would be Canada 1993:
The thing here is that a honeymoon occurred, resulting in PC leads, and then fully dissipated during the campaign period. Any swing back there might have been was washed away in the larger polling movements. That's a newly installed Penny Mordaunt (sub name as appropriate here) on the campaign trail that is, losing the swing back Rishi would have bagged.
Rishi interviewing Musk is really weird. Rishi playing role of starstruck intern for some reason. Good actor to be fair, if he needs another career.
He's just the worst. Cringeingly humiliating.
Nope. He's relaxed, congenial and leading the conversation quite comfortably. In fact, pretty good at this. And a lot better at this than I can imagine other pols being.
Trying to claim had no idea what any of it meant....about as believable as accidentally deleting all your whatsapp messages from covid period. Especially as one account was antisemitic rapper lowkey, what did she think he was posting about, and another account shills for Hamas.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
It means I respect your opinion on Beirut in the 1980s-90s rather more - yes, it does
Also - enough of Ukraine - I want your archaeological opinion on something else
Yesterday I went to the weirdest place in Sicily. Cozzo Matrice. Near Enna, in the centre of the island. It has a very profound atmosphere, deserted, sad, desolate, ancient
I went because Wiki told me that the the site - and its "monumental walls" - date from 8000BC. I'm not joking. 8000BC!
Can that possibly be right? The age is mentioned elswhere, but I can't find a primary source. If it IS right than Cozzo Matrice is one of the oldest human settlements on earth, one of the oldest structures on earth, and surely the oldest village in Europe. So it should be world famous. Yet it is not
Thoughts?
"Near Pergusa lake is the archaeological site known as Cozzo Matrice. These are the remains of an ancient prehistoric fortified village, with walls dating about 8000 BC."
NYT: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says War Has Hit a ‘Stalemate’ In a candid assessment, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said no “beautiful breakthrough” was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/europe/ukraine-zaluzhny-war.html
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
A few thousand - or even tens of thousands - of Hezbollah and Lebanese soldiers are not going to be able to militarily defeat Israel.
Sunil utters a cough that sounds suspiciously like "2006".
Yes, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Invading is hard, as Russia has discovered.
The idea that even tens of thousands of Hezbollah/Lebanon troops could successfully invade Israel is utterly ridiculous.
Who said anything about invasion?
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets (and God knows what else - eg drones- if this spectacular has been long in the planning)
It is commonly thought that an all out assault with those rockets would overwhelm Iron Dome. So then Israel has to invade Lebanon to stop the missiles. Or rely on the US to attack Iran and Lebanon on its behalf. Complicated
I agree a frontal Hezbollah invasion of Israel would be much more difficult and highly unlikely to succeed. Jews would fight for every inch of their nation. So they probably won't try that
That would be, ummm, you:
"Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?"
I would have thought Nazareth would not be an Iranian target. It is 69% Muslim.
The right kind of muslim though? It's not as though history is short on muslim on muslim conflicts. I don't know if its a better ratio than christian on christian, but it's not low either way.
NYT: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says War Has Hit a ‘Stalemate’ In a candid assessment, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said no “beautiful breakthrough” was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/europe/ukraine-zaluzhny-war.html
Depressing stuff indeed. Always a possibility, and regrettably the Russians appear for the moment to have done enough to grind away and buy time to bleed Ukraine and hope for a good outcome in the US elections at the very least.
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
@Cyclefree They are a despicable bunch to be sure, rotten to the core.
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
Just logged in and saw this
I decided to vote for Blair month's before the GE and wasn't really a don't know . Indeed I voted for him again
You voted for Blair? Proof indeed you are not a True Tory. If only you had voted for Plaid Cymru - then you could have a True Tory badge. Awarded by HYUFD himself
Unclear why "calling for a ceasefire" is so controversial? I could call for an end to plane crashes, but it would be as much use. Neither side wants one, so it ain't happening.
Its controversial because its insane and wrong to call for one.
But firstly, do you mean Israel or Ukraine conflict?
Israel: Hamas are holding hundreds of Israelis hostage. The military has been able to rescue some of them, but there's still hundreds outstanding. Calling for a ceasefire now is disgraceful, call for the hostages to be released and then possibly there could be talk about a ceasefire but until Hamas have been eradicated I'd oppose one anyway but at least then there could be civilised talk of one.
Ukraine: Russia is occupying vast swathes of Ukrainian land, there should not be a ceasefire until all of it and the people living there have been liberated.
I thought you would be the one to reply. Surely a ceasefire would necessitate those mitigations?
NYT: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says War Has Hit a ‘Stalemate’ In a candid assessment, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said no “beautiful breakthrough” was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/europe/ukraine-zaluzhny-war.html
Depressing stuff indeed. Always a possibility, and regrettably the Russians appear for the moment to have done enough to grind away and buy time to bleed Ukraine and hope for a good outcome in the US elections at the very least.
It seems Ukraine’s biggest enemy is the strategic impatience of the West.
Unclear why "calling for a ceasefire" is so controversial? I could call for an end to plane crashes, but it would be as much use. Neither side wants one, so it ain't happening.
Its controversial because its insane and wrong to call for one.
But firstly, do you mean Israel or Ukraine conflict?
Israel: Hamas are holding hundreds of Israelis hostage. The military has been able to rescue some of them, but there's still hundreds outstanding. Calling for a ceasefire now is disgraceful, call for the hostages to be released and then possibly there could be talk about a ceasefire but until Hamas have been eradicated I'd oppose one anyway but at least then there could be civilised talk of one.
Ukraine: Russia is occupying vast swathes of Ukrainian land, there should not be a ceasefire until all of it and the people living there have been liberated.
I thought you would be the one to reply. Surely a ceasefire would necessitate those mitigations?
No, a ceasefire typically is no mitigations, the conflict freezes in situ as it is at the moment.
That is a victory for Hamas, and a victory for Russia as it stands.
That is why it is their proxies calling for a ceasefire, as they're afraid of what will happen if one is not forthcoming.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
Just logged in and saw this
I decided to vote for Blair month's before the GE and wasn't really a don't know . Indeed I voted for him again
I sort of do wonder if this may be one of those elections where the campaign makes no difference? It tends to only do so when it is a bit of a surprise. Like 2017. And 2019.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
That folding, fwiw, probably happens after Putin accidentally falls out of a window.
Such an event is probably hard to see in advance, sadly.
It is surely part of Russia's strategy to make it seem impossible to beat them back - if that had been taken at face value Ukraine would have surrendered as various idiots said they should at the start, and not retaken anything including one of the biggest cities in the country - but even knowing that the slow grind will take its toll on allies.
The Russians have already got half the GOP and one presidential candidate opposed to helping Ukraine, and in other less significant regions in Europe support has held up better than I would have thought, but will presumably start eking away, or least stop seeing game changing inputs.
I was hoping to get another first first, just to make me feel my life had been worthwhile.
Don't worry, when the intercontinental ballistic missile launches are detected and reported, someone will inevitably respond to that news by saying "first". That could be you?
NYT: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says War Has Hit a ‘Stalemate’ In a candid assessment, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said no “beautiful breakthrough” was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/europe/ukraine-zaluzhny-war.html
Depressing stuff indeed. Always a possibility, and regrettably the Russians appear for the moment to have done enough to grind away and buy time to bleed Ukraine and hope for a good outcome in the US elections at the very least.
It seems Ukraine’s biggest enemy is the strategic impatience of the West.
I would say their biggest enemy is the almost incomprehensible indifference to the fate of their own people by the sociopathic loons that run Russia. Any sane country would have stopped a long time ago.
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
Just logged in and saw this
I decided to vote for Blair month's before the GE and wasn't really a don't know . Indeed I voted for him again
I sort of do wonder if this may be one of those elections where the campaign makes no difference? It tends to only do so when it is a bit of a surprise. Like 2017. And 2019.
I don't think the 2019 campaign made any difference IIRC. I was someone who thought the polling with Tories well ahead would close up quite a bit, but they didn't. I think it was RobD tracking how the polls were remaining steady vs how things had changed in 2017.
I was hoping to get another first first, just to make me feel my life had been worthwhile.
Don't worry, when the intercontinental ballistic missile launches are detected and reported, someone will inevitably respond to that news by saying "first". That could be you?
Unclear why "calling for a ceasefire" is so controversial? I could call for an end to plane crashes, but it would be as much use. Neither side wants one, so it ain't happening.
Its controversial because its insane and wrong to call for one.
But firstly, do you mean Israel or Ukraine conflict?
Israel: Hamas are holding hundreds of Israelis hostage. The military has been able to rescue some of them, but there's still hundreds outstanding. Calling for a ceasefire now is disgraceful, call for the hostages to be released and then possibly there could be talk about a ceasefire but until Hamas have been eradicated I'd oppose one anyway but at least then there could be civilised talk of one.
Ukraine: Russia is occupying vast swathes of Ukrainian land, there should not be a ceasefire until all of it and the people living there have been liberated.
I thought you would be the one to reply. Surely a ceasefire would necessitate those mitigations?
No, a ceasefire typically is no mitigations, the conflict freezes in situ as it is at the moment.
That is a victory for Hamas, and a victory for Russia as it stands.
That is why it is their proxies calling for a ceasefire, as they're afraid of what will happen if one is not forthcoming.
In your world. Not mine. A ceasefire implies to me exchange of prisoners/hostages. But we're drifting off the point. Which was. What's the point if neither wants it?
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring and the change of government in Egypt was happening, doesn't make me an expert on Egypt.
But you seem to be an expert on Israel!
I wouldn't say an expert but for decades I've studied the history, the geopolitics of it and the framework around that, which is why I know the history and the international law when it comes to things like human shields, which is why I can correct mistakes others make. I'd bow before the expertise of genuine experts, but I can hold my own with other lay people.
I've also spent a bit of time studying Egypt, but only in its ancient history not its modern history, which is what I was there to see at the time of the Arab Spring and got caught off-guard with that. Had trips booked that were cancelled at the last minute as it was deemed unsafe to leave our resort due to what was happening outside.
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
@burgessian The greens are weirdo's the clowns made minister's are the thickest people you could imagine.They will take the SNP down with themselves, though Labour may need some useful idiots. Scotland is in dire straits just now.
This only proves that the Scottish Greens do not understand what safeguarding means. It does not mean that you can avoid being in the same building as someone who has different political opinions to you. It is also utterly contemptible of the Greens since their MSPs voted enthusiastically for a bill which would have allowed a depraved transgender sex offender - such as Andrew Miller recently sentenced for sexual offences against an 11 year old girl described by the judge as "frankly nauseating in its level of depravity and criminal deviance" - to get a GRC with no checks of any kind so that he could easily get access to women and girls.
Ignorant contemptible bullies - these seem to be the main requirements to be a member of the Scottish Greens.
Also weirdly pro-Palestinian to the point of being - allegedly - pro-Hamas attacks
What is this eerie, ugly, narcissistic Celtic indlugence of Hamas? Ireland is rank with it
Some see the fight against the English as similar to the Palestinian struggle.
"Two People, One Struggle", as the banners at Celtic Park say.
And to put it at its kindest, Irish Republicans are not Jew-friendly.
Of course Billy Fullerton, the inspiration for The Billy Boys that’s so frequently bellowed out at Ibrox, was a Moselyite and the BUF leader in Scotland. He’ll be spinning in his grave at all these Magen Davids fluttering at Unionism HQ.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring and the change of government in Egypt was happening, doesn't make me an expert on Egypt.
But you seem to be an expert on Israel!
Seeing as we’re sharing war correspondent anecdotes I was in India during the communal riots in 2002 when over a thousand Muslims were killed by mobs of Hindu nationalists In Gujarat and Rajastan after islamists firebombed a railway carriage full of pilgrims. We were on a night train to Jodhpur when we stopped in the suburbs and rioters started pelting the carriage with stones. There were soldiers on the train who restored calm and on we chugged into the central station.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring and the change of government in Egypt was happening, doesn't make me an expert on Egypt.
But you seem to be an expert on Israel!
Seeing as we’re sharing war correspondent anecdotes I was in India during the communal riots in 2002 when over a thousand Muslims were killed by mobs of Hindu nationalists In Gujarat and Rajasthan after Islamists firebombed a railway carriage full of pilgrims. We were on a night train to Jodhpur when we stopped in the suburbs and rioters started pelting the carriage with stones. There were soldiers on the train who restored calm and on we chugged into the central station.
Good to know you made it safely.
But you know the guy who led the said mobs of Hindu nationalists? He just happens to be the current PM of India...
NYT: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says War Has Hit a ‘Stalemate’ In a candid assessment, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said no “beautiful breakthrough” was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/europe/ukraine-zaluzhny-war.html
Depressing stuff indeed. Always a possibility, and regrettably the Russians appear for the moment to have done enough to grind away and buy time to bleed Ukraine and hope for a good outcome in the US elections at the very least.
It seems Ukraine’s biggest enemy is the strategic impatience of the West.
If we look at things from the West's perspective strategically, rather than with a moral hat on, Russia has already been defeated.
It attempted to capture Kyiv and nearly all of Ukraine, and has ended up with a relatively small increase on the territory it already controlled in all but name.
And the cost has been total economic and geopolitical isolation, the decimation of much of its conventional military capability, and the loss of many many young men that will hasten their demographic decline.
Of course Russia still has lots of nukes and poses a threat, but much less of one than it did 2 years ago.
The best outcome is a complete military defeat and withdrawal of Russia, but something falling short of that isn't the end of the world for the wider West.
Which unfortunately may mean Ukraine finds the flow of new expensive kit slows down, and they may need to eventually settle for a stalemate.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
It means I respect your opinion on Beirut in the 1980s-90s rather more - yes, it does
Also - enough of Ukraine - I want your archaeological opinion on something else
Yesterday I went to the weirdest place in Sicily. Cozzo Matrice. Near Enna, in the centre of the island. It has a very profound atmosphere, deserted, sad, desolate, ancient
I went because Wiki told me that the the site - and its "monumental walls" - date from 8000BC. I'm not joking. 8000BC!
Can that possibly be right? The age is mentioned elswhere, but I can't find a primary source. If it IS right than Cozzo Matrice is one of the oldest human settlements on earth, one of the oldest structures on earth, and surely the oldest village in Europe. So it should be world famous. Yet it is not
Thoughts?
"Near Pergusa lake is the archaeological site known as Cozzo Matrice. These are the remains of an ancient prehistoric fortified village, with walls dating about 8000 BC."
It is not impossible but I would be surprised. The oldest stone monuments in Europe are usually held to be the Megalithic tombs on Malta and Gozo and they are only 5th millenium BC.
But considering what they were building in Jericho at around the same time it is certainly within the realms of possibility. My immediate question would be how did they date it? We use two basic terms for dating - Terminus post quem (the earliest possible date for something) and Terminus ante quem (the latest possible date for something. Basically if you find a structure (a wall or a road) built over a dateable horizon then that structure must be younger than the dateable evidence. So if you find a wall that is claimed to be Roman and when you date it you find a medieval hammered coin underneath it the you know it cannot be Roman (Terminus post quem).
My question would be how have they dated the walls? Short of actually knocking some of them down and excavating beneath them it would be difficult to say how old they were - and even in that case you would only be able to get an 'oldest possible' date.
At Gobleki Tepe they can date the structure because they can date the backfill that overlies it but I am not sure if the circumstances at Cozzo Matrice would allow them to do that.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
That folding, fwiw, probably happens after Putin accidentally falls out of a window.
Such an event is probably hard to see in advance, sadly.
It is surely part of Russia's strategy to make it seem impossible to beat them back - if that had been taken at face value Ukraine would have surrendered as various idiots said they should at the start, and not retaken anything including one of the biggest cities in the country - but even knowing that the slow grind will take its toll on allies.
The Russians have already got half the GOP and one presidential candidate opposed to helping Ukraine, and in other less significant regions in Europe support has held up better than I would have thought, but will presumably start eking away, or least stop seeing game changing inputs.
There is no doubt that Trump winning the US election would be bad for Ukraine, as would Le Pen winning in France.
But long term military adventures have a nasty habit of resulting in violent changes of government. And that is much more likely to happen to the attacker than the defender.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring and the change of government in Egypt was happening, doesn't make me an expert on Egypt.
But you seem to be an expert on Israel!
Seeing as we’re sharing war correspondent anecdotes I was in India during the communal riots in 2002 when over a thousand Muslims were killed by mobs of Hindu nationalists In Gujarat and Rajastan after islamists firebombed a railway carriage full of pilgrims. We were on a night train to Jodhpur when we stopped in the suburbs and rioters started pelting the carriage with stones. There were soldiers on the train who restored calm and on we chugged into the central station.
It's not clear that it was islamists that firebombed the train. It may well have been an accidental fire.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring and the change of government in Egypt was happening, doesn't make me an expert on Egypt.
But you seem to be an expert on Israel!
I wouldn't say an expert but for decades I've studied the history, the geopolitics of it and the framework around that, which is why I know the history and the international law when it comes to things like human shields, which is why I can correct mistakes others make. I'd bow before the expertise of genuine experts, but I can hold my own with other lay people.
I've also spent a bit of time studying Egypt, but only in its ancient history not its modern history, which is what I was there to see at the time of the Arab Spring and got caught off-guard with that. Had trips booked that were cancelled at the last minute as it was deemed unsafe to leave our resort due to what was happening outside.
I was there during the Arab Spring when you could smell the recently burned buildings in Tahrir Square. As in: they were still smouldering, the ashes were still damp from the fire engines
I was writing about it for the Gazette and I went all over the country, for several ensuing weeks of national chaos. You stayed in your resort as it was "deemed unsafe"?? lol
Soz, but if we are doing war stories, it seems only fair
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
It means I respect your opinion on Beirut in the 1980s-90s rather more - yes, it does
Also - enough of Ukraine - I want your archaeological opinion on something else
Yesterday I went to the weirdest place in Sicily. Cozzo Matrice. Near Enna, in the centre of the island. It has a very profound atmosphere, deserted, sad, desolate, ancient
I went because Wiki told me that the the site - and its "monumental walls" - date from 8000BC. I'm not joking. 8000BC!
Can that possibly be right? The age is mentioned elswhere, but I can't find a primary source. If it IS right than Cozzo Matrice is one of the oldest human settlements on earth, one of the oldest structures on earth, and surely the oldest village in Europe. So it should be world famous. Yet it is not
Thoughts?
"Near Pergusa lake is the archaeological site known as Cozzo Matrice. These are the remains of an ancient prehistoric fortified village, with walls dating about 8000 BC."
It is not impossible but I would be surprised. The oldest stone monuments in Europe are usually held to be the Megalithic tombs on Malta and Gozo and they are only 5th millenium BC.
But considering what they were building in Jericho at around the same time it is certainly within the realms of possibility. My immediate question would be how did they date it? We use two basic terms for dating - Terminus post quem (the earliest possible date for something) and Terminus ante quem (the latest possible date for something. Basically if you find a structure (a wall or a road) built over a dateable horizon then that structure must be younger than the dateable evidence. So if you find a wall that is claimed to be Roman and when you date it you find a medieval hammered coin underneath it the you know it cannot be Roman (Terminus post quem).
My question would be how have they dated the walls? Short of actually knocking some of them down and excavating beneath them it would be difficult to say how old they were - and even in that case you would only be able to get an 'oldest possible' date.
At Gobleki Tepe they can date the structure because they can date the backfill that overlies it but I am not sure if the circumstances at Cozzo Matrice would allow them to do that.
But it absolutely isn't impossible.
During the Ice Age, Sicily would have been connected to Malta, famed for its own megalithic temples.
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
Just logged in and saw this
I decided to vote for Blair month's before the GE and wasn't really a don't know . Indeed I voted for him again
I sort of do wonder if this may be one of those elections where the campaign makes no difference? It tends to only do so when it is a bit of a surprise. Like 2017. And 2019.
I don't think the 2019 campaign made any difference IIRC. I was someone who thought the polling with Tories well ahead would close up quite a bit, but they didn't. I think it was RobD tracking how the polls were remaining steady vs how things had changed in 2017.
Besides, the story of 2017 wasn't so much about the Conservatives- their ratings stayed fairly stable through the campaign. It was the rise and rise of Corbyn's Labour.
This does look, ominously, like a potential full-on Hezbollah assault on Israel
"JUST IN: HEZBOLLAH RELEASES FINAL TEASER BEFORE TOMORROW'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SPEECH ON WHETHER THEY WILL JOIN THE WAR
🚨This is the FIRST TIME Hezbollah release teasers for a speech, making this VERY CONCERNING
MY THOUGHTS:
- Clashes escalating - Teasers - Various hints they will escalate - Iran and their proxies hinting of a surprise - Lebanese schools closing - Airport evacuation plans - Prime Minister preparing for war, and a last ditch effort to reach a peace deal - And most importantly, the leak we mentioned yesterday: Iran and Hezbollah warned the US that if the war doesn't pause tomorrow, Hezboollah is joining
I'm not in the slightest bit worried about Hezbollah. That histrionic tweet is written like China is about to invade Taiwan.
Absurd hyperbole.
And yet I remember people saying exactly this before Putin invaded Ukraine. "Oh it's all bluster, he won't do it". Even though he was saying he would do it. Then he went and did it
Who knows what will happen tomorrow (I have no idea). We know today that clashes in the north of Israel are much more intense than at any point since 2006
If Islamic forces have gamed all this, I imagine this is the thinking
1. Get Hamas to do a massive, cruel attack on Israel, slaughtering many hundreds of Jews 2. Rile the world, and most of all rile Israel, who will then react with brutal and focused force on Gaza 3. Thereby gain world sympathy 4. At the same time, prepare forces in Lebanon with arms, troops, drones, etc, to attack Israel when she is already concentrating on Gaza 5. Call America's bluff. Is America really going to wipe out Tehran to save Nazareth?
If you wanted to inflict a terrible humbling defeat on Israel, that would be a pretty good way of doing it, with a fairly good prospect of success
Which rather misses the point that Israel don't need the US to do anything if they decide to wipe out Tehran. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. The only thing currently hampering Israel is the fact they are having to fight an assymetric war and are making some attempts to do so without simply wiping out every Palestinian in Gaza. If it came to a proper shooting war with Iran or their Syrian/Lebanese proxies then Israel would have no such need for restraint.
Quite
Israel has a modern, well trained and will equipped army, and they would be facing a fraction of the forces that attacked them in (for example) the Yom Kipper war.
A modern, well trained, well equipped army.... that completely missed an incursion by 1500 Hamas fighters from supposedly the most surveilled place on earth, surrounded by razor wire and laser guns, and was unable to respond fast enough to save 1400 Jewish lives?
Is it possible the IDF is a bit of a paper tiger? They can beat the shit ouf of Palestinian kids cowering in cellars or hiding in olive groves, but they're not so good against actual fighters?
I dunno. I genuinely dunno. But Israel's last biggish war was Hezbollah in 2006 and that was widely regarded as a draw
How much of Israel do those fighters control?
A raid, with lots of Israeli dead, of course they can do that. But they can't actually defeat Israel militarily, just as Ukraine can't invade Russia and march to the gates of Moscow.
Your thinking is simplistic and monochrome
No of course Israel is not going to be overrun, and Jerusalem will not be reconquered by Hamas/Hezbollah
But there are ways of inflicting a stinging defeat on Israel without any of that. Make large parts of Israel almost uninhabitable by the constant threat of attack from Gaza and Lebanon - and maybe from within, from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs
Thereby slowly but surely corrode the raison d'etre of Israel: as the ultimate safe place for Jews
By the way, how is the destruction of Ukraine by constant missile attacks going?
Well, all the PB-ers who were telling me to "shut the fuck" for being a "Putinist shill" and a "fucking appeaser", for merely suggesting that Ukraine's offensive was maybe going nowhere, and the war was stalemated, seem to have gone awful quiet
You were telling us that nuclear war was imminent, and we’d have to throw Ukraine to the wolves to avoid it.
No offence, but I would not want you anywhere near running a military campaign.
The only sort of running Leon does is away.
I mean, if you look at my life, that really isn't the case, is it?
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
Yeah yeah. And I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of Beirut airport in 1989 whilst someone was dropping shells on the runway. I also got arrested as a spy in Tunis (needless to say I wasn't) and spent a happy few days in jail there. We have all done things in our lives that we look back on and wonder what the fuck we were doing.
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring and the change of government in Egypt was happening, doesn't make me an expert on Egypt.
But you seem to be an expert on Israel!
Seeing as we’re sharing war correspondent anecdotes I was in India during the communal riots in 2002 when over a thousand Muslims were killed by mobs of Hindu nationalists In Gujarat and Rajasthan after Islamists firebombed a railway carriage full of pilgrims. We were on a night train to Jodhpur when we stopped in the suburbs and rioters started pelting the carriage with stones. There were soldiers on the train who restored calm and on we chugged into the central station.
Good to know you made it safely.
But you know the guy who led the said mobs of Hindu nationalists? He just happens to be the current PM of India...
He was Chief Minister of Gujarat, he wasn't personally leading the mobs.
Can we just all stop and praise my comment from February 2023
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Actually, I think you're completely wrong on this. At some point, Russia will fold. Because invading is hard, and it requires them to keep pumping in money and young men. And for what?
That folding, fwiw, probably happens after Putin accidentally falls out of a window.
Such an event is probably hard to see in advance, sadly.
It is surely part of Russia's strategy to make it seem impossible to beat them back - if that had been taken at face value Ukraine would have surrendered as various idiots said they should at the start, and not retaken anything including one of the biggest cities in the country - but even knowing that the slow grind will take its toll on allies.
The Russians have already got half the GOP and one presidential candidate opposed to helping Ukraine, and in other less significant regions in Europe support has held up better than I would have thought, but will presumably start eking away, or least stop seeing game changing inputs.
There is no doubt that Trump winning the US election would be bad for Ukraine, as would Le Pen winning in France.
But long term military adventures have a nasty habit of resulting in violent changes of government. And that is much more likely to happen to the attacker than the defender.
Although, as previously discussed, the winner of a war writes the history of it, and who writes the history of a war that casts them as an unprovoked attacker? So you're saying that the loser's of war tend to see violent changes of government, which is kinda obvious.
Comments
And all the stuff during his fallow period before that had at least one corking track nobody else could have done. (And for a while at least several more left off the final cut).
I also said the Ukrainian offensive was going nowhere, you kept saying it was about to succeed; turns out I was right, you were wrong
I wouldn't want me running a military campaign either, I am far too excitable and easily bored. I'd probably drop that nuke when I was in a bad mood, for larks. But I wouldn't want any PBers running military analysis and strategic planning, nearly all of you are lamentably useless
Who was the first PB-er to actually go to Ukraine and shelter from bombs and air raid sirens? Me. Not you. Me
But America would not wipe out Tehran in response, which is the precise wording of my original point
Indeed, the whole gambling industry relies on it.
"Leon said:
I disagree. Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice"
"rcs1000 said:
"I don't buy it: remember, the invasion is usually the easy part, and it's the occupation that kills you.
And Korea was North Koreans fighting for their country against foreign invaders.
The Russians do not have an endless supply of young men and artillery shells. Now, if the Chinese step up and start arming the Russians, that would change things. But right now, the Ukrainians are being resupplied by the West with ever better equipment, while the Russians are begging the North Koreans for artillery shells, and have seen a number of their best new units utterly destroyed."
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/11202/starmer-gets-the-best-ipsos-ratings-truss-the-worst-politicalbetting-com/p5
So, I was right, wasn't I? And you were wrong. At least, in that exchange, and in the context of what we know now
And that was back in February, long before Ukraine began its "counter attack"
Interesting stuff coming out on the don't knows in recent surveys. I can appreciate that demographically they more resemble the retained Tory vote than the defectors, and that they trend retained Tory on subsidiary questions, and I think that does need to be allowed for. But they are different from the retained Tory in that they HAVE jumped to Don't Know, and many of them won't jump back.
Some points:
That BES survey, I think saying that 16% of 92 Tories went Labour in 97. So, the rough numbers are that the Tories had 14m votes in 92, 16% of which are 2.25m votes.
Labour only gained almost exactly 2m votes in 97, so that implies Labour vote gains from LD, DNV, new voters etc were substantially outweighed by 92 Labour votes lost to death, DNV, Con. For my own finger in the air, I've always put Con -> Lab switching a bit lower for that reason when I've estimated things, but who am I to argue with BES.
If Labour already has 10% of Conservatives now, only around a quarter of those 23% Conservative don't knows need to split Labour to match Blair's switching record. They may be a pretty Tory looking bunch, but those numbers in amongst them. Perhaps.
I'd wonder with some of those 97 switchers like Big G at what stage they decided their vote. Were they don't knows till the polling booth?
The other thing is it is far more difficult for Labour net losing votes outwith Tory switching - with the age gradient, deaths and new voters weigh massively more towards them than in 97, so any loss of Corbynites is likely to be more than compensated. For the Tories facing strong negative swing within the common voters across both elections the evolution of the register is likely to be very unfavourable indeed.
I don't claim omniscience.
Lost on the Provos, of course.
"Putin and Russia are all in. Russia will not be defeated like this, ie with total Ukrainian victory
OTOH I can’t see how Russia wins, either. I predict a long bloody stalemate that ends with a Korean style partition and an exhausted armistice""
Eeeeee. I scare myself, sometimes
Except Russian bombs. I run towards those. I went to Ukraine
Just because you're so incontinent you need everything to happen now or you'll wet yourself with fear, doesn't mean its odd that wars take time.
Russia are all-in and Ukraine are all-in, that only ends if one or both sides decide to stop being all-in (which can lead to an exhausted armistice) or it ends after years with a culmination.
Whatever. The best we can do in geopolitics is, surely, short-medium term stuff
My predictions of a Ukrainian stalemate are proving better, in the short-medium term. You can ask me for my secret via DM
The fact you're too blind to see the big picture doesn't change it.
I could call for an end to plane crashes, but it would be as much use.
Neither side wants one, so it ain't happening.
But whatever, you do you, eh. You like to insist I'm a coward because in some bizarre way it makes my undoubted but justified arrogance less intolerable
I am not sure any of that makes me an expert on either Lebanon or Tunisia.
My neighbour, an 80 year old quaker, helped negotiate the ceasefires between the various Lebanese militias. Now she does know something about the place. She even wrote a book about it.
https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156
But firstly, do you mean Israel or Ukraine conflict?
Israel: Hamas are holding hundreds of Israelis hostage. The military has been able to rescue some of them, but there's still hundreds outstanding. Calling for a ceasefire now is disgraceful, call for the hostages to be released and then possibly there could be talk about a ceasefire but until Hamas have been eradicated I'd oppose one anyway but at least then there could be civilised talk of one.
Ukraine: Russia is occupying vast swathes of Ukrainian land, there should not be a ceasefire until all of it and the people living there have been liberated.
I decided to vote for Blair month's before the GE and wasn't really a don't know . Indeed I voted for him again
This is not what I believe actually will happen, but let's go out on that anti-psephological limb for a moment and consider the possibility.
Why might there be no swing back?
1. A protest vote requires the possibility that something might change as a result - May's Brexit deal, Boris's and Truss's end days promising better soon. What better can a Tory minded voter hope for by protesting? So, why bother? Maybe the by-election results don't have much element of protest in them.
2. Worse than that the Tories might be shored up by a natively Tory sympathy vote. Yes, we know change is needed and will deliver at the GE, but no need to kick poor Mr Sunak in a by-election, you know.
FWIW, I believe we will see some pretty normal swing back and that neither of the above hold true, but there is one scenario that could quash swing back totally.
That is a leader change that leads to a honeymoon wind down election. Exhibit A would be GE2017, exhibit B, which would be more akin to Sunak being ditched would be Canada 1993:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_1993_Canadian_federal_election?wprov=sfla1
The thing here is that a honeymoon occurred, resulting in PC leads, and then fully dissipated during the campaign period. Any swing back there might have been was washed away in the larger polling movements. That's a newly installed Penny Mordaunt (sub name as appropriate here) on the campaign trail that is, losing the swing back Rishi would have bagged.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/02/guardian-retweet-twitter-hamas-israel-gaza/
Also - enough of Ukraine - I want your archaeological opinion on something else
Yesterday I went to the weirdest place in Sicily. Cozzo Matrice. Near Enna, in the centre of the island. It has a very profound atmosphere, deserted, sad, desolate, ancient
I went because Wiki told me that the the site - and its "monumental walls" - date from 8000BC. I'm not joking. 8000BC!
Can that possibly be right? The age is mentioned elswhere, but I can't find a primary source. If it IS right than Cozzo Matrice is one of the oldest human settlements on earth, one of the oldest structures on earth, and surely the oldest village in Europe. So it should be world famous. Yet it is not
Thoughts?
"Near Pergusa lake is the archaeological site known as Cozzo Matrice. These are the remains of an ancient prehistoric fortified village, with walls dating about 8000 BC."
https://www.italymagazine.com/enna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enna
Ukraine’s Top Commander Says War Has Hit a ‘Stalemate’
In a candid assessment, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said no “beautiful breakthrough” was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/europe/ukraine-zaluzhny-war.html
Keep well Big G
Surely a ceasefire would necessitate those mitigations?
That is a victory for Hamas, and a victory for Russia as it stands.
That is why it is their proxies calling for a ceasefire, as they're afraid of what will happen if one is not forthcoming.
It tends to only do so when it is a bit of a surprise.
Like 2017. And 2019.
It is surely part of Russia's strategy to make it seem impossible to beat them back - if that had been taken at face value Ukraine would have surrendered as various idiots said they should at the start, and not retaken anything including one of the biggest cities in the country - but even knowing that the slow grind will take its toll on allies.
The Russians have already got half the GOP and one presidential candidate opposed to helping Ukraine, and in other less significant regions in Europe support has held up better than I would have thought, but will presumably start eking away, or least stop seeing game changing inputs.
Well, most of you.
A ceasefire implies to me exchange of prisoners/hostages.
But we're drifting off the point.
Which was. What's the point if neither wants it?
I've also spent a bit of time studying Egypt, but only in its ancient history not its modern history, which is what I was there to see at the time of the Arab Spring and got caught off-guard with that. Had trips booked that were cancelled at the last minute as it was deemed unsafe to leave our resort due to what was happening outside.
But you know the guy who led the said mobs of Hindu nationalists? He just happens to be the current PM of India...
It attempted to capture Kyiv and nearly all of Ukraine, and has ended up with a relatively small increase on the territory it already controlled in all but name.
And the cost has been total economic and geopolitical isolation, the decimation of much of its conventional military capability, and the loss of many many young men that will hasten their demographic decline.
Of course Russia still has lots of nukes and poses a threat, but much less of one than it did 2 years ago.
The best outcome is a complete military defeat and withdrawal of Russia, but something falling short of that isn't the end of the world for the wider West.
Which unfortunately may mean Ukraine finds the flow of new expensive kit slows down, and they may need to eventually settle for a stalemate.
It is not impossible but I would be surprised. The oldest stone monuments in Europe are usually held to be the Megalithic tombs on Malta and Gozo and they are only 5th millenium BC.
But considering what they were building in Jericho at around the same time it is certainly within the realms of possibility. My immediate question would be how did they date it? We use two basic terms for dating - Terminus post quem (the earliest possible date for something) and Terminus ante quem (the latest possible date for something. Basically if you find a structure (a wall or a road) built over a dateable horizon then that structure must be younger than the dateable evidence. So if you find a wall that is claimed to be Roman and when you date it you find a medieval hammered coin underneath it the you know it cannot be Roman (Terminus post quem).
My question would be how have they dated the walls? Short of actually knocking some of them down and excavating beneath them it would be difficult to say how old they were - and even in that case you would only be able to get an 'oldest possible' date.
At Gobleki Tepe they can date the structure because they can date the backfill that overlies it but I am not sure if the circumstances at Cozzo Matrice would allow them to do that.
But it absolutely isn't impossible.
Are they also after a twenty three precent payrise?
So it could easily end up as @Leon predicts.
But long term military adventures have a nasty habit of resulting in violent changes of government. And that is much more likely to happen to the attacker than the defender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_riots
Nonetheless Modi (who was in charge of Gujerat at the time) allowed it to become the trigger for an anti-Muslim pogrom.
I was writing about it for the Gazette and I went all over the country, for several ensuing weeks of national chaos. You stayed in your resort as it was "deemed unsafe"?? lol
Soz, but if we are doing war stories, it seems only fair
Good luck replicating that, Rishi.
Those Red Wall seats wont lose themselves...
Rishi Sunak @RishiSunak
My conversation with
@elonmusk
👇
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1720187297558065441