magnkarl

The bread and shelter being dependent on a militia is exactly why the UNRWA needs to be looked at. And, while I get your point, I don't think any sort of UN or Western aid should go to a teacher who posts pictures online of bombs and wanting to execute any people, no matter where they are from. If you don't see that that is an issue, then that might be part of the problem for UNRWA. 'Oh it's fine that kids are being taught by extremists, the extremists hold those views because of Israel!'. The striking amounts of aid given to Palestine over the years have ensured two things, rich, fat-cat politicians in Hamas\Fatah\PA and a population held ransom by extremists in Gaza. The UN has both the power and military to do the handouts themselves and not rely on a terrorist organisation to do so.

Israel is clearly fumbling here, though the UNRWA is clearly not without fault on many things: Report alleges ethical abuses at UN agency for Palestinian refugees Or that time when they lied about how many 'Palestinians' they serve to increase aid: Lebanon census turns up two-thirds fewer Palestinians than expected Or, that time shortly after Oct 7th where a whole bunch of UNRWA teachers praised the attack. Group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers celebrates Hamas massacre and rape Here's the US hearing on it, full of sources, incriminating articles and research from people not connected to Israeli media, some of it obviously has people from Israel testifying, and some of it is based on internal reports from the UN. I think it's likely a case here that the UNRWA clearly isn't fit for purpose. Why does the UN need its own agency for Palestinians when lots of other groups suffer the same or worse and don't have one? The way UNRWA has propped up Gaza for years now clearly hasn't worked, it's gotten worse and worse, and the organisation seems to lose sight of what its purpose originally was. Hamas controls the aid and the population is off worse. PA/Fatah heads controls the money and amasses wealth at an unprecedented rate. Israel clearly has a habit of trying to discredit UNRWA, though I don't really think UNRWA does a great job at making that job hard for Israel. The historical narrative for UNRWA is that you can't possibly talk about their issues and failures, that doing so somehow discredits Palestinians. I'd say it's the other way around. When this organisation keeps the current cycle going we need to look at it. Just like we need to seriously consider how we could've prevented Israel from committing war crimes while being our ally.

But that was written before the US came in with their biggest aid bill ever. We'll see. My guess is that it depends on the election in November.

Seems the US plans to get stuff in to Ukraine as soon as the ink is on the paper. Trucks moving out of American bases in Germany with Abrams, Strykers and lots of kit from the European rapid response forces being utilised and later back filled.

Hakeem Jeffries seems solid. Future president?

The Democrats are roasting the Republicans to hell in congress right now, it's about to go to a vote.

Sure all those people fell out of windows, really..

Hard to say. Stuff that goes on a plane. A week maybe. Stuff that goes on a boat? Upwards of a month. GMLRS rockets and shells, likely very fast. Bradleys, Stryker and Abrams, likely the end of May unless they've got a stockpile somewhere in Europe. I'm not sure if Ukraine have any heavy transports left, but they can carry the heavier stuff too - @blandy knows way more about how much stuff can get flown than I do. If there's a will there's a way. The Pentagon is already preparing to send the first aircraft apparently, and some have already landed at Rammstein according to locals.

The bill for Ukraine will go through tomorrow, people tell me. Great news. Hope America wakes up and tosses MAGA out on its ass.

Patriot or FrankenSAM-200 on the prowl.

I think Emi does a better job at goading the French than we do..

'Oh la la laah' does it for me. **** French.

World's best keeper. Hands down. Or up, or wherever the hell Emi wants to put them.

If only Ukraine got 1/10th of the reporting and mass frenzy that Gaza gets in the West the war would be over in summer last year.. But I guess that was Putin's plan all along when he invited Hamas to the Kremlin. Someone else took the spotlight and appear to be outplaying the West at their own propaganda-game.

He forgot the last 6 months where he's blocked this. Idiot.

Doesn't appear to be, none of the content creators can get through to google, they're being stonewalled by AI-chatbots. The Russian Dude (pro Ukraine Russian dissident) was also taken down. It appears that Google have just let it slip, a bit like twitter. It's now just a place where bad-faith regimes can play the rules to their advantage and try to force the conversation away from their own horrible conduct. Expect that the bots went into overdrive now that the US are about to give Ukraine massive capability. Yesterday Russia bombed the Chernihiv hospital, killing at least 10. The usual suspects who are extremely vocal on Palestine are deathly silent on Russia.

So Russia has found a way to strangle pro-Ukrainian channels on youtube by spamming the report buttons with bots. Reporting From Ukraine has been taken down, so has Arthur Rehi, Combat Veteran Reacts, Denys Davidov+++. The biggest tech company in the world can't spot a bot attack? Jesus Christ on a bike. I think both the EU and US need to seriously look into how autocratic regimes are playing big techs' algorithms.

France and Poland maybe. The US just briefed our MOD that our armed forces will take 10 years to get to where they're in good working order again. We've cut our tank, ship and airframe fleet since like forever. Spain and Portugal? Maybe.. The Nordics are capable too, especially with Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the money they're putting into their air fleet and armament.

It appears like Mike Johnson has caved. He's going to split the aid bill into 4 different bits to try to allow his loonies to show their 'conscience' when voting on aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel separately, and then he's somehow linking banning TikTok with the border bill. I don't see how most republicans won't vote yes for the aid for Ukraine unless Trump has a bigger hold than I thought. It would only need 4 republican votes to pass. It would then need to go back to the Senate where it'll pass too. At least there's a glimmer. The guy is off his nuts.

If only we had a pre-Iraq Blair to go to the Yanks and get them to wake up like he did with Bosnia. It's up to EU\UK\Norway to keep Ukraine in this until the U.S election. The US will be forever stained for this. From listening to various podcasts on this people in the DOD in US predicted this war years ago, and have been trying to get US politicians to arm Ukraine ever since to no avail. Must be the most depressing job in the world.

What do you think is the chance of the discharge petition going through? How long can Maga-Mike keep up this idiocy? Does it take another Iranian attack for him to buckle?

The US did eventually step in against Milosevic though. There's still hope. I'm not saying that the US should defend Ukraine like they did Israel (though it would likely save tonnes more lives than what Iran's barrage would kill), I'm saying that they should get some of the thousands of tanks\ifv's\apc\airframes and other military kit going to Ukraine even if it is lend lease or via loans. It just makes the US look silly when they have 400 bradleys and 200 abrams mk1 rusting to hell in a desert while Ukraine have shown extremely capable with both. The US is turning a blind eye to their traditional enemy commiting genocide, kidnap, torture and extreme breaches of rules of war when they could even turn a profit on just helping Ukraine with 80-90's kit they don't use. It's sad as hell. It's even more sad that the US public have let itself slip to a place where they believe in the disinformation Russia is spreading via the MAGA-crew.

Hopefully Iran attacking Israel means that the vote in congress will go through. The take away from recent conflicts is that everyone needs a nuke. Thanks Russia.

Biden has backed Israel to the hilt, even with their clear war crimes, lastly with intercepting lots of drones for them. Did that need to go through congress? If you’re Ukraine you can’t but help feel like the US aren’t even out of first gear with their aid, and recently back to park.

They went to great lengths for Israel. For Ukraine they’re leisurely walking at a pace akin to that of the US while England was being terror bombed and Hitler was killing 2 million people from minorities a year before they were attacked themselves. FDR wanted to help but was hamstrung by the same clownery we now see in congress. To think that one orange clown and his tiny minority of under-clowns in congress can let a horrible dictatorship do whatever they please with a European ally, just goes to show that the US aren’t reliable anymore.