Panto_Villan

The US is already entirely self-sufficient in oil and gas. It’s a very narrow view to assume we could just ignore the Middle East if only we didn’t need their oil.

I believe it’d need to be a constitutional amendment, so 2/3 of both houses. I’d be absolutely amazed if Trump was willing to do it for the Supreme Court though (or if he did, his party would refuse to vote for it).

I don't think this is true. You might be right about the long-term effects, but I very much doubt Saudi would think that far ahead - Iran are a real threat to them, and I think the Saudis would be extremely enthusiastic about a chance to take the Iranians out. Countering Iranian influence was the main driving force behind the recent improvement of relations with Israel, as the Arab countries consider Iran a much bigger issue than Israel these days. That was clear in Yemen, where a coalition of several Arab nations couldn't even defeat one of the weaker Iranian proxies. Let alone the fact Iran keep threatening to build nukes. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if all the countries that were fighting the Houthis in Yemen would happily support an American invasion of Iran with their own military forces, and if not I'm sure they'd be willing to contribute to an invasion logisitically.

Yeah, I really think there should be term limits on more offices than just the President. Adding them to the supreme court and both houses of Congress would probably be a big improvement. Something like 20 years seems the absolute maximum anyone should be able to spend in those three institutions. The same is true in the UK as well. There'd still be some old people in politics that way, but only after they'd spent most of their life doing something else.

Yeah. Or another assassination of one of their military generals abroad? There's quite a few options available, it's just a question of what Biden decides is a suitable response. But yes, my money would probably be on large-scale strikes on targets outside Iranian borders. Haha. The problem is they did get Iran to sit down and talk things over a few years back, and there was a nuclear deal agreed between the US and Iran and several European powers, including us. Wasn't a great deal by any stretch of the imagination, but Trump ripped it up - so I don't think Iran would trust the US to stick to a deal even if one was negotiated. Their foriegn policy is too erratic these days. With all that said, I think the hope is that once the Gaza war is over, the region might calm down a bit. I guess the US is probably hoping it can get by by trading missiles and drone strikes with Iran until Israel are done with Gaza, and then perhaps everyone can claim they achieved their objectives and let the situation calm down. But escalation can take on a life of its own. Hamas' terror attack was disastrously successful because it left Israel no choice but to respond with overwhelming force against Hamas, and if say an Iranian missile somehow got through the defences of a US warship and sunk it with massive loss of life then Biden would similarly have no other option than start a major war with Iran. So everyone involved is playing a dangerous game here.

Honestly, no idea. As I said above there's genuinely no good options here. The US really doesn't want to escalate, but they also need to do something big enough to deter Iran from further action, and those two things appear contradictory. I'd guess they'd err on the side of non-escalation, and then in a few weeks they'll find themselves in the same situation again.

Out of interest, have you updated your thoughts on the Ukraine conflict since the proper war broke out? Apologies if I'm misremembering but I seem to recall you talking about the democratic revolutions in Ukraine being carried out by CIA-funded fascists before Putin invaded. Is that what the US did to force Russia to invade, or was it something else?

No, it's not normal. But they're all Iranian-aligned proxies so really it needs to be seen as Iran flexing it's muscles rather than lots of small groups acting independently.

Some of the difference might come because there's a legal and criminal distinction between knowingly paying money to members of a banned terrorist group, and paying money to a non-banned organisation that might still engage in activities we consider to be bad (indoctrinating children in extremist ideologies, etc). Certainly for any individual or corporation, you'd be on the hook for a serious crime if you're knowingly transferring money to an organisation that you have evidence may then transfer some of it banned terrorist group. Whereas it's sort of irrelevent from a legal perspective what the UNRWA have previously been up to if they're not on the banned organisation list; giving them money for their own use isn't a crime. I'd assume most Western countries have legislation in place that says government bodies are not legally allowed to authorise any payment to a banned terrorist group, and if so then they'd need to do a bit of due dilligence before they can continue to fund the UNRWA.

Yeah, war with Iran would be a big thing. As mentioned above, they're basically the dominant regional power after the US put the smackdown on Iraq and Israel are tied up with the Palestinians and Hezbollah. There's a couple of problems with trying to fight them. The first is that there's not very far from having nuclear weapons, and if they come under attack they'll almost certainly start sprinting the final stretch. I forget what their current breakout time is estimated to be, but it's not long. Two weeks, maybe? Perhaps two months? Basically the US and Israel would need to find all the Iranian enrichment sites, which are often buried deep underground, and destroy them all before Iran enriches enough uranium to build nukes. Not the easiest task in the world. But who knows what would happen if Iran lobbed a nuke at Israel, or just fired it at the US carrier group parked off their coast? Not sure anyone really wants to find out. The second problem is that they've got quite a large army, and a lot of regional proxies like the Houthis and Hezbollah. They're not exactly a high-tech force but they've been involved in a lot of fighting and they're not going to be a pushover. There's also twice as many people in the country as there were in Iraq. And does Biden even have the political support at home for a major war in the Middle East? There's a lot of isolationists in the the Republican camp. I don't envy anyone who has to make the decisions here. There's no easy answers so far as I can see.

Yeah. When discussing politics casually an awful lot of different axes get compressed into a single left / right line. Those things you mention are a big part of political identity in Europe too. I was under the impression support for capitalism and free markets vs socialism and communism was the original genesis of the left / right spectrum, but it’s a bit tangential to the discussion anyway.

I think the social views are measured predominantly on the authoritarian/ libertarian axis, aren’t they? How much control should the state exert over people’s reproductive / sexual activities, education preferences, respect for free speech and democracy, etc. Left / right does tend to mostly represent your economic perspective. Presumably it’s possible to be a centrist on one axis but not another.

I don’t think the UN agency is the only organisation with access to Gaza, but even if they were then I doubt they lack the financial reserves to operate for a couple of weeks at normal capacity while some of their funding countries temporarily pause donations. As I said, it becomes a problem if this turns into a prolonged thing, but if it’s resolved in a week or two it probably won’t have any operational effect at all.

The ICJ has already given its provisional ruling, and the full ruling about whether genocide was committed is going to take literally years (we’re quite possibly talking a decade away). This matter isn’t going to change anything about either ruling. Yes, it’s perfectly possible Israel is releasing damaging material on the UN to try and further its own aims, but you think the court case from SA should be considered on its own merits despite them not being a trustworthy source. The same should apply to allegations made by Israel. It’s perfectly sensible for countries to temporarily pause funding an organisation that is alleged to be paying salaries to Hamas members while they investigate the matter. Canada isn’t exactly a noted warmonger but they’ve done the same thing. If this gets used as an excuse to permanently end aid to Palestinian refugees then sure, I can see the issue. Even if this agency is compromised there should be other ways to get aid to the Palestinians. It’ll be a few weeks before we know if that’s happened though.

I did the test and I got -1.75 / -3.03, so slightly to the left and leaning libertarian rather than authoritarian. Not sure how meaningful that is without knowing where Britain as a whole sits on the chart though.

As far as I'm aware, Britain isn't pausing military / financial aid to Israel because hasn't sent any at any point in the conflict. Whereas Britain has been funding the UNRWA for the full duration of the conflict. The US position on Israel here is rather hypocritical, but what's new there? Not sure you can say the same about any of the other countries pausing aid though.

No, I imagine he's talking about the fact a number of Western countries have paused funding UNRWA (the UN Palestinian Refugee agency) while they investigate allegations that a number of the employees were involved in the Hamas attack on Israel. Not really sure what to think about it. I can certainly see why the West doesn't want to be directly funding Hamas members, but it depends how long an investigation is going to take.

Looks cool. I presume it’s based on the novel?

Hmmm. I’m not at all qualified to answer that question, but Wikipedia suggests that it’s debated whether it would permit someone to take a third term. That said, I can’t imagine it’d go down great with the electorate and I also think it’d be awfully tempting for the guy who had been elected president and done the debates and all the campaigning etc and had the army under his control to just, y’know, not resign and instead spend four years being President. Trump couldn’t do anything about it if he did. I think the more likely approach would be that he’d just anoint Donald Trump Jr as his chosen successor in the next election instead. But it remains to be seen whether anyone else could defy political gravity like Trump can, even his son. Although all this is predicated on the idea that Trump actually wins the election. That’s far from a given at this point, and even if he does he also needs to win both the Senate and Congress to be able to govern effectively.

So this is something I was genuinely concerned about a week or so back, but a friend of mine pointed out that amending the constitution requires either a 2/3 vote of both houses or a 2/3 vote of the states, and there’s no way either party will have that much power any time soon. I also don’t think even Trump could pull off trying to disregard that. It’s about as cut and dried a legal question as you can get. Even hardcore MAGA supporters can count to two.

The problem isn’t your position, it’s the fact a bunch of people corrected someone who referred to SA as a “beacon of morality” and then you angrily accused them of minimising genocide.

South Africa’s chequered history clearly shouldn’t undermine the results of the court case they brought against Israel. It means the evidence and arguments SA put forward should be treated with due skepticism, but that’s what the ICJ judges are trained to do so it shouldn’t affect the ultimate ruling. However anyone who believes South Africa are “a beacon of hope and morality” absolutely need correcting given their support of genocide elsewhere in the world. SA can do a good thing but still be a bad actor, just like people wouldn’t call Saudi Arabia a beacon of morality if they’d brought the case instead. Seems strange anyone would be angry about people being against genocide.

Ah, that doesn’t sound particularly pleasant. Maybe I’m thinking of carbon monoxide poisoning specifically then. Or perhaps you get sleepy if you’re breathing low oxygen gas rather than pure inert gas. Plus I guess the other disadvantage of gas is that, unlike lethal injection, you can’t have friends and family at your bedside at the end. Might limit its use in assisted suicide. I’m purely interested in this because I think assisted suicide will be much more popular in the coming decades. Someone being given the death penalty doesn’t really raise eyebrows for me any more.

Yeah. Wouldn’t be surprised to see this replace lethal injection in the long term tbh, both for the death penalty and voluntary euthanasia. If you’re breathing something and it doesn’t contain too much carbon dioxide, your body doesn’t react. You just get sleepy and die.

It’s impossible to discuss conscription in the current climate because it’s impossible to envision an actual scenario where it’d be necessary to start conscripting people. The UK is a long way from any dangerous opponents and we have nuclear weapons to discourage anyone threatening the UK itself. We don’t have an aggressive expansionist neighbour like Ukraine does. Of course the country wouldn’t support conscription at present. But I’d fight for this country if say China and India formed an alliance and went rampaging across Europe, treating occupied people the way the Japanese did in WW2. I imagine lots of people would be willing to fight if the lives of their friends or loved ones were actually at stake. But there’s a million reasons why that’s not going to happen, isn’t there? And I don’t think anyone has suggested conscription would happen in the current climate.