Padraig

That doesn't seem true. Biden clearly wants to support Ukraine. But he can't without Republican support. It is about politics, not really Ukraine itself. Europe has much more at stake. But from the very start, some states have dragged their feet on how to react. That continues. Its interesting to see why some countries have done what they have. Hungary is the only state particularly opposed to Ukraine though (and that existed since the start also). Here is views from the public at large. https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/europeans-continue-strongly-support-ukraine-eurobarometer-shows-2023-12-13_en I would be more anxious about the war right now. Putin and the Russian media have started to talk with a lot more confidence (although, some of that is propaganda).

Two referendums on the same subject being rejected in a year is not good. Politicians are supposed to come up with solutions to problems. Even if you approve of an individual result, this is not going to inspire faith in institutions, which you need.

I don't believe that is how that works. And many EU/Eurozone countries have individually given money to Ukraine.

That's a very good question. Politico, for whatever that is worth, is blaming an incident from 2009 for making the Slovak PM hate Ukraine. And he does get along with Orban. https://www.politico.eu/article/slovakia-new-prime-minister-robert-fico-ukraine-war/ While the US system can be very intransigent, the EU system is probably worse with its 27 vetos. And Orban is like a pantomime villain, except able to create real damage. On the other hand, the EU does normally get there in the end, it just takes much longer than you'd like. It is been reported here that if no agreement is reached with Hungary in the new year, the 26 other member states could come together on a bilateral basis to provide Ukraine with the extra funding, outside the EU’s structures. So, I still imagine we'll have more EUish funding before the US comes on board. Opening EU negotiations is good news at least. Moldova is included also. And Georgia reaches EU candidate status, which is very significant also. We are years from a result (and Orban can interfere later on also) but its something.

Yes, the Brazilian foreign minister said a few days ago that "under no circumstances can we allow one country to attack another using our territory". It is up to countries like Brazil and the US to make it clear to Venezuela that they are utterly opposed to war. This dispute is a perfect one for diplomacy. It may require some posturing but we can live with that if it avoids war. Ultimately, while people may frown at any US involvement because of past sins, the people who would suffer from US isolation would be the Guyanese (not the US). It would be ridiculously ironic if Latin Americans like the Guyanese would pay the price as "punishment" for historic US aggression against other Latin American countries. Venezuela has talked about Guyana now giving the green light to the US to set up military bases there (in response to Venezuela's demands). We certainly don't want more military bases in the world but I can't blame the US, if this is true (rather than propaganda). Venezuela opened the door for that. There is a huge difference. It is hard to underplay the atrocities caused by wars of conquest. For thousands of years, it was a terrible blight on the world. It was the "normal" way the world operated. Big countries would invade smaller countries, seize their wealth, enslave their people, rape and pillage etc. So yes, wars still happen but denormalising wars of conquest is seismic. Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where wars don't happen but never let the pursuit of perfection undermine the progress that has been made.

I've read that it is very difficult for Venezuela to even invade Guyana. The border is jungle. They'd have to make an amphibious attack, which is obviously more challenging. Most experts in that region seem positive that there wouldn't be any war. Maduro is just using it as an opportunity to arrest opposition figures for treason (since they opposed the referendum). The Presidents of both countries are supposed to meet this coming week, so we'll know more then.

Into the late 80s for me film wise. You can see how the big blockbuster is becoming more prominent. Although, Back to the Future is an enjoyable movie, I didn’t remember how much of a children's movie it is (even with the mom and son thing). I was less surprised about Who Framed Rodger Rabbit (although I’m sure nostalgia for the old school cartoons helped that film cross the age divide and it does have the amusing Chinatown parallels). I would prefer Back to the.Future of the two movies but they are enjoyable. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (from earlier in the decade) holds up much better for all ages I think. On a completely different note, Aliens stands up really well. Great movie. I liked Alien 3, but after reseeing this, Alien 3 really didn't treat Aliens with much respect. As well as the blockbusters, I did watch some serious movies. Even when I know it’s going to happen, Full Metal Jacket is still structured so oddly. Somebody described it as 2 movies, featuring some of the same characters. I could see how a third act could bring it all together but apparently the book, which its based on, is similarly structured. Still, the one later Kubrick movie I do like a lot. Do the Right Thing feels as topical today as it was back then. Another very strong movie. And an amazingly young Giancarlo Esposito.

I will admit I was exaggerating somewhat (I hope). People have been saying that Russia will collapse soon after its initial invasion failed. I suppose if you keep repeating it, it could eventually be true. But in the meantime, I will continue to roll my eyes when I read it. I'm sure Russia is suffering a lot. But Ukraine certainly is too. And as you said, continuing external support is a serious concern. It might all work out. I'm not as clued in as some of you all. But I don't see much reason to be optimistic. I hope i'm wrong.

I wouldn't say I know a lot about Venezuela but I know enough to be really confused by what is going on there. I was trying to find some decent analysis of this situation. I think it is reasonable to be skeptical of articles from cato.org but there isn't much else and it does seem to make reasonable points. https://www.cato.org/blog/will-nicolas-maduro-invade-guyana It is basically suggesting that fear of a detrimental ruling from the ICJ, fear of losing the 2024 election, Guyana having no real army, a belief that Colombia and Brazil (with their left wing Presidents) wouldn't oppose them and the US being distracted by other fish, means Venezuela is willing to push this. Concluding... The Brazil thing is the most interesting aspect. Brazil has supported diplomacy but it has moved some of its army near the borders in case things go crazy.

And I’m sure in 20 years those costs will force them to stop fighting in Ukraine.

I’m assuming you read what Kal posted. I mentioned the EU. And on the battlefield, nearly all fronts see Russia grinding forward by meters. Ukraine isn’t even doing that.

There seems to be a new boiling the frog situation too. Over the last 6 months, things seem to have gotten a little worse for Ukraine each month. Now Orban is getting more vocal in the EU, on top of the US money issue. I fear where it ends up.

The interesting question is how far the people there are willing to go. I’m assuming not war. This issue is already with the ICJ, so you’d imagine people will wait to see what it will judge. The US has reduced sanctions on Venezuela recently. Hope they don’t have to reconsider. But still, Russia has helped reopen the threat of war for land. Bad times.

Of the 4 I have seen, my personal favourites would be Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon and then Barbie. All are very good movies in their own way. I don't think I could ever watch Killers of the Flower Moon again though (or at least, for a very long time), which is both a point in its favour and the opposite. Oppenheimer blew my mind.

Was this response directed at me? I do know a little bit about the Irish economy. That article doesn't say that Ireland is a tax haven, which is a controversial idea. The challenges around Irish GDP figures have been well known for almost a decade. if you read the link in my last post, it talks about those very challenges, which you are now repeating. But even using better measurements of the Irish economy (i.e., not GDP), Ireland has been doing better than "ok". It is heavily dependent on certain industries though. We have done boom and bust and we are probably more open to another bust given those dependencies. And while we have been doing better than "ok", some parts of society have been left behind, and remain very fragile to shocks (e.g., COVID). There are a lot of common features across global economies but each country has its own localised aspects also. That affects the saliency. So one can generalise but not too much.

If anyone really cares about the data behind all this, you can go to Eurobarometer survey. Download the data annex there. On page 45 it looks at "top two most important issues facing your country at the moment" (there are actually several pages on this topic. It is a very large file). I didn't realise Ireland was so out of kilter with the rest of the EU on some measures. 61% says housing is one of the top two (compared to 10% in the EU), then inflation/cost of living at 44% (that is very similar with the rest of EU). While Immigration is also very similar with the average in the rest of EU at 14%. There are a lot of interesting things in this survey (Netherlands scores more than double the EU average when it comes to Immigration, which reflects the latest elections there). The UK obviously doesn't feature in this report. Immigration is non-trivial and I wouldn't want to be seen to dismiss the challenges around it in Ireland. But it is dwarfed by housing and cost of living (and healthcare). And of course these issues are all linked. Partly why immigration is salient is because people can't find homes and blame immigrants. I generally find it pointless to focus on individual people but while there has been a focus on how the recent attacker was an immigrant, he also was homeless (and living in accommodation for the homeless). There were mental health issues also but its maddening how everything bad seems to connect to the housing crisis here. Well, GDP can be a misleading figure to use in the context of Ireland but its not like we perform poorly when you look at other measures (which strips out the weird things going on). See below if interested. https://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/statisticsexplained/nationalaccountsexplained/modifiedgni/ And fine on the UK surveys. Interesting as such but pity we don't have the same type of info before the referendum.

But was this polling done before the referendum or after the economic hit? It is still interesting if the polling was after the economic hit but it would be much more powerful if it was before. I am surprised that there isn't more research on this. We all agree that it isn't a binary issue (i.e. no immigration restrictions versus no immigration). So the only question is about quantities required and economic consequences of choosing specific quantities. Right now, people think the other side are patronising because they are making assumptions about the nuances around immigration. But both sides don't seem to know enough (from my perspective anyhow). Except that I don't think it is much of an assumption to say that immigration will increase in future years given worldwide trends around climate change.

This probably highlights how we view things differently. From my perspective, people are complicated and those responses you are criticising are just trying to add nuance to the discussion. Instead, you are banking the "immigration must be reduced significantly" line, without seeing the purpose of exploring those views further. I don't know how many immigrants the UK "needs". That sounds like something that should be researched. Especially since you are mainly focused on the "controllable" quantities. However you choose the define it, I don't believe it was a question at that time of GDP growth v Brexit.

Is that not what I said? You should know this far better than I but I don't believe that was the main argument. Wasn't it that everything was better with Brexit? Hindsight is different. There probably are some differences between Ireland and the UK on this subject generally. For years now, it has been hammered home that the source of our economic success is significant international inward investment (in money and people). Up to now, we haven't had this obsession with immigration as in the UK (i.e., witness Brexit). As I said, people have responded to the most overriding issue in Ireland by moving left. But that issue is housing, not immigration. When immigration comes up, it is often framed in relation to how it makes the housing crisis worse. I can buy the idea that the Tories made a promise on immigration without any idea how to deliver it (if that is what you are saying). But i'm not sure the promise is achievable. We just keep coming back to "we want less" of it, without any real details or plan. Unless Rwanda is the plan. I don't really follow all that.

Is it though? This is the nub of Brexit and other similar issues. What do people actually want? You ask people do they want to reduce immigration, they say yes. But you ask them do you want to improve public transport or health care, they will also say yes. But issues like health care rely on immigration. So the much more salient question is whether you want to reduce immigration even if it leads to a similar decline in health care (if not worse). So when you say that the majority of government departments are trying to increase numbers, I would suggest that they are being very rational in most cases because they will point at a survey that says that people highly value the service they provide. It just happens to depend on immigration. The restructuring idea is interesting but whatever about anything else, we will need more people in health care in future. The question is then restated to say that we want to remove the "bad types" of immigration. But what are those? People hopefully don't support sending refugees back to their homeland when they are at genuine risk of death or serious harm? Or I'm not sure of statistics for other countries but I know in Ireland, it is estimated by the Migrant Rights Centre that there were 17,000 – 20,000 undocumented persons in the State in 2020, which is pretty much nobody, even for a small country like Ireland. So what do people really want? For issues like immigration it is very difficult to parse exactly. It gets more complicated when you throw climate change into the mix and governments talk about delaying climate initiatives or reduced foreign aid. The more climate change hits, the more refugees. If we don't support other countries (and this is complicated too), the more refugees. If you want to stop immigration, its like crime, you need to fight the causes, which are massively complicated. But long term, it is the only appropriate approach. As for the far right. Far right political parties are difficult to ignore but i wouldn't let far right mobs dictate anything . It is fair to say that, iike any other criminal element, they reflect a societal failure (e.g., lack of housing), which should be worked on but that's it. Suggesting we are doing something wrong because there are more right wing violence this year than last year? That's almost pointless to speculate on. Far right wing violence may be something that will never go away for the foreseeable future. Such people are never going to be happy. Social media has incited it, linked groups worldwide, and there will always be some issue that excites a few hundred people to violence. A couple of years ago it was COVID, now its immigration. If immigration really was "reduced", I certainly wouldn't expect a similar decline in far right violence. That genie is uncorked. We might be lucky though. And solving the housing crisis will help the general environment. A more equal society will also help. A lot of things will help but I will agree with HoI in that its hard for governments to look at long term solutions and a lot of these things will take years. The restructure your society idea, so you don't need immigration. I'm curious about that. Japan has taken some steps on that path, as its population is now declining moderately. It goes hand in hand with no longer constructing your economy to grow eternally (which Japan stopped doing since the 1990s, not deliberately though), which probably is required to become more sustainable. But i'm assuming this sort of restructure would still require going well beyond what Japan has done. And i'm not sure what kind of research has been done here (there has definitely been research done on moving away from the economic growth model though).

Thanks for sharing that insight.

Yes. Nobody is immune from real life. Do you have a solution to share with us?

Oh come on. I can assure you that people are well aware of the housing crisis and that immigration is a major challenge also. So no, I wouldn't be thanking a far right mob for raising awareness of them. Making some sort of moral judgment regarding immigration because of the behaviour of one person (who we still know very little about if you ignore the mess that is social media) is as silly as focusing only on the other immigrant who helped save people's lives during the attack. And actually, in Ireland, it is the left which have benefited from the perceived incompetence of the government in managing the housing crisis. There is no significant far right party here, as of yet. While Varadkar is the head of a centre-right party. Par for the course for such parties to try to play to their right.

I would say the opposite sadly. The VVD has said it wouldn't join the next government but it wouldn't block it either. So that makes it much more likely that the PVV will get the numbers it needs. The NSC and BBB seem willing to go along with a VVD government. It may not be a stable government but it will be a government with Wilders presumably as PM. The political parties in the Netherlands can easily decide not to let VVD take power but it seems that enough parties are ok with it. They have more in common with VVD than alternatives. All times are scary. While the Dutch news is very disappointing, we shouldn't forget the better results more recently in Poland or in Spain, where Vox did worse than expected or in Brazil last year. That said, inflation has meant that mainstream parties in power are vulnerable. And it is fair to say that the consequences of climate change will make us all very vulnerable. So I wouldn't be too positive...

Ultimately, you (as in Dutch people) know what it means, so that is all that matters. An international audience may find it confusing but that's by the by. And I don't envy you this. My feeling is that once a party goes into power, it normalises them. It will be far easier for them to get into power again (even if it takes a few years before it arises again) once you accept them as a "normal" governing party. And it will be far easier for people to justify voting for them (if a normal party is willing to work with them, why shouldn't I vote for them). And yes there is a possibility that a party actually does moderate if it comes into power, when faced with the mundaneness of actual governing. On the other hand, worse case scenario, you have a Hungary situation, and you never manage to get them out of power again. Because I wouldn't assume that their support reduces. They might be lucky and inflation drops over the next couple of years (not because of anything they did, just coincidence) and they get the credit. Their immigration policies could be very popular. The longer they are in power, the more damage they'll do. They certainly could be incompetent but we have a clear example in Hungary of the opposite (or at least, where they get away with any incompetence by playing up the populist angle). I don't believe that the Netherlands is as fragile as Hungary but this could be the first step on that path. Yes, sadly you can go through nearly every country in Europe and say something similar. The left are back into power in Spain after the last election, so it's not an immediate problem but admittedly, that government looks a little fragile, so they too may fall eventually.