Snowy89

12 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

But not so long ago, we had the BBC's political editor being caught doctoring a video interview with the leader of the opposition.

She asked him one question, then edited the video to show his answer to a completely different question.

And, unquestionably, twenty or thirty years ago, any BBC political editor caught pulling such a stunt would have not remained the BBC political editor for very long afterwards.

This one got her own show.

 

Name and number for non-Brits?

8 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

The Tories ain't winning shit this year. No matter who I vote for.

Which is why you feel comfortable voting greens probably? There is no downside anyway.

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Trump will absolutely encourage more people to die in Gaza. It's not talked about nearly enough but one of the turning points for Hamas was the US choosing to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital and the rest of the world just going along with it, and that was all on Trump. 

That still isn't the point. The point is that for a number of people, right now, voting for Biden means voting for someone who effectively encouraged the deaths of the people they care about. They may not vote for Trump - they probably won't - but it would be a remarkable thing to say to them to vote for someone who they view as complicit in their friends and family's deaths. 

So I ask again, Scot - can you understand why they may not want to do that? 

I think everbody can understand this emotional reaction in the moment. I just hope 6 months allows for enough time to also apply rational thought and that people will not make an emotional choice in the moment that very likely sooner than later they will bitterly regret.

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Interesting one for those who missed it.

Going back to the Taurus (non-) debate from the previous pages.

Scholz clarified, there'd be no Taurus deliveries. Reasons as described, they could be used to hit targets inside Russia, making Germany party in this war. Our Smurf chancellor expressed his irritation over the way this decission was/is covered,

When you hear Justin Bronk explaining the worst case scenario for Ukraine, I can no longer even remotely understand the current hesitancy on EU leaders. What do these European leaders exactly expect the impact to be of a new refugee wave of very possibly more than 10 million additional Ukrainians running to EU countries if the Ukrainian army crumbles due to lack of ammunition like the Afghan army. Have they even remotely thought through the political and economical consequences just on Europe, never mind the world economy?

What do they expect the consequences of a Russia in full control of all Ukraine's borders all along EU nation states, with an experienced victorious army with backed by a military industry in full production. Like the guest says, what kind of deterrence do European leaders think they will have against Russia when they have just shown they cannot even bear when it is only money to stop the Russian army. Do they honestly expect Putin to believe them when they say they will now spend both money AND blood to defend Europe's borders. I'm honestly starting to think I may need to start preparing some emigration plans before this shitshow hits.

2 hours ago, Celestial said:

I do not think it is a case of "the pool of competent leadership dried up, right across Western democracies, at some point in the 1990's" as SeanF put it, but rather the fact that NATO and the United States have not faced a major threat from a near-peer adversary for more than 30 years. Just like muscles atrophy if you don't use them, so could strategic thinking.

Basically, we have a political class who has lived in a kind of "la belle epoque" for 30 years and who suddenly found itself required to deal with a kind of brutal military expansionism from a near-peer adversary not seen since WW2. It is no surprise that they all, without any single exception, displayed massive complacency, lack of imagination and total incapacity to think outside the box. It is like taking a person who lived for 30 years in a luxury penthouse, all his need covered by a trust fund, and suddenly asking him to plough.

And the same thing can be said about the population of Europe and US. If the politicians lived "la belle epoque", so did their constituencies. If you take a population who had not experienced major hardships for decades and suddenly ask them to make significant sacrifices, they are going to scream and whine. Just look at the European farmers recently: the climate change IS coming and is likely to be brutal, yet they don't give a fuck, all they care about is to have cash NOW. If that's how they react to the global warming which is going to affect everyone no matter where they live, to expect them to show better judgment with regard to Russia (which is not likely to march through Berlin or Paris, no matter what turn the events will take) is pointless.

This kind of politicians and this kind of constituencies is a match made in hell. Say what you want about Churchill, but, despite all his other flaws, he at least had the boldness to tell point blank that "blood, toil, tears and sweat" was what was required. Any politician of today would rather hang themselves than tell their constituency the same. It's safer for their careers to bury their heads in the sand, offer off-ramps to Putin and hope everything will solve itself away by some kind of divine intervention.

This applies to American internal politics as well: because Biden and the democrats never had to deal in their whole life with a situation where a president attempted a coup and with a major political party doing the bidding of a foreign power, they have no clue how to deal with this problem. However, going soft on putschists is a very bad idea, because, if there are no consequences for plotting a coup, they would try again. In Jan 2021, someone like Stefanik claimed the insurrectionists had to be punished. Now, the same Stefanik says there was no insurrection. Why this happened is pretty obvious: in Jan 2021, the MAGA-affiliated politicians thought Trump was done for and will end up in jail quickly. But nothing happened to Trump on that account and, as a result, we have the Republican party back in his thrall and the Project 2025, with the fascists preparing to have a second try and to do it right, this time.

They just opened comments on the article. Many comments that there were no reports on Russian channels regarding a defeat/capture of troops on a scale anything like the one described in the article, so I guess things may turn out not to be as bad. Still, the analysis of too little too late, and as you say a complete lack of imagination on European policy makers parts is still valid. 2 years in and only know are we finally starting to see hard long-term commitments, showing Putin with more than just words that Europe actually is in this for the long haul.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/us/politics/ukraine-prisoners-avdiivka-russia.html. Lovely. Up to a 1000 men potentially captured.

This is what this Bidens and EU's incrementalism gets you, only providing support enough for Ukraine not to loose outright. This means you only need one black swan defeat like this for the larger war to completely reverse, since there is no slack available to Ukraine to catch unexpected setbacks. I am so tired of the hubris on western policy makers that think they can manage this tightrope.

7 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I feel like people are really overestimating Russia's military strength and stamina.  Russia is not the Soviet Union.  They are a petrostate with a huge but shrinking stockpile of Soviet weaponry.  I know pessimism is all the rage, but Russia is nowhere near conquering all of Ukraine.  And if they somehow managed that, holding it against an angry population would be extremely difficult.  And then going further and invading Poland or Finland or something is....well beyond anything we have seen from Russia in this war.  If you want to talk about some states like Germany being unprepared for a shooting war, that's fine, but Poland and Finland are not those states. 

According do the IMF and UN estimates, Germany's GDP is more than twice Russia's.

But Russia is spending 40 to 50% of its budget on the war. Can you ever see Germany spending 20% of their budget on their military to match that, short of once war has broken out? People keep talking about GDP this GDP that, and in the meantime after 2 years Ukraine still is at an 1 to 5 disadvantage in artillery ammunition, with parity not even in sight 1 year from now. All the money in the world cannot instantly produce weapons. It needs time, and Europe has been wasting 2 years of it so far.

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

True. To be fair though, from a French perspective, our country has been pushing for a European military alliance that would not rely on US power since the 1950s, and was denied at every turn.
The "French" plan was to develop a military alliance around a strong France-Germany axis, including the development of European weaponry and combined brigades (a friend of mien served in one of these in Germany btw). But both the US and the UK were lukewarm about it, and Eastern Europeans often preferred siding with the US in both commercial and diplomatic matters ; they sought to rely on the US to defend them from a resurgent Russia - while Germany or France wanted to buy cheap fossil fuels from it.
It's the historical paradox of the US position: what the US really wants is for Europe to develop its own military... through buying American weapons. France was ok with the first part, less so with the second...
So we're here also because everyone wanted to develop their own militaro-industrial complex, and this came at the price of unity. If I wanted to paint with a thick brush, NATO was also a great marketing tool... Meanwhile, France had its own assault rifle (the famas), its own jet fighter (the rafale), its own tank (the leclerc), its own submarines ... etc, that it wanted to sell.
A military alliance that entailed sabotaging our own defense industry was not appealing.
So yeah, it is true that France and the French are unlikely to want to extend a nuclear umbrella to Eastern Europe in the near future. But a bit of historical perspective helps understand that: in recent decades, these same Eastern European states often chose to rely on the US rather than help develop an independent European military power (there was a line about "old Europe" at some point, yeah? ) , so...

PS: I'm explaining this position, not necessarily adhering to it, so don't tear me a new one for this. I'm personally no fan of any military-industrial complex...

 

France could have all of that... If they are willing to put their money where their mouth is and explicitly extend both conventional and nuclear protection to all of Eastern Europe. Right now France is talking the talk of wanting a European sovereign defense policy without actually defending the sovereignty of all of Europe. I am convinced if France (+Germany and maybe Italy) were to show real commitment to go all the way to defend the Baltic states + Poland and we were to combine this were to coincide with a Trump presidency stating Eastern Europe was on it's own it would totally convince the Eastern Europeans to hop aboard. Unfortunately I just do not see what kind of geopolitical shock would be able to cause this political shift. If the invasion of of Ukraine did not catalyze this, nothing short of an invasion of an EU member will, at which point it would already be too late.

5 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not wanting to turn this ito a German politics thread (which still exists btw.), however as bad as I think the next CDU lead goverment will be (Merz ), but I don't think they are going to enter a goverment with the AfD (at least not on the Federal level, no idea what they will do in the east on a state level, but that's more down to my low opinion of Saxon and Thuringia).

What I can see as a more realitic scenario. That an end of US support starts a chain reaction among some/most European allies starting to view Ukraine aid as some sorta sunk cost and deciding to follow suit (as there being no point without the US) and ending their support, too (or cutting it down significantly). That's something I can see happening, but that's not necessarily tied to Merz becoming chancellor.

 

 

I recently came across an interesting analysis of this situation. They perceived this situation would have two possible scenarios. One, Poland and Baltic states may choose to actively enter the war against Russia while Ukraine was still standing and able to help. Better to fight Russia with Ukraine still in the fight, than to try to built up their defenses for a couple of years while Ukraine falls and Russia rearms, only to have to face Russia on their own. They would surely loose this fight.

Alternatively they might take the route you described, in which case I do not see how this would ultimately result in any successful defense at all.

Frankly I think this scenario would cause an incredibly fast proliferation of nuclear weapons both in Poland and possibly Finland and maybe other Nordic states. Once US withdraws their nuclear protection and if the Poles cannot be convinced by France/UK that they will be protected by their nuclear weapons, there is nothing even the US can do to deter them from getting nuclear weapons. If you're not going to help us, why care at all about your opinion? They will take any sanctions if that preserves their independence. By the way, you would see the exact same behaviour play out on South Korea and Japan.

As a sidenote, I think we will see similar behaviour on the Ukrainian side if the US does not keep up its support. So far Ukraine has been relatively restrained in its attacks on Russian oil and gas export facilities/ships. If the military support were to really dry up, the US and Europe will have no leverage over Ukrainians at all to prevent them from attempting to stage mass attacks on oil facilities and Russian oil shipping worldwide. The only reason Russia is still able to finance this war is the more than 50% of the national budget this trade brings to the Russian state. As Cicero said, the sinews of war are infinite money. Imagine the impact on the world economy if suddenly every week Russian ships started sinking and/or their oil export facilities. US and European politicians would be wise to use their imagination and think ahead on the impact this would have on their economies.

Alternatively, destroying Russia's oil export capacity might actually not be such a bad idea regardless. Right now Russia still has alternative methods to sell its oil. If Ukraine were to disable all export methods EXCEPT for the still existing oil pipelines to Europe, Russia would have to choose between either selling no oil whatsoever, or using their last remaining method of oil exports to Europe at a price of Europe's choosing. This would add a pressure method on Russia unparalleled by any sanctions put on Russia so far.

12 minutes ago, Bironic said:

I don't think so, at least it wasn't/isn't the main reason. And not in the way most people think, meaning the fear is not that Putin might use nukes. There were plenty of wars since 1945 where one or even more sides had/have nukes, wars that resulted in victories, losses or stalemates.

I think what the USA fears is not Putins nukes, but a Russia without Putin. As paradoxical that might sound. Joe Biden has never been a war hawk, always a pragmatist, a centrist. He saw several major US interventions that wanted regime change backfire completely: In Afghanistan the Taliban are back in power, in Iraq the situation is extremely unstable and there is a violent insurgency going on, while Iran has massively increased its influence in the country. In Libya there is an active civil war. North Korea tripled its efforts to get a nuke and managed to do so partially out of fear that the US might remove their regime, a similar thing happened/happens in Iran. The rise of Putin is unthinkable in a world where the Soviet Union never collapsed, similarly a rise of Stalin would have never happened if the Russian Empire never collapsed. In all these cases regime change and war led to a regime that went from bad to worse. 

Putin for all the bad stuff he has pulled off, offers a certain amount of stability and reliability. He is like the poker player you play against every weekend for the past 24 years. You know his tells, you can roughly estimate what his hand is and you know when he is likely to bluff(for example when he threatens you with his nukes/ace of spades).

Now what the USA fear is some sort of WWI scenario where Putin is removed from power and then all bets are off. The game played would change from Poker (where a lot of it is luck based, but you can still make progress when you play intelligent and know your opponent) to a game of Roulette or in this case Russian Roulette. There are no good Roulette players and there are no patterns or intel you can learn.

Now obviously the parallelisation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the American invasions and interventions in the middle east are problematic in many ways and the idea that if Russia loses the war, it will dissolve like the Soviet Union or lead to civil war like WWI in the Russian Empire is very very problematic and there is really not much proof of such a comparison but people tend to see patterns in things even when those patterns don't exist. Hence I think thoses horror scenarios is what the US and some other western leaders try to prevent. 

This could be the case, and is clearly one of the long term goals of Putin and Xi Jinping to return to 19th century power politics, where the big boys sit at the table and carve out their respective spheres of influence...

Hence why it is so paramount for the smaller, non nuclear powers to support Ukraine with everything we got.

My issue with this is when you follow this line of thinking to the end: If we are so afraid of Putin leaving, we should right now start working on eternal life to keep him alive, because god forbid he dies naturally. Somehow people seem to think if Putin were to die naturally power transition will be all nice and peaceful. I just do not understand this double think.

23 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Sure. But that goes both ways. 

So, please tell me, what are we supposed to think when the Netanyahu-appointed Israeli Digital Mouthpiece (or whatever the fuck his job title is), who has been tweeting pretty accurately since he was appointed, posts the following, only to delete it shortly afterwards?

 

 

 

Of course, the tweet might be fake. Dude might never have tweeted it. But, assuming it isn't a mock-up, what the fuck are we supposed to think? 

ETA: Mr Mouthpiece is now tweeting video that he claims is the missile launch from the cemetery behind the hospital.

It has already been debunked. The video he is sharing was filmed in 2022.

 

In other words, nothing this guy says can be trusted. Never mind he's just some private citizen retweeting random crap he gets through his telegram channels.

24 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

We just sat through over 2 decades of America and our allies committing war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq in the course of the War on Terror and seeing zero consequences for it. We have very little credibility here, not sure why anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American foreign policy would expect anything different.

Terrible things absolutely happened, the death of any civilian Israeli or Palestinian is terrible and it is an indisputable fact there are certainly civilians that were murdered in cold blood at Kfar Azar. The beheaded babies thing seems to come from IDF sources and the only journalist I have seen who has claimed to know it for a fact has admitted that her sources she used to verify her reporting was IDF soldiers who think it happened. No doubt there are dead babies, some might even have been beheaded, intentionally or unintentionally, but the media is jumping on the most sensationalist stories because it benefits them.

How do you unintentionally behead a baby? Other than that I trust Israeli sources only marginally more than Hamas, I will wait for the pictures.

1 hour ago, dbergkvist said:

At this point, it looks like only Hezbollah or Iran have any intention of doing that. Putin and Xi Jinping have made some statements of disapproval of Israels' behavior, but not given any indication that they will intervene. And the other players are on Israel's side.

Well this is touches their beloved sovereignty. If they now start interfering with other countries "internal" problems they have no standing to complain when outsiders "interfere" in their countries in turn.

53 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

No, it was about regime change, but once Putin figured out the people he was bribing and been bribed even more, he looked for a quick way out. A guarantee of no NATO membership etc. Per the former Israeli PM they agreed (this was when Zelensky was scared) but Western intervention with the promise of more support scuttled the agreement. 

Another example of succesful Russian framing (and lying).

Listen to the man Bennett himself. There was no agreement whatsoever.

"The English subtitles are flawed, however. In the exchange, Bennett and the interviewer do not use the word "blocked" but rather "stopped," referring to ongoing peace talks."

So there was no agreement, and stopping talks when Russia was not offering anything close to leaving Ukrainian lands in my book is nothing to be criticized for.

For once there won't be a lack of maintained available equipment unlike with leopard 2s. Most of the F16 nations are actively phasing them out for F35's, so it should be trivial to find decent numbers of well maintained airplanes for Ukraine.

Euron

I thought the dragons were really well done, I like their forms and I like how the CGI showed them, they're really beautifull :)

Although the Black Dread is more like the Red Dread :P