Panto_Villan

@Captain_Townsend Perhaps you’d like to explain why you’re posting confused reactions to my posts? I’m always happy to listen to alternate viewpoints if you’ve got counterpoints to offer.

Thanks. Yes, I've found it interesting too - although I've got a busier day at work so I doubt I'll be posting as much today I think one other thing to bear in mind is that Britain may have been at its lowest ebb if you're picking the latter half of 1940, but the scale of military conflict between major powers was almost incomprehensibly different in those days. The British Army was 1.6 million men at the time, and although I can't find an exact figure of how many were stationed in Britain you had 550,000 that had been evacuated from France plus all those who were originally stationed in Britain / Northern Ireland rather than France. And that doesn't include the Home Guard, who were another 1.5 million volunteers (or the Navy). The major industrialised countries could call up vast numbers of men and build astonishing amounts of hardware incredibly quickly - the forces in Britain went from having 350 tanks in June 1940 to having 700 two months later. We were building 400 Spitfires & Hurricanes per month between June and October in 1940. We could build more planes and tanks than the entire Irish armed forces had in just a couple of days. How could Ireland ever compete with that? Basically, don't mistake Britain being on the back foot against another superpower as Britain being weak. It's hard to relate to today, but Britain was still incredibly powerful compared to everyone except for the handful of other world powers. I don't think Britain would have wanted to invade Ireland unless it was absolutely necessary, but if Ireland had announced they were joining the Axis then I honestly don't think they'd have lasted a week. Our military and industrial base was so large it just wouldn't have stretched us much.

I think you’re making the assumption that Britain had deployed all their forces elsewhere at the start of WW2. Although it makes hypothetical discussions more interesting, I don’t think it was true. It seems like we had quite extensive army forces deployed in Northen Ireland at the start of the war and they weren’t committed elsewhere until D-Day. Similarly the Home Fleet was operating in UK waters, and contained a lot of large ships until 1944. It was already protecting the seas we’d have needed to control to blockade Ireland. I think the reason why we were worried about Ireland falling to the Nazis is the same reason why we’d find it relatively easy to conquer - it’s right next to Britain, and not very well protected. Hard to know for certain but it seems like the forces earmarked for defending Britain itself would have been adequate for taking Ireland, so I don’t think it would have required deprioritising anything else. Yes, there would have been partisan activity if we’d actually attacked Ireland but Britain had 200 years of invading and conquering much larger countries than Ireland. I doubt it would have been any harder to control than France or Poland or any other (much larger) country that was occupied in WW2. EDIT: that said, one interesting angle to the hypothetical is how much invading Ireland would have poisoned relations with America?

Come on - if any German naval officer ordered 10 U-boats into the small and shallow Irish Sea to take on half the Royal Navy with the RAF overhead he'd probably be shot for treason. At the end of the day you're talking about a country with 3m people, an agrarian economy and no real military forces or defence industry, vs one of the most powerful countries in the world with a population of 50m, a global empire to call on and a defence industry to match. There's absolutely no way Ireland would have been able to hold out for any length of time once the British navy had cut them off from any potential aid. But even that's irrelevent. Turns out we already had the forces required to invade Ireland stationed in Northern Ireland in 1940 and (surprising nobody) we'd made a plan to invade Ireland if the Germans attacked. Sounds like it was done largely in co-operation with the Irish government but from reading the article it's implied we were going into Ireland to fight off any attacking Germans whether the Irish wanted us to or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_W However, because of the threat of German occupation and seizure of Ireland and especially the valuable Irish ports, Plan W was developed. Northern Ireland was to serve as the base of a new British Expeditionary Force that would move across the Irish border to repel the invaders from any beach-head established by German paratroopers. In addition, coordinated actions of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy were planned to repel German air and sea invasion. According to a restricted file prepared by the British Army's "Q" Movements Transport Control in Belfast, the British would not have crossed the border "until invited to do so by the Irish Government,"[1] and it is not clear who would have had the operational authority over the British troops invited into the State by Éamon de Valera.[2]

Yeah, that's a very good point. They'd have needed to send unescorted bombers, or they'd have been forced to try and use the Me110 as an escort fighter. I don't think either would have gone very well.

Hmmm. I suppose that depends how much Britain had telegraphed it. If we're talking hypotheticals, Ireland had no real air force or navy, and only had a small army with not many armoured vehicles or artillery. They could have called up more men if Britain was clearly preparing to invade, but there's only so much infantry can do on the battlefield without the hardware to back them up. Given where Ireland is located, I'm not sure joining the Axis would have helped much in that situation. How would the Germans have been able to help them? The Royal Navy was still the biggest navy in the world at the time so sneaking ships past them with troops or supplies was always going to be a struggle, and I don't think the Luftwaffe alone would have been able to prevent a British invasion.

Yup, you're absolutely right - that's why I mentioned it in the last paragraph. India is definitely heading down the route of chauvanistic Hindu nationalism, and it's not at all nice to read about. Anti-Muslim pogroms and the like. That said, it's still got a long way to go before it'd be equivalent to the level of religious fundamentalism you see in say Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan etc.

The issue with Islam isn't anything fundamental to the religion itself, it's mostly that a lot of Muslims live in the Middle East and Northern Africa which are the two of the least stable areas of the world. That's not because the people there are Muslims - there's a lot of factors for it. It's easy to blame religion for the state of the region when you're sitting in Europe or America, but Europe had more than its fair share of continent-wide religious wars up until democracy took hold, and there's plenty of examples of first world countries that had major sectarian divides up until a few decades ago (e.g. Ireland). You can't really blame Islam for the problems of the Middle East. At the same time, it needs to be acknowledged that Islam is unusual because a number of world governments have fundamentalist Islamic leaders with violent and retrograde beliefs. That's not really true for other religions - there's no fundamentalist Christian or Buddhist or Hindu countries. That means terrorism and violence is currently much more likely to be commited in the name of Islam than any other religion. Again, that's not to blame anything on Islam specifically. When countries do start to flirt with other types of religious fundamentalism (Christianity in America, Buddhists in Myanmar, Hindus in India etc) it's no less ugly than fundamentalist Islam is.

They can’t bypass him. It’ll definitely pass if there’s a vote, but if he chooses not to bring the bill to the floor then nobody can vote on it. What they could do is threaten to launch a vote of no confidence and then vote with the democrats to remove him and then vote for a democrat speaker to replace him (who would bring the bill to the floor)… but that’s a way more serious trangression against your party than just voting against the party line on one vote. Not sure I can see anyone threatening that.

Wouldn’t be surprised if Britain invaded Ireland first to pre-empt that. We actually had a plan to invade Norway and Sweden to stop the Germans getting it, but the Nazis launched their invasion first. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_R_4#:~:text=Plan R 4 was an,not carried out as designed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68284380 The US Senate has approved a long-awaited $95bn (£75.2bn) aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of political wrangling. Passed 70-29, which is pretty overwhelming bipartisan support. I just hope the Republicans in Congress do the right thing now.

F16's do have better radars, yeah. But it's not like Ukraine doesn't have pretty powerful ground-based radars already. The key difficulty is that the Russian air force primarily attacks Ukraine by firing long range missiles at it - so they take off over Russia, get a lot of altitude, and then head towards the front lines and release missiles while high up and still well behind the front lines. Obviously the range of these cruise missiles is a lot longer than an air-to-air missile, so to stop these attacks the Ukrainian aircraft would need to get close to the front lines. But they can't do that because air defence will shoot them down if they fly high, and if they fly low their missiles won't have the range. The situation is the same whether it's a MiG or an F16; the latter is more advanced but it'll still suffer the same fundamental problem (as would Russia if the situation were reversed). Yes, there's been a lot of SEAD but it's mostly been taking place around Crimea and I believe that's mostly been done to pave the way for the missile attacks on the Russian fleet, and the attempted drone attacks on other parts of Crimea. @Mandy Lifeboats yes, you may well be correct that the better radars and better missile integration means the F16's will be more effective against helicopters than the MiGs are. I don't think that's going to be a game changer though, even if it does happen. And yes, it does pave the way for use of more advanced munitions in future.... assuming the US actually continue sending Ukraine military aid.

We've had some good experiences with TUI all-inclusives - the sort of holiday I'd never have dreamed I'd be doing ten years ago but with two small children they've been a godsend. We went to Greece most recently; it didn't break the bank and it was a nice resort with good rooms, nice pools and decent food. The kids seemed to enjoy the kids clubs for an hour or two each day as well. Anyway, there's obviously plenty of possible destinations but I'd absolutely recommend you go for an all-inclusive whatever you do choose. Maybe you end up paying slightly more overall but it makes things so much easier with small children. As Genie says, make sure you check what the transfer time is once you land.

Sure, I fully agree with that. I was just pointing out that it's not true to say it makes up a lot of the US growth in the linked article; it's a relatively small factor overall.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/10/europe/russian-forces-push-into-ukraine-avdiivka-intl-hnk/index.html Avdiivka, to the northwest of Donetsk city, remains the scene of some of the heaviest fighting as Russian forces continue their push from the north into the center of town. The DeepState mapping site has shown a series of Russian advances in recent days and now puts Moscow’s fighters in control of part of the railway line just north of the town’s station.

No, they're not. They can't really be used offensively because the Russian air defences are too strong - they're mostly just a somewhat more capable replacement for the old Soviet jets the Ukrainians are using defensively to shoot down cruise missiles and patrol their own territory, because it's hard to get replacement parts for the old MiGs. It's about maintaining the capacities Ukraine already has more than giving them new ones. Basically you won't see them winning many dogfights with the Russians because air-to-air missiles only have good range if you fly high, and if you fly high in a contested area then you're vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles.

Biden isn't a rubbish President (although he is old), but from an economic standpoint there's a lot of good arguments to be made that the level of covid stimulus under Biden was excessive. It's helped improve GDP figures over the past couple of years but it's also one of the main factors contributing to inflation over there, and it's added a lot to the (already pretty enormous) US debt pile. So it's maybe not the unambiguous win it looks like. It's really not a lot at all when compared to the covid stimulus. Ukraine aid has been about ~$75bn, not all of which was spent on military hardware and quite chunk of what was was out of service (i.e. had already been replaced, so wouldn't generate new arms sales). Whereas the covid stimulus was ~$2.3 trillion. Even if we're being generous and say ~$50bn of Ukraine aid ended up being spent on new hardware from the US arms industry, it's only like... ~2% of the covid amount. Drop in the ocean really.

Sure, but when they stopped trying to take Ukrainian territory and why they did so would affect what article I would have chosen. Like, I don't know if you think both sides stopped attacking when the lines settled down in 2023 or whether you think that Russia was only interested in the Donbass and have entirely forgotten the initial stages of the war where various parts of Ukraine were attacked from multiple directions, or something else entirely. In any case, the situation is the same - it's a war and both sides have continued to attack each other heavily throughout. The only difference in 2023 was that both sides had built more minefields and fortifications, so the attacks ended up capturing far less territory than they did previously and it became a war of attrition rather than a war of maneuver. But the fighting is still extremely fierce and costly for both sides. There's like a million sources for that, but here's the first one I found on Google: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/12/ukraine-and-russia-say-they-want-peace-but-theyre-nowhere-near-talks.html “It is true that the battlefield isn’t moving very far in one direction or the other but the reality is that there’s a lot going on on the battlefield that’s keeping it exactly where it is ... There’s a lot of fighting going on. That indicates that both sides feel there is more that they can achieve, and need to achieve, on the battlefield.”

It’s actually quite hard to answer this unless I know why you think Russia has stopped seeking more territory. What’s your understanding of the situation?

Russia was absolutely seeking more land (and still are) - they were just incapable of taking it. During 2022 the Ukrainians also reclaimed more like 25% of the occupied lands - look at how much the borders changed in Kharkiv and Kherson, as @LondonLax pointed out. Yes, it was a stalemate in 2023 when both sides tried large attacks that captured very little ground.

Depend what you mean by “progress”. The aid supplied so far stopped the routine takeover of Ukraine, and then allowed Ukraine to push the Russians out of Kharkiv etc. It’s much more of a stalemate now, but the aid given so far has been far from pointless. At this point the question is just “do we let Ukraine collapse?” or “do we back Ukraine to the point where the Russians eventually have to seek peace?” Because right now Russia has no interest in peace, because they know they’ll win the long war.

They didn’t get him into power, though. If they had the power to choose the next President then they’d surely have picked literally any other candidate from the 2016 primary field? They were all far more reliable low-tax pro-corporate Republicans, who weren’t trying to undermine the trade and globalisation that made corporate America rich. I get the point that US corporations wield outsize political power, but you’re exaggerating it there. I know it doesn’t suit your political narrative but the fact Trump is anywhere near power should prove that.

If the West throws its weight behind Ukraine the best case could potentially be better than that - the Ukrainians are more motivated than the Russians given it’s their country under attack, and the West’s industrial capacity (and technology) dwarfs that of Russia. Given enough supplies the Ukrainians might be able to make it too costly for the Russians to want to continue the fight, and have to give some concessions to end the war. But that’s reliant on this Ukraine aid bill being passed and then Biden winning the election, I think. Or some black swan event like a coup in Russia or Putin dropping dead.

If there’s a secret cabal of global corporatists who run US politics, why would they pick Trump for President instead of someone that’s actually good for their interests?

What are they?