Why Labour’s large leads could be a chimera – politicalbetting.com

rcs1000 said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

Cyclefree said:

malcolmg said:

Burgessian said:

One for @malcolmg

EXCLUSIVE: Green MSPs fume as turncoat MSP Ash Regan set to join their Holyrood corridor

Party has raised safeguarding concerns about the possible arrangement due to them employing transgender staff members

Some sources said Regan was testing chairs...

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1719993165673832812

@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

Leon said:

Cyclefree said:

malcolmg said:

Burgessian said:

One for @malcolmg

EXCLUSIVE: Green MSPs fume as turncoat MSP Ash Regan set to join their Holyrood corridor

Party has raised safeguarding concerns about the possible arrangement due to them employing transgender staff members

Some sources said Regan was testing chairs...

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1719993165673832812

@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.

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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?"

Foxy said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

HYUFD said:

RochdalePioneers said:

HYUFD said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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

Foxy said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

rcs1000 said:

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.

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

Cyclefree said:

malcolmg said:

Burgessian said:

One for @malcolmg

EXCLUSIVE: Green MSPs fume as turncoat MSP Ash Regan set to join their Holyrood corridor

Party has raised safeguarding concerns about the possible arrangement due to them employing transgender staff members

Some sources said Regan was testing chairs...

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1719993165673832812

@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

Leon said:

Cyclefree said:

malcolmg said:

Burgessian said:

One for @malcolmg

EXCLUSIVE: Green MSPs fume as turncoat MSP Ash Regan set to join their Holyrood corridor

Party has raised safeguarding concerns about the possible arrangement due to them employing transgender staff members

Some sources said Regan was testing chairs...

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1719993165673832812

@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!"

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

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."

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"

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

Sean_F said:

rcs1000 said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

Cyclefree said:

malcolmg said:

Burgessian said:

One for @malcolmg

EXCLUSIVE: Green MSPs fume as turncoat MSP Ash Regan set to join their Holyrood corridor

Party has raised safeguarding concerns about the possible arrangement due to them employing transgender staff members

Some sources said Regan was testing chairs...

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1719993165673832812

@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

Leon said:

Cyclefree said:

malcolmg said:

Burgessian said:

One for @malcolmg

EXCLUSIVE: Green MSPs fume as turncoat MSP Ash Regan set to join their Holyrood corridor

Party has raised safeguarding concerns about the possible arrangement due to them employing transgender staff members

Some sources said Regan was testing chairs...

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1719993165673832812

@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.

Leon said:

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

Leon said:

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

Leon said:

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

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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

Dumbosaurus said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

Leon said:

Dumbosaurus said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

@SeanT doesn't count. The man's a madman

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

dixiedean said:

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.

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

FrancisUrquhart said:

So what's the ETA on the first nuke strike?

viewcode said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

So what's the ETA on the first nuke strike?

10, 9, 8, 7, ...

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Pro_Rata said:

On topic:

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

BartholomewRoberts said:

dixiedean said:

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.

DavidL said:

viewcode said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

So what's the ETA on the first nuke strike?

10, 9, 8, 7, ...

I was hoping to get another first first, just to make me feel my life had been worthwhile.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

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.

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

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.

TimS said:

kle4 said:

geoffw said:

 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.

BartholomewRoberts said:

DavidL said:

viewcode said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

So what's the ETA on the first nuke strike?

10, 9, 8, 7, ...

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?

Sunil_Prasannan said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

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!

Sunil_Prasannan said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

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!

williamglenn said:

I think the wildcard is what Turkey will do if it continues to escalate.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Foxy said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

So what's the ETA on the first nuke strike?

Surely such news merits a fresh thread!

You just want to steal David's "first" !

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Foxy said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

So what's the ETA on the first nuke strike?

Surely such news merits a fresh thread!

You just want to steal David's "first" !

“First. And possibly last”

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

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."

https://www.italymagazine.com/enna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enna

kle4 said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

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.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

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.

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Sean_F said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

Casino_Royale said:

kle4 said:

Leon said:

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

THINGS DO NOT LOOK GOOD"


https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1720127444101845328?s=20

Sounds insane, Lebanon has enough problems.

A lot of piss and wind.

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.

https://bookshop.quaker.org.uk/dining-with-diplomats-praying-with-gunmen_9781999314156

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."

https://www.italymagazine.com/enna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enna

Not heard of it before.

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.

rcs1000 said:

kle4 said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

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.

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.