Panto_Villan

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?

I think there’s an awful lot of people jumping to the assumption that Trump actually cares about the 2% spend of NATO, especially as some kind of master plan to sell more weapons. I think it’s a lot more likely he’s an isolationist who doesn’t consider any of the US allies as being worth fighting for. I don’t think he’d be willing to go to war with Russia if they attacked Poland, even though Poland spends 4% of GDP on its military. The 2% thing is just a convenient fig leaf.

You'll probably find out in the next couple of weeks. The US Senate is due to pass an aid bill for Israel and Ukraine on Wednesday (with both Democrat and Republican support), and it'll be sent to Congress. If it passes, then you can expect the stalemate to continue until at least November. Maybe Russia will take small amounts of territory, but nothing too significant. It's possible next year or later this year that Russia will exhaust their stocks of military hardware and want to negotiate some kind of peace where they retain some of the territory they've taken, but perhaps not all of it. But if the vote fails or the Republican speaker just decides not to bring it to the floor then the US aid for Ukraine is dead. If that happens then the war is effectively over at that point - Ukraine won't be able to hold their territory, as Europe just doesn't have the military stockpiles or production to sustain Ukraine's war effort alone. Russia will have no reason to seek any kind of peace deal when they've got Ukraine on the ropes and have already stared down the West.

Not really, because that would imply both choices are equally bad. It should be pretty obvious to literally anyone with a functioning brain that Trump is much worse than Biden, even if Biden is past the age where he should be holding office. Also if someone followed me around with a video camera for a few weeks (let alone years) you’d probably be able to make a highlights video making me look senile and I’m not even 40 yet.

Iran's government is only "effective" in the same way that Russia or North Korea is - they've completely sacrificed their economic development in order to be a regional military power. The government has clung onto power but the situation there is anything but stable; there's been mass uprisings against the government twice in the last five years which have both resulted in hundreds of people being killed by security services and dozens of people being publicly executed. Sure, they're making a little bit of money on their drones but their GDP is $350bn whereas Israel's GDP is $500bn - and Iran has almost ten times the population, plus major oil reserves. Even the UK alone has a GDP of ten times that of Iran. Iran should be much wealthier than it actually is. The problem is, how do you expect the West to deal with a regime that is behaving that way? We've already been doing sanctions, but they've got limited effect if a government is more interested in troublemaking than economic development. So when you complain about a lack of leadership, what do you do you actually expect our leaders to do about Iran - invade them?

Speaker of the House just said he's spiking the Ukraine / Israel / US border deal being worked on in the Senate, and will instead by putting forward an Israel-only bill next week (likely under MAGA pressure). The Ukrainians apparently believe there's a back channel between Trump and Putin, and are trying to figure out who it is - although, in a remarkable coincidence, MAGA star Tucker Carlson has been over in Moscow for the past three days. Europe doesn't have the military capacity to sustain Ukraine's ammunition needs until November / January, which is the earliest US aid could resume if the MAGA crowd are intent on sabotaging things. It's looking pretty bleak for Ukraine.

Yeah, of course it does. But that’s part of the reason why the blockade is dumb - they’re letting in 100 lorries a day, which is presumably enough to sustain Hamas, but not enough to feed the civilian population who have to make do on what doesn’t get stolen. Also, I really don’t think trying to starve Hamas to death was ever going to be a viable strategy. Israel have plenty of other ways to kill militants so how well-fed they are shouldn’t really be a concern. I can’t see how letting in enough food for everyone would make things any harder for the IDF (beyond them needing to search more trucks each day). I think a lot of the realities of fighting a war against Hamas are harder than many posters here make out, but even to me many things Israel is doing are not justified.

An awful lot of them are now dead, too - the men were conscripted into the DPR / LPR forces at the start of the war en-made and used as expendable meat for the Russian war machine.