War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
Yes, the two state solution is gone. A tragedy, but it is gone. After Oct 7 Israel will not accept a Palestinian state next door
Interesting discussion. But, I think, missing one consideration.
Which is: the Israeli state was completely humiliated by the October massacre. In particular the armed forces and the intelligence services. They couldn't even prevent a pogrom on Israeli soil.
Ultimately it comes down to "what kind of a country are we?" One that, after a bit of symbolic retaliation, accepts what happens and "negotiates". Or one that asserts itself.
The UK faced the same challenge in 1982. We sent a fleet halfway round the world.
I'm frankly not in the least surprised at the Israeli approach. No-one's laughing at the IDF or Mossad now, are they.
Since metaphors are being done, isn’t that like the (self categorised) alpha male who has his pint nicked, girlfriend chatted up and is generally dissed who then smashes up the whole pub including oaps quietly having their pensioners’ special lunch? I would’t laugh at him but I’d consider him a complete rsole.
I don't know who recommended today's posting by Perun, but you may also be interested to know that the history 'Tuber HistoryBuffs has released a vid on "The Pacific", the first sequel to "Band Of Brothers". Because of the subject, the sudden death of the DVD market, the more disjointed narrative, and the huge budget, "The Pacific" was an enormous financial loss compared to its legendary predecessor. HistoryBuffs' video provides a nice companion piece to LittleWarsTV's dissection of the finances. Enjoy.
I have the DVD at home; Band of B excelled because it followed the same group of guys (less their casualties) from training in the US through D-Day to the fall of Germany. Pacific jumped about here and there and didn’t command the same compelling narrative. The recently released Masters of the Air did better in recapturing some of the original Band of B spirit, hampered by flying bombing raids over Germany being essentially a repetitive grind of an experience, which the series did well to counter with various side stories of captured airmen and the like, and a few completely imagined scenes of pilots overflying to Soviet held territory and chancing upon the death camps.
Masters of the Air was TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written and directed by an inferior subspecies of human
Band of Brothers was superb. Nuanced, clever, emotional, compelling
Pacific was pretty MEH, agreed
Yeah, it was shit. Barely managed to finish it.
Pacific was quite good, actually, but I don't know why they didn't integrate the Vets stories into it.
It's essentially a game of two halves: Leckie and then Sledge.
I read both their books because of it. Disturbing and harrowing, but boy they stay with you.
I don't know who recommended today's posting by Perun, but you may also be interested to know that the history 'Tuber HistoryBuffs has released a vid on "The Pacific", the first sequel to "Band Of Brothers". Because of the subject, the sudden death of the DVD market, the more disjointed narrative, and the huge budget, "The Pacific" was an enormous financial loss compared to its legendary predecessor. HistoryBuffs' video provides a nice companion piece to LittleWarsTV's dissection of the finances. Enjoy.
I have the DVD at home; Band of B excelled because it followed the same group of guys (less their casualties) from training in the US through D-Day to the fall of Germany. Pacific jumped about here and there and didn’t command the same compelling narrative. The recently released Masters of the Air did better in recapturing some of the original Band of B spirit, hampered by flying bombing raids over Germany being essentially a repetitive grind of an experience, which the series did well to counter with various side stories of captured airmen and the like, and a few completely imagined scenes of pilots overflying to Soviet held territory and chancing upon the death camps.
Masters of the Air was TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written and directed by an inferior subspecies of human
Band of Brothers was superb. Nuanced, clever, emotional, compelling
Pacific was pretty MEH, agreed
Masters of the Air did a decent job of capturing the experience of the section of the US armed forces with the highest casualty rate (second to the tank regiments), sitting up there in daylight running raids time after time, just waiting to see if Lady Luck would see them shot down. The trouble was that the experience in itself didn’t make a particularly compelling narrative.
I think James Cleverly has had the worst campaign.
Nice unifying guy but I can't recall a single thing he's said or done.
I can for Badenoch, Tugendhat and Jenrick.
Cleverly has come in from about 13 to 8.6 on bf - not sure why.
Maybe people have listened to the other three?
He does appear to be the sole rational one, so you'd have expected his odds to drift. He's available at 13 currently. Tugendhat at 16 which is shorter than he has been. Badenoch 3.
I don't know who recommended today's posting by Perun, but you may also be interested to know that the history 'Tuber HistoryBuffs has released a vid on "The Pacific", the first sequel to "Band Of Brothers". Because of the subject, the sudden death of the DVD market, the more disjointed narrative, and the huge budget, "The Pacific" was an enormous financial loss compared to its legendary predecessor. HistoryBuffs' video provides a nice companion piece to LittleWarsTV's dissection of the finances. Enjoy.
Public service announcement - do not ever see Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis.
I don't recall the last time I saw a film which was such pretentious, unfocused, faux-artistic, meaningless bilge.
I cannot even say at least the visuals were good, as it was such an editing nightmare, nor fall back on decent performances, since they range from bland nothing to just plain embarrassing.
It felt like it lasted forever.
Yorgos Lanthimos does weird but compelling so much better.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
"International law" is a farce and Israel disputes that it is contrary and quite frankly I could not care less.
As for having no intention of handing over the settlements, that's been done time and time again. In Egypt when peace was agreed there and more recently unilaterally Israel removed all of its settlements from Gaza and withdrew completely from Gaza and look what happened afterwards.
Building new settlements in Gaza now unless or until leadership in Gaza respects Israel's rights to exist would be the sensible thing to do now.
Nobody is being cleansed from the West Bank, that is absurd. The borders are not finalised, which is agreed by both sides, and Israel is quite reasonably seeking more land for itself just as its enemy is. Unless or until peace is agreed, that's the sensible thing to do.
So allowing for duty rosters, annual leave, sickness, pilots in training etc it doesn't seem a ridiculous figure, depending on how intensively the planes fly. The planes will also have down time too.
I don't know who recommended today's posting by Perun, but you may also be interested to know that the history 'Tuber HistoryBuffs has released a vid on "The Pacific", the first sequel to "Band Of Brothers". Because of the subject, the sudden death of the DVD market, the more disjointed narrative, and the huge budget, "The Pacific" was an enormous financial loss compared to its legendary predecessor. HistoryBuffs' video provides a nice companion piece to LittleWarsTV's dissection of the finances. Enjoy.
I have the DVD at home; Band of B excelled because it followed the same group of guys (less their casualties) from training in the US through D-Day to the fall of Germany. Pacific jumped about here and there and didn’t command the same compelling narrative. The recently released Masters of the Air did better in recapturing some of the original Band of B spirit, hampered by flying bombing raids over Germany being essentially a repetitive grind of an experience, which the series did well to counter with various side stories of captured airmen and the like, and a few completely imagined scenes of pilots overflying to Soviet held territory and chancing upon the death camps.
Masters of the Air was TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written and directed by an inferior subspecies of human
Band of Brothers was superb. Nuanced, clever, emotional, compelling
Pacific was pretty MEH, agreed
Yeah, it was shit. Barely managed to finish it.
Pacific was quite good, actually, but I don't know why they didn't integrate the Vets stories into it.
It's essentially a game of two halves: Leckie and then Sledge.
I read both their books because of it. Disturbing and harrowing, but boy they stay with you.
It's hard to pursue a narrative through war. Band of Brothers found one, the others didn't. You have to winnow out a story from total chaos, and - let's face it - you have to LIE a little bit, to make the story work
Consumers don't mind if you stay true to the essential narrative and experience
And on the other side, no amount of CGI and AI and superb acting can make up for a crappy story that doesn't hang together. You lose interest, fast
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
I think this thread is beneath the normal level of discussion. There is a genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA and whether immigrants both legal and illegal have been strategically placed on it. How much of an issue this is I am not sure but there does seem to be some fire with the smoke. That I believe is what Elon Musk is trying to get at. If Harris wins by a narrow margin (I cant see anything but a tight race) and it is found that illegal immigrants were on the voter roll then potentially we have chaos.
On Israel, my family includes both Iranians and Israeli Jews. The success level of Israel is stunning. They are being fed very good info and the hunch is it is coming from the top in Iran. Forget Gaza which is a sideshow. Is the Iranian leadership about to change?
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
I liked the debate on Scotland. Looking at by-elections last week. The SNP are still on the way down. Biggest winners are Lib Dems and Reform. I cant see the Lib Dems getting less than 10 MSPs which will make it even harder for anyone to get a majority. Given Reform 3 or 4 MSPs and we are into a German style rainbow parliament.
Final Point is another European country has swung dramatically to the right with Austria. This is now a strong trend.
"Adorni said Aerolineas currently employs 1,204 pilots to fly 81 planes, or nearly 15 pilots per plane."
I wonder what the expected ratio is for an airline using its planes properly 24/7. 3? 5?
I used to know a guy who was paid as a pilot in the middle east. 9-5 he sat in the cockpit 'just in case' the owner wanted a flight.
Paid top dollar too.
Sounds great, though it would have to be top dollar, as being paid to do nothing can be incredibly frustrating.
I did a weekend locum once that was so quiet that I was paged 4 times in 3 days. I kept checking with switchboard that my bleep was working. Pre Internet too, so I had to pop out to buy a book to read.
"Adorni said Aerolineas currently employs 1,204 pilots to fly 81 planes, or nearly 15 pilots per plane."
I wonder what the expected ratio is for an airline using its planes properly 24/7. 3? 5?
I used to know a guy who was paid as a pilot in the middle east. 9-5 he sat in the cockpit 'just in case' the owner wanted a flight.
Paid top dollar too.
Sounds great, though it would have to be top dollar, as being paid to do nothing can be incredibly frustrating.
He only did it for a year or two as I remember (this is going back to the 90s, so it's a little hazy). But made enough to have a fairly comfy time of it and set himself up, for the basics at least, for the rest of his days.
I don't know who recommended today's posting by Perun, but you may also be interested to know that the history 'Tuber HistoryBuffs has released a vid on "The Pacific", the first sequel to "Band Of Brothers". Because of the subject, the sudden death of the DVD market, the more disjointed narrative, and the huge budget, "The Pacific" was an enormous financial loss compared to its legendary predecessor. HistoryBuffs' video provides a nice companion piece to LittleWarsTV's dissection of the finances. Enjoy.
I have the DVD at home; Band of B excelled because it followed the same group of guys (less their casualties) from training in the US through D-Day to the fall of Germany. Pacific jumped about here and there and didn’t command the same compelling narrative. The recently released Masters of the Air did better in recapturing some of the original Band of B spirit, hampered by flying bombing raids over Germany being essentially a repetitive grind of an experience, which the series did well to counter with various side stories of captured airmen and the like, and a few completely imagined scenes of pilots overflying to Soviet held territory and chancing upon the death camps.
Masters of the Air was TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written and directed by an inferior subspecies of human
Band of Brothers was superb. Nuanced, clever, emotional, compelling
Pacific was pretty MEH, agreed
Yeah, it was shit. Barely managed to finish it.
Pacific was quite good, actually, but I don't know why they didn't integrate the Vets stories into it.
It's essentially a game of two halves: Leckie and then Sledge.
I read both their books because of it. Disturbing and harrowing, but boy they stay with you.
It's hard to pursue a narrative through war. Band of Brothers found one, the others didn't. You have to winnow out a story from total chaos, and - let's face it - you have to LIE a little bit, to make the story work
Consumers don't mind if you stay true to the essential narrative and experience
And on the other side, no amount of CGI and AI and superb acting can make up for a crappy story that doesn't hang together. You lose interest, fast
I just didn't care enough about the characters in Masters of the Air, one or two of whom were basically posing models out of a catalogue. Oh, someone got shot down. Err, who? Oh, not him, he's still there two episodes later? OK. Whatever.
Then there was the Pompous Brit v. Plucky US fight in a pub stuff which pissed me off.
Even the groundscenes were bad. And that's before you get to the bad lighting and inaudible dialogue stuff that directors now seemingly can't resist.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
I think this thread is beneath the normal level of discussion. There is a genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA and whether immigrants both legal and illegal have been strategically placed on it. How much of an issue this is I am not sure but there does seem to be some fire with the smoke. That I believe is what Elon Musk is trying to get at. If Harris wins by a narrow margin (I cant see anything but a tight race) and it is found that illegal immigrants were on the voter roll then potentially we have chaos.
On Israel, my family includes both Iranians and Israeli Jews. The success level of Israel is stunning. They are being fed very good info and the hunch is it is coming from the top in Iran. Forget Gaza which is a sideshow. Is the Iranian leadership about to change?
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
I liked the debate on Scotland. Looking at by-elections last week. The SNP are still on the way down. Biggest winners are Lib Dems and Reform. I cant see the Lib Dems getting less than 10 MSPs which will make it even harder for anyone to get a majority. Given Reform 3 or 4 MSPs and we are into a German style rainbow parliament.
Final Point is another European country has swung dramatically to the right with Austria. This is now a strong trend.
And again the mainstream political forces will ignore another massive flashing red light. How many far right parties have to win, actually WIN, elections in Europe before the rest of them accept the consensus on migration/asylum/multiculturualism is finished, and done, and it has failed, and electorates are rejecting it, wholesale, and they are willing to elect unabashed quasi-Nazis (eg the AfD in Thuringia) to get that done-ness done, if needs be
I am astonished by their wilful blindness. Like someone deliberately walking into a forest fire, scattering tinder as they go
Britain will be next, in 2029. We are lucky we have Farage as a kind of firebreak, the alternative will be worse
I don't know who recommended today's posting by Perun, but you may also be interested to know that the history 'Tuber HistoryBuffs has released a vid on "The Pacific", the first sequel to "Band Of Brothers". Because of the subject, the sudden death of the DVD market, the more disjointed narrative, and the huge budget, "The Pacific" was an enormous financial loss compared to its legendary predecessor. HistoryBuffs' video provides a nice companion piece to LittleWarsTV's dissection of the finances. Enjoy.
I have the DVD at home; Band of B excelled because it followed the same group of guys (less their casualties) from training in the US through D-Day to the fall of Germany. Pacific jumped about here and there and didn’t command the same compelling narrative. The recently released Masters of the Air did better in recapturing some of the original Band of B spirit, hampered by flying bombing raids over Germany being essentially a repetitive grind of an experience, which the series did well to counter with various side stories of captured airmen and the like, and a few completely imagined scenes of pilots overflying to Soviet held territory and chancing upon the death camps.
Masters of the Air was TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written and directed by an inferior subspecies of human
Band of Brothers was superb. Nuanced, clever, emotional, compelling
Pacific was pretty MEH, agreed
Yeah, it was shit. Barely managed to finish it.
Pacific was quite good, actually, but I don't know why they didn't integrate the Vets stories into it.
It's essentially a game of two halves: Leckie and then Sledge.
I read both their books because of it. Disturbing and harrowing, but boy they stay with you.
It's hard to pursue a narrative through war. Band of Brothers found one, the others didn't. You have to winnow out a story from total chaos, and - let's face it - you have to LIE a little bit, to make the story work
Consumers don't mind if you stay true to the essential narrative and experience
One of my favourite book series 'The Darkness' by Harry Turtledove had a little of that going on. It was essentially a fantasy retelling of WW2, told through various perspectives high and low, and in following the general patterns of the war necessarily had plenty of repetitive grind and seeming dead ends, to add to that feel of chaos and hopelessness. It was one of the most powerful and emotional in the genre I've read as a result.
I still love it, but narratively I could see people downgrading it a little as a result.
I think James Cleverly has had the worst campaign.
Nice unifying guy but I can't recall a single thing he's said or done.
I can for Badenoch, Tugendhat and Jenrick.
Cleverly has come in from about 13 to 8.6 on bf - not sure why.
NOTA has an appeal. MPs could rally round him to get him to the last two, and Jenrick could "lend".
He is the most likely to do the job of stabilising the ship and then handing over in 2-3 years.
Jenrick is probably a case of the more he gets seen, the more members despair...
Yes, but hand over to whom?
In 2-3 years time we'll have the same 120 MPs plus maybe 1-2 more if we're lucky through by-elections or defections.
Maybe it's actually Jenrick for 2-3 years and then Cleverly, Hunt or Tugendhat.
Who knows.
Even if it is Jenrick he has the advantage Hague didn't in 1997 Starmer's already much less popular than Blair's was. Plus Reform is also eating into the Labour vote which as long as it does that more than it eats into the remaining Tory vote is still a swing to the Tories
Anyhow the high tide failed to top the pontoon by a couple of inches, so I can still get off the boat and hope VA hasn’t suffered that much by way of flooding. And the water is now on the way down, although still so full of mud and other crap that all the turtles that used to nose the boat on my last stay are still in hiding, this time.
Tomorrow me and Mr Dog move on to stay three days in Biden’s home spot, while I deal with the veterinary admin that Brexit has imposed on my trip - costing a full $600 more than when we last made the same crossing.
So allowing for duty rosters, annual leave, sickness, pilots in training etc it doesn't seem a ridiculous figure, depending on how intensively the planes fly. The planes will also have down time too.
30 hours a month seems to be the average that planes are in the air globally which would indicate roughly that pilots are in the air twice as often as planes (which makes fits with planes having two pilots each).
Of course that's an average and some airlines are more efficient than that average and fly planes more, not sure on the efficiency or productivity of Aerolineas specifically.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
With 20% of MPs required to nominate a challenger, then that going to a membership vote I can't see it myself.
Labour are not the Tories who change leader more often than their knickers.
Anyhow the high tide failed to top the pontoon by a couple of inches, so I can still get off the boat and hope VA hasn’t suffered that much by way of flooding. And the water is now on the way down, although still so full of mud and other crap that all the turtles that used to nose the boat on my last stay are still in hiding, this time.
Tomorrow me and Mr Dog move on to stay three days in Biden’s home spot, while I deal with the veterinary admin that Brexit has imposed on my trip - costing a full $600 more than when we last made the same crossing.
Mr Dog says B***ocks to Brexit!
Is Jamestown interesting? Did you get to Williamsburg?
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
With 20% of MPs required to nominate a challenger, then that going to a membership vote I can't see it myself.
Labour are not the Tories who change leader more often than their knickers.
Which is why over the long term Labour is less serious than the Tories.
Changing leaders when they're not good is a good thing, not a bad one.
Too much stability is a bad thing.
Right now we're in a period were Labour are more serious but that says more about the Tories than it does about Labour.
I remember a particularly bad job I had while paying my way through college. Data input job from 10pm to 6am.
In the red light district. In an office with glass brick walls. At the height of the heroin and/or jellies ... 'fad'.
Sitting at about 2am while a psycho office manager literally on speed wandered round and round to see if you were keeping up your required 8-10 thousand key-depressions an hour while some poor lassies bum was slapping off the glass bricks.
Then watching the 'post business' ... seepage run down the glass bricks.
So much to unpack in one post.
Heroin and Jellies fad !
I must have led a sheltered life. For me it was barwork at the local British Legion. With the odd fellow amorous barmaid.
All I'll offer on Musk's comments is I would strongly dispute his view illegal immigrants will always be in the Democrat camp.
There are plenty of instances suggesting once "illegal" immigrants receive amnesty and join society, all they want to do is make a life of themselves so they become workers, pay taxes, use services and come to appreciate (if applicable) the weakness of the social democratic economic model.
Within a few years your Democrat voting immigrant becomes your Republican voting citizen opposed to further immigration and wanting tax cuts and the Government off his/her back.
Musk is wrong - democracy doesn't end, societal evolution never ends, the argument never ends.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
"International law" is a farce and Israel disputes that it is contrary and quite frankly I could not care less.
As for having no intention of handing over the settlements, that's been done time and time again. In Egypt when peace was agreed there and more recently unilaterally Israel removed all of its settlements from Gaza and withdrew completely from Gaza and look what happened afterwards.
Building new settlements in Gaza now unless or until leadership in Gaza respects Israel's rights to exist would be the sensible thing to do now.
Nobody is being cleansed from the West Bank, that is absurd. The borders are not finalised, which is agreed by both sides, and Israel is quite reasonably seeking more land for itself just as its enemy is. Unless or until peace is agreed, that's the sensible thing to do.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
With 20% of MPs required to nominate a challenger, then that going to a membership vote I can't see it myself.
Labour are not the Tories who change leader more often than their knickers.
Which is why over the long term Labour is less serious than the Tories.
Changing leaders when they're not good is a good thing, not a bad one.
Too much stability is a bad thing.
Right now we're in a period were Labour are more serious but that says more about the Tories than it does about Labour.
That's as maybe, but the simple truth is that unless Starmer resigns or meets his maker he gets a full term.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.
The projections, based on almost complete results, give Kickl's party 28.8% - more than two points ahead of the conservative People's Party on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People's Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.
They are on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
I think this thread is beneath the normal level of discussion. There is a genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA and whether immigrants both legal and illegal have been strategically placed on it. How much of an issue this is I am not sure but there does seem to be some fire with the smoke. That I believe is what Elon Musk is trying to get at. If Harris wins by a narrow margin (I cant see anything but a tight race) and it is found that illegal immigrants were on the voter roll then potentially we have chaos.
On Israel, my family includes both Iranians and Israeli Jews. The success level of Israel is stunning. They are being fed very good info and the hunch is it is coming from the top in Iran. Forget Gaza which is a sideshow. Is the Iranian leadership about to change?
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
I liked the debate on Scotland. Looking at by-elections last week. The SNP are still on the way down. Biggest winners are Lib Dems and Reform. I cant see the Lib Dems getting less than 10 MSPs which will make it even harder for anyone to get a majority. Given Reform 3 or 4 MSPs and we are into a German style rainbow parliament.
Final Point is another European country has swung dramatically to the right with Austria. This is now a strong trend.
There is not a "genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA". That is pure MAGA lies. It has been thoroughly debunked over and over. We know Musk is too stupid to understand that, but I had hoped PB posters were a bit more intelligent.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
I think this thread is beneath the normal level of discussion. There is a genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA and whether immigrants both legal and illegal have been strategically placed on it. How much of an issue this is I am not sure but there does seem to be some fire with the smoke. That I believe is what Elon Musk is trying to get at. If Harris wins by a narrow margin (I cant see anything but a tight race) and it is found that illegal immigrants were on the voter roll then potentially we have chaos.
It is almost inconceivable that the vanishingly small number of legal or illegal immigrants who will try to vote, still less succeed in doing so - which despite the fertility of Musk's otherwise underpowered brain, isn't going to be in five figures anywhere - will exceed the literally millions of legitimate voters being disenfranchised by corrupt judges in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Georgia and Florida at the behest of their Republican overlords because they belong to predominantly Democratic groupings.
There is a clear risk this will be America's last election. The risk is not in electing Kamala Harris.
Musk doesn't care of course because he's an even bigger crook and nastier piece of work than Trump.
"Adorni said Aerolineas currently employs 1,204 pilots to fly 81 planes, or nearly 15 pilots per plane."
I wonder what the expected ratio is for an airline using its planes properly 24/7. 3? 5?
Ryanair has about 6600 pilots for 584 aircraft, according to Wikipedia. That's ratio of just over 11. But their whole model is based on planes being the expensive bit and pilots being a cheap way to get more use out of the aircraft.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
"International law" is a farce and Israel disputes that it is contrary and quite frankly I could not care less.
As for having no intention of handing over the settlements, that's been done time and time again. In Egypt when peace was agreed there and more recently unilaterally Israel removed all of its settlements from Gaza and withdrew completely from Gaza and look what happened afterwards.
Building new settlements in Gaza now unless or until leadership in Gaza respects Israel's rights to exist would be the sensible thing to do now.
Nobody is being cleansed from the West Bank, that is absurd. The borders are not finalised, which is agreed by both sides, and Israel is quite reasonably seeking more land for itself just as its enemy is. Unless or until peace is agreed, that's the sensible thing to do.
The escalation of violence in the West Bank is neither arbitrary nor disconnected from the violence in Gaza. Instead, as a political scientist who studies Palestinian politics, I believe it should be understood in the broader context. The proliferation of armed settlers in the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settler outposts and now the increasing violence and forced displacement all stem from the same underlying policy that led to the 16-year blockade of Gaza: an Israeli policy of ignoring Palestinian national claims altogether.
You what!? Israel demolished all its settlements in Gaza, the blockade came afterwards (and before Bibi was elected) when Hamas took over. Because blockading Hamas is the sensible thing to do.
Not bothering to read on after that as its clearly completely false bullshit with an agenda.
I did think that sounded a hell of a lot of people for some data centres....have people not watched Silicon Valley tv show!
A £10bn artificial intelligence hub championed by Sir Keir Starmer for creating thousands of new jobs could boast just 300 full-time staff once completed, it has emerged.
The vast data centre project in Northumberland, announced by the Prime Minister last week, will lead to only 300 to 400 permanent staff employed at the site instead of the 4,000 roles indicated by its financial backers.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
"International law" is a farce and Israel disputes that it is contrary and quite frankly I could not care less.
As for having no intention of handing over the settlements, that's been done time and time again. In Egypt when peace was agreed there and more recently unilaterally Israel removed all of its settlements from Gaza and withdrew completely from Gaza and look what happened afterwards.
Building new settlements in Gaza now unless or until leadership in Gaza respects Israel's rights to exist would be the sensible thing to do now.
Nobody is being cleansed from the West Bank, that is absurd. The borders are not finalised, which is agreed by both sides, and Israel is quite reasonably seeking more land for itself just as its enemy is. Unless or until peace is agreed, that's the sensible thing to do.
The escalation of violence in the West Bank is neither arbitrary nor disconnected from the violence in Gaza. Instead, as a political scientist who studies Palestinian politics, I believe it should be understood in the broader context. The proliferation of armed settlers in the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settler outposts and now the increasing violence and forced displacement all stem from the same underlying policy that led to the 16-year blockade of Gaza: an Israeli policy of ignoring Palestinian national claims altogether.
You what!? Israel demolished all its settlements in Gaza, the blockade came afterwards (and before Bibi was elected) when Hamas took over. Because blockading Hamas is the sensible thing to do.
Not bothering to read on after that as its clearly completely false bullshit with an agenda.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
"International law" is a farce and Israel disputes that it is contrary and quite frankly I could not care less.
As for having no intention of handing over the settlements, that's been done time and time again. In Egypt when peace was agreed there and more recently unilaterally Israel removed all of its settlements from Gaza and withdrew completely from Gaza and look what happened afterwards.
Building new settlements in Gaza now unless or until leadership in Gaza respects Israel's rights to exist would be the sensible thing to do now.
Nobody is being cleansed from the West Bank, that is absurd. The borders are not finalised, which is agreed by both sides, and Israel is quite reasonably seeking more land for itself just as its enemy is. Unless or until peace is agreed, that's the sensible thing to do.
The escalation of violence in the West Bank is neither arbitrary nor disconnected from the violence in Gaza. Instead, as a political scientist who studies Palestinian politics, I believe it should be understood in the broader context. The proliferation of armed settlers in the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settler outposts and now the increasing violence and forced displacement all stem from the same underlying policy that led to the 16-year blockade of Gaza: an Israeli policy of ignoring Palestinian national claims altogether.
You what!? Israel demolished all its settlements in Gaza, the blockade came afterwards (and before Bibi was elected) when Hamas took over. Because blockading Hamas is the sensible thing to do.
Not bothering to read on after that as its clearly completely false bullshit with an agenda.
I saw Guido whinging about Sunak only spending a day at conference earlier, but seems like that's exactly what he and others would have wanted, to allow the candidates to spend as much time as possible getting attention.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.
The projections, based on almost complete results, give Kickl's party 28.8% - more than two points ahead of the conservative People's Party on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People's Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.
They are on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.
The projections, based on almost complete results, give Kickl's party 28.8% - more than two points ahead of the conservative People's Party on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People's Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.
They are on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.
Another European country that is going to struggle to have a functioning government.
The Conservative PP and Social Democrats combined would have a majority of seats German grand coalition style. However it would be like Farage's Reform party coming top here and Starmer Labour and the Sunak Tories combining to form a non Reform government
All I'll offer on Musk's comments is I would strongly dispute his view illegal immigrants will always be in the Democrat camp.
There are plenty of instances suggesting once "illegal" immigrants receive amnesty and join society, all they want to do is make a life of themselves so they become workers, pay taxes, use services and come to appreciate (if applicable) the weakness of the social democratic economic model.
Within a few years your Democrat voting immigrant becomes your Republican voting citizen opposed to further immigration and wanting tax cuts and the Government off his/her back.
Musk is wrong - democracy doesn't end, societal evolution never ends, the argument never ends.
Musk is also disingenuous in tweeting of illegals voting because they need to have become citizens in order to cast their ballots.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
The Middle East is not the UK. Sinn Fein could be negotiated with, Hamas and Hezbollah can not.
Why can Israel not 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah, yet they could defeat Egypt and Sri Lanka could defeat the Tamil Tigers?
They 'defeated' Egypt through means of a conventional war. And even then they didn't stop the armed conflict as such. That was done via a peace treaty on equal terms, not through defeat on the battlefield. In case you missed the Camp David Agreement.
Achieved under a lot of pressure from the Carter administration, one of its relatively few notable achievements — although there was an NPR programme on Friday about how his presidency is more recently being appraised less negatively.
I assume the US is holding back on exerting significant pressure on Israel and the other regional players, until its election is done and dusted.
Also a peace deal that worked by handing over territory and removing settlements. Since then 50 years of peace and generally good relations.
Carrot and stick.
Defeated militarily and with settlements built on the occupied land that could be removed/handed over once someone was willing to accept peace.
Yet Richard is all up in arms about settlements being built in "Palestinian" land today, despite the fact that's exactly what was done in Egyptian land (see: Sharm etc) and despite the fact that Palestinian leadership has successively and consistently refused to agree the borders anyway and insist the borders are up for negotiations (as they want more, not less, but negotiations can go either way).
Following the playbook with Egypt, Israel building settlements on occupied territory today is conducive to generally good relations in the future, is it not, if it leads to a future where those settlements can be removed/handed over to someone that will recognise Israel's right to exist?
The building of those settlements is contrary to international law. The people building those settlements have no intention of handing the land over to anyone after they've taken it over. They intend to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land. They are ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from the West Bank, albeit slowly.
Barty is talking about a fantasy ME, not what exists.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
Except this was an Indiana USA court, not a UK court.
Cordellionè was convicted of strangling the 11-month-old baby while her mother — the murderer’s then wife — was out at work on Sept 12, 2001.
'According to Fox News, Cordellionè filed a separate lawsuit last year against a prison chaplain for allegedly preventing the inmate from wearing a hijab outside of a cell despite identifying as a Muslim woman.'
A grand coalition in Austria with a very small majority is probably the outcome the Freedom Party is most happy with, (bar actually winning the election themselves, which wasn't going to happen).
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
'A group of Republican senators is unveiling a new bill that would cease all permanent normal trade relations with China and double the tariffs on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) goods.
The bill would, over five years, increase tariffs by 100% on imports deemed "strategic" to national security by the Biden administration in an effort to force the growth of the domestic market for national security-related goods.
It would boost tariffs on non-strategic goods by a minimum of 35%.
The bill, led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and cosponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., would also grant the president the authority to institute further tariffs, quotas and bans on specific Chinese goods. It would end "de minimis treatment" for China, or the value threshold below which imports are not subject to customs duties. ' https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tom-cotton-releases-bill-cease-all-normal-trade-relations-china-increase-tariffs-100
Question: In legislative elections, does any party in Western Europe now have a higher vote share than the British Labour Party?
Austria's ÖVP had 37.5% under Kurz at the last election, which has now been replaced with a sub 30% number.
Obviously electoral systems play a role, but there feels like a trend towards winning on lower vote share whilst third and fourth placed parties gain ground.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.
The projections, based on almost complete results, give Kickl's party 28.8% - more than two points ahead of the conservative People's Party on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People's Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.
They are on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
He sounds like a nutter.
The UK is better off without him.
Didn't GB News have to ditch him? And that's saying something.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
And Musk is an immigrant, which rather belies his belief that immigrants all vote Democrat.
Musk can't be an immigrant.
He has white skin and lots of money.
I think this thread is beneath the normal level of discussion. There is a genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA and whether immigrants both legal and illegal have been strategically placed on it. How much of an issue this is I am not sure but there does seem to be some fire with the smoke. That I believe is what Elon Musk is trying to get at. If Harris wins by a narrow margin (I cant see anything but a tight race) and it is found that illegal immigrants were on the voter roll then potentially we have chaos.
On Israel, my family includes both Iranians and Israeli Jews. The success level of Israel is stunning. They are being fed very good info and the hunch is it is coming from the top in Iran. Forget Gaza which is a sideshow. Is the Iranian leadership about to change?
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
I liked the debate on Scotland. Looking at by-elections last week. The SNP are still on the way down. Biggest winners are Lib Dems and Reform. I cant see the Lib Dems getting less than 10 MSPs which will make it even harder for anyone to get a majority. Given Reform 3 or 4 MSPs and we are into a German style rainbow parliament.
Final Point is another European country has swung dramatically to the right with Austria. This is now a strong trend.
There is not a "genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA". That is pure MAGA lies. It has been thoroughly debunked over and over. We know Musk is too stupid to understand that, but I had hoped PB posters were a bit more intelligent.
There is.
N Carolina, for example, purged a full 10% of its voter roll - and announced the fact just over a month before the election. That’s one example of many. Not a peep from arch democracy defender Musk about that sort of thing, of course.
We’re very lucky to have a (relatively) consensual set of arrangements for the administration of elections, in this country.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
He sounds like a nutter.
The UK is better off without him.
Didn't GB News have to ditch him? And that's saying something.
No wonder he's gone to America, they have a market for oddball grifters.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
If you actually looked at the article you would see it was from America and the guy in question is in an Indiana prison.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
It's not even in the UK - that's terrible clickbait from The Telegraph.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
It's not even in the UK - that's terrible clickbait from The Telegraph.
It's in Indiana, I think. I don't know the political alignment of the judge in question, but that's another bagful of votes in the Trump column.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party is heading for an unprecedented general election victory under leader Herbert Kickl, projections say.
The projections, based on almost complete results, give Kickl's party 28.8% - more than two points ahead of the conservative People's Party on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People's Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.
They are on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
He sounds like a nutter.
The UK is better off without him.
Didn't GB News have to ditch him? And that's saying something.
No wonder he's gone to America, they have a market for oddball grifters.
But they have no shortage of supply of them too.
America has people interested in it. But it's others who pump the roubles in to keep these grifters grifting. Plenty available for those willing to debase themselves and not think too much about it.
I think she only gets 3rd, it will be Jenrick v Tugendhat or Cleverly the MPs send to the members
Possibly, and that's certainly the scenario that's most often put forward. But it just takes a couple of missteps and she's in, so...there's that. A fiver is not big money and worth a punt on value grounds.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
The Southeast is grappling with widespread devastation after Helene made landfall. In North Carolina, days of flooding have turned roads into waterways, and left many without basic necessities and strained state resources. CNN’s Rafael Romo has the latest from Asheville, North Carolina:
I think she only gets 3rd, it will be Jenrick v Tugendhat or Cleverly the MPs send to the members
The members are going to be furious. They want Kemi.
They'd get over it, so long as the new leader does ok, so any MPs having that as that primary concern can relax, so long as the final two are decent (this is in relative terms).
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
If you actually looked at the article you would see it was from America and the guy in question is in an Indiana prison.
That's my point. The whole of the west is suffering from this shit
The Southeast is grappling with widespread devastation after Helene made landfall. In North Carolina, days of flooding have turned roads into waterways, and left many without basic necessities and strained state resources. CNN’s Rafael Romo has the latest from Asheville, North Carolina:
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
FFS, it's in the US, not the UK. At least bother to read the article.
It's not like you didn't have warning: telegraph.co.uk is as a strong indicator as any that nonsense is present.
You are seriously close to the rabbit hole now. Like a tiny, yappy terrier.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
If you actually looked at the article you would see it was from America and the guy in question is in an Indiana prison.
That's my point. The whole of the west is suffering from this shit
We need to PURGE
In the best traditions of revolutions, you realise that you will end up against the wall?
I think she only gets 3rd, it will be Jenrick v Tugendhat or Cleverly the MPs send to the members
The members are going to be furious. They want Kemi.
They want Thatcher. They chose Truss in her back-page-of-a-sunday-suppliment-souvenir-plate image.
And now Kemi I fear is a faint echo of even that. I've not heard her say a single coherent thing I could call 'a political philosophy' apart from something about toilets.
Dare say the membership would lap it up. If you'll forgive the image.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
If you actually looked at the article you would see it was from America and the guy in question is in an Indiana prison.
That's my point. The whole of the west is suffering from this shit
We need to PURGE
In the best traditions of revolutions, you realise that you will end up against the wall?
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
If you actually looked at the article you would see it was from America and the guy in question is in an Indiana prison.
That's my point. The whole of the west is suffering from this shit
We need to PURGE
In the best traditions of revolutions, you realise that you will end up against the wall?
Perun is quite impressive in that his views per video is actually pretty close to his subscriber number, 400-500k, on a consistent basis (with more popular videos well over that). There are channels with millions of subs who don't get that 500k consistency of views, and bear in mind many many of those views are non-subscribers anyway.
Do we think even Robert Jenrick can picture himself as Prime Minister?
Being able to picture yourself as PM from a long way off, even before you are an MP possibly, is probably an important aspect of the self confidence needed to be able to become PM. So yes, he can.
Does he think he has a realistic chance of it? Maybe, he probably thinks if he is ever to have the chance he cannot wait out this time, despite being pretty young, so it's worth a go.
When we finally have our own UK populist hard right revolution, we will have to entirely cleanse the judiciary, the Home Office, all the senior lawyers, all of them. They are toxic and they are disgusting
If you actually looked at the article you would see it was from America and the guy in question is in an Indiana prison.
That's my point. The whole of the west is suffering from this shit
We need to PURGE
In the best traditions of revolutions, you realise that you will end up against the wall?
PURGE!
I'd recommend sticking with movies 2-3, though some people liked the TV show too.
Comments
And it needs to be decisive to stymie procedural and legal skulduggery.
Pacific was quite good, actually, but I don't know why they didn't integrate the Vets stories into it.
It's essentially a game of two halves: Leckie and then Sledge.
I read both their books because of it. Disturbing and harrowing, but boy they stay with you.
He's available at 13 currently. Tugendhat at 16 which is shorter than he has been.
Badenoch 3.
Sublime.
I don't recall the last time I saw a film which was such pretentious, unfocused, faux-artistic, meaningless bilge.
I cannot even say at least the visuals were good, as it was such an editing nightmare, nor fall back on decent performances, since they range from bland nothing to just plain embarrassing.
It felt like it lasted forever.
Yorgos Lanthimos does weird but compelling so much better.
As for having no intention of handing over the settlements, that's been done time and time again. In Egypt when peace was agreed there and more recently unilaterally Israel removed all of its settlements from Gaza and withdrew completely from Gaza and look what happened afterwards.
Building new settlements in Gaza now unless or until leadership in Gaza respects Israel's rights to exist would be the sensible thing to do now.
Nobody is being cleansed from the West Bank, that is absurd. The borders are not finalised, which is agreed by both sides, and Israel is quite reasonably seeking more land for itself just as its enemy is. Unless or until peace is agreed, that's the sensible thing to do.
https://www.pilotmall.com/blogs/news/a-day-in-the-life-what-is-a-pilot-s-schedule-really-like#:~:text=The CFRs limit Part 121,performing other non-flying duties.
So allowing for duty rosters, annual leave, sickness, pilots in training etc it doesn't seem a ridiculous figure, depending on how intensively the planes fly. The planes will also have down time too.
Consumers don't mind if you stay true to the essential narrative and experience
And on the other side, no amount of CGI and AI and superb acting can make up for a crappy story that doesn't hang together. You lose interest, fast
I think this thread is beneath the normal level of discussion. There is a genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA and whether immigrants both legal and illegal have been strategically placed on it. How much of an issue this is I am not sure but there does seem to be some fire with the smoke. That I believe is what Elon Musk is trying to get at. If Harris wins by a narrow margin (I cant see anything but a tight race) and it is found that illegal immigrants were on the voter roll then potentially we have chaos.
On Israel, my family includes both Iranians and Israeli Jews. The success level of Israel is stunning. They are being fed very good info and the hunch is it is coming from the top in Iran. Forget Gaza which is a sideshow. Is the Iranian leadership about to change?
Is there a market on Starmer surviving? If Twitter is only half true he will be gone in the next month. Who is going to be the next PM?
I liked the debate on Scotland. Looking at by-elections last week. The SNP are still on the way down. Biggest winners are Lib Dems and Reform. I cant see the Lib Dems getting less than 10 MSPs which will make it even harder for anyone to get a majority. Given Reform 3 or 4 MSPs and we are into a German style rainbow parliament.
Final Point is another European country has swung dramatically to the right with Austria. This is now a strong trend.
Then there was the Pompous Brit v. Plucky US fight in a pub stuff which pissed me off.
Even the groundscenes were bad. And that's before you get to the bad lighting and inaudible dialogue stuff that directors now seemingly can't resist.
I am astonished by their wilful blindness. Like someone deliberately walking into a forest fire, scattering tinder as they go
Britain will be next, in 2029. We are lucky we have Farage as a kind of firebreak, the alternative will be worse
I still love it, but narratively I could see people downgrading it a little as a result.
Tomorrow me and Mr Dog move on to stay three days in Biden’s home spot, while I deal with the veterinary admin that Brexit has imposed on my trip - costing a full $600 more than when we last made the same crossing.
Mr Dog says B***ocks to Brexit!
Of course that's an average and some airlines are more efficient than that average and fly planes more, not sure on the efficiency or productivity of Aerolineas specifically.
Labour are not the Tories who change leader more often than their knickers.
Changing leaders when they're not good is a good thing, not a bad one.
Too much stability is a bad thing.
Right now we're in a period were Labour are more serious but that says more about the Tories than it does about Labour.
Heroin and Jellies fad !
I must have led a sheltered life. For me it was barwork at the local British Legion. With the odd fellow amorous barmaid.
There are plenty of instances suggesting once "illegal" immigrants receive amnesty and join society, all they want to do is make a life of themselves so they become workers, pay taxes, use services and come to appreciate (if applicable) the weakness of the social democratic economic model.
Within a few years your Democrat voting immigrant becomes your Republican voting citizen opposed to further immigration and wanting tax cuts and the Government off his/her back.
Musk is wrong - democracy doesn't end, societal evolution never ends, the argument never ends.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-02/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/meet-the-israelis-physically-blocking-the-ethnic-cleansing-unfolding-in-the-west-bank/0000018d-6609-d37c-a9df-ef8b77200000
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/october/ethnic-cleansing-in-the-west-bank
https://journals.openedition.org/revdh/7613
Stop turning a blind eye to this, Bart.
So he has now left the way for the 4 leadership candidates to do their audition speeches this week to follow him
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/29/politics-latest-tory-jenrick-badenoch-cleverly-tugendhat/
The projections, based on almost complete results, give Kickl's party 28.8% - more than two points ahead of the conservative People's Party on 26.3%, but far short of a majority.
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been in coalition before, but the second-placed conservative People's Party has refused to take part in a government led by him.
They are on course to secure about 56 seats in the 183-seat parliament, with the conservatives on 52 and the Social Democrats on 41.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rdygy5888o
Another European country that is going to struggle to have a functioning government.
There is not a "genuine issue with the voter roll in the USA". That is pure MAGA lies. It has been thoroughly debunked over and over. We know Musk is too stupid to understand that, but I had hoped PB posters were a bit more intelligent.
There is a clear risk this will be America's last election. The risk is not in electing Kamala Harris.
Musk doesn't care of course because he's an even bigger crook and nastier piece of work than Trump.
The escalation of violence in the West Bank is neither arbitrary nor disconnected from the violence in Gaza. Instead, as a political scientist who studies Palestinian politics, I believe it should be understood in the broader context. The proliferation of armed settlers in the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settler outposts and now the increasing violence and forced displacement all stem from the same underlying policy that led to the 16-year blockade of Gaza: an Israeli policy of ignoring Palestinian national claims altogether.
You what!? Israel demolished all its settlements in Gaza, the blockade came afterwards (and before Bibi was elected) when Hamas took over. Because blockading Hamas is the sensible thing to do.
Not bothering to read on after that as its clearly completely false bullshit with an agenda.
A £10bn artificial intelligence hub championed by Sir Keir Starmer for creating thousands of new jobs could boast just 300 full-time staff once completed, it has emerged.
The vast data centre project in Northumberland, announced by the Prime Minister last week, will lead to only 300 to 400 permanent staff employed at the site instead of the 4,000 roles indicated by its financial backers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/29/labour-backed-10bn-tech-hub-will-have-300-permanent-staff/
But then, so will Israel.
Denying Autumn Cordellionè’s demand for sex reassignment would be ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, court agrees"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/09/29/taxpayers-fund-trans-surgery-inmate-murdered-stepdaughter/
Cordellionè was convicted of strangling the 11-month-old baby while her mother — the murderer’s then wife — was out at work on Sept 12, 2001.
'According to Fox News, Cordellionè filed a separate lawsuit last year against a prison chaplain for allegedly preventing the inmate from wearing a hijab outside of a cell despite identifying as a Muslim woman.'
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. '
In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control.
"[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."'
https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
The UK is better off without him.
The bill would, over five years, increase tariffs by 100% on imports deemed "strategic" to national security by the Biden administration in an effort to force the growth of the domestic market for national security-related goods.
It would boost tariffs on non-strategic goods by a minimum of 35%.
The bill, led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and cosponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., would also grant the president the authority to institute further tariffs, quotas and bans on specific Chinese goods. It would end "de minimis treatment" for China, or the value threshold below which imports are not subject to customs duties. '
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tom-cotton-releases-bill-cease-all-normal-trade-relations-china-increase-tariffs-100
In legislative elections, does any party in Western Europe now have a higher vote share than the British Labour Party?
Austria's ÖVP had 37.5% under Kurz at the last election, which has now been replaced with a sub 30% number.
Obviously electoral systems play a role, but there feels like a trend towards winning on lower vote share whilst third and fourth placed parties gain ground.
N Carolina, for example, purged a full 10% of its voter roll - and announced the fact just over a month before the election. That’s one example of many.
Not a peep from arch democracy defender Musk about that sort of thing, of course.
We’re very lucky to have a (relatively) consensual set of arrangements for the administration of elections, in this country.
https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/24617483.fire-breaks-two-open-skips-isle-wight-tip/
But they have no shortage of supply of them too.
Badenoch 36%, Jenrick 25%, Tugendhat 13%, Cleverly 13%.
Head to head Badenoch 59% Cleverly 30%, Badenoch 63% Tugendhat 27%, Badenoch 50% Jenrick 37%.
Jenrick 58% Tugendhat 31%, Jenrick 51% Cleverly 37%.
Cloeverly 48% Tugendhat 30%
https://conservativehome.com/2024/09/29/jenrick-starts-to-close-the-gap-with-badenoch-in-our-pre-conference-leadership-survey/
He's in danger of becoming a laughing stock.
That is who you are shilling for, .
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/29/weather/video/asheville-helene-damage-romo-digvid
On the other hand I don't think any of the losers this time will be in the running for the next contest, so They'd get over it, so long as the new leader does ok, so any MPs having that as that primary concern can relax, so long as the final two are decent (this is in relative terms).
We need to PURGE
It's not like you didn't have warning: telegraph.co.uk is as a strong indicator as any that nonsense is present.
You are seriously close to the rabbit hole now. Like a tiny, yappy terrier.
And now Kemi I fear is a faint echo of even that. I've not heard her say a single coherent thing I could call 'a political philosophy' apart from something about toilets.
Dare say the membership would lap it up. If you'll forgive the image.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkwP727sAxg
Also, Starmer is so bad almost anyone will be able to beat him in 2028-29. As long as they can neutralise or pacify Reform
Does he think he has a realistic chance of it? Maybe, he probably thinks if he is ever to have the chance he cannot wait out this time, despite being pretty young, so it's worth a go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purge
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/29/david-cameron-boris-johnson-brexit-leave/
You support leave, I will shank you up bruv....recollections may vary.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unleashed-unfiltered-Conservative-bestselling-political/dp/0008618208/
Might pick it up in a church book sale for 50p in a few years.
A bit of reality. (Random video that popped up on YouTube).
"I stayed at London's cheapest hotel, but was attacked on the streets
Adams Rotten Rooms"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNSIGq2Jbtw