Bironic

A cargo Boeing 767 by fedex has made a controlled belly landing in Istanbul…

WTF? Seriously where do you get your news from? Or do you consume them while being high? I don’t even know where to start to rebuke this insanity… The EU doesn’t have an army. There‘s no proof whatsoever that France deploys troops to Ukraine, nor has Ukraine asked for that. Ukraine is not winning on the battlefield, due to lack of weapons, ammo and manpower. NATO is a defensive alliance. Odessa is not in Russian hands. Crimea and the Kerch bridge have been under attack since the start of the conflict. Why does China need to step in? How would they broker such a peace deal? According to your other posts, probably with a single phone call…\irony

That must have been a big part... and one fat, full worm...

Maybe the international extremist hotline? but then you would probably go directly to voicemail, since the guys operating it are busy at fucking up the world 24/7... #sarcasm The American revolution was (at least partially) violent and a war.. there's no need to fight a war or make a violent Anti-UN revolution... it can be reformed by peaceful means as well... The reason why Veto exists in the UNSC was because in the previous iteration, the League of Nation council, the countries that were part of a conflict did not have the right to vote and thus no Veto power and the only thing that achieved was that all the countries that had a ruling against them (Germany, Italy, Japan, USSR) simply left the League of Nations robbing it of its function as a forum where you can meet, discuss and negotiate peacefully with everyone. And leaving it with little to no international power, legitimacy or usefulness. If you would abolish the current veto power now, China and Russia would simply build their own Anti-UN (where they would have Veto power), which would basically end the UN as an international forum for peaceful negotiations and diplomacy. And no diplomacy is always worse and more risky than having diplomatic channels open even when a lot of conflicts are blocked because of the power of veto. The idea of reform of the UN is basically more levied towards making veto less powerful (there are multiple ideas in various directions that I won't explain in detail here since that would take up too much space) and not by completely abolishing it. Do I think that this is very likely to happen? No... but times change. Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump etc. are all mortal men and there is the chance that they will be replaced by people that are more open to reform. When the UN was created Stalin was the head of the USSR, 40 years later it was Gorbachev... The opposite is also possible, that they will be replaced by even crazier people, but then we might edge towards your solution, meaning that we will see a WW3/violent revolution and however that ends the UN in it's current form will most likely not survive it. Agreed

He still values loyalty over competence. But he also tries to prevent any single member/faction in his regime from becoming powerful enough to be a threat to himself. So it will be interesting who will be rewarded and whose influence will be reduced. Prigozhins fall last year increased the power of the military, while the recent terror attack decreased the power of the FSB, otoh the guys who ran the re-election have to be rewarded somehow…

There’s also the possibility of reform of the UN. Not super likely at the moment but definitely on the table.

I have read some dubious reports that Italy has sent Storm Shadow(alongside SAMPT AA systems) to Ukraine, is that true? I couldn't find any reliable confirmation... Meanwhile Belgium has approved that 2 additional F 16 alongside 40 military personnel will be sent to Denmark until September to help train Ukrainian pilots. And they have fast tracked the delivery of their F-16 to Ukraine, originally declared to be not flight-worthy, then to be delivered in 2025, and now rescheduled to be delivered by the end of 2024. Big week also in Russia: Putin has been sworn in as President today. He will preside over the May 9th Victory Parade on Thursday and is expected to nominate (and Parliament will confirm) the new cabinet by the end of the week. There are major rumors about internal struggles for the best jobs...

I agree with you. The problem with that approach is that people who don't have real world experience have a much better chance to run for office and get elected. Across all western nations politicians are often a) relatives of other politicians or b) have a significantly higher income and wealth than the average population they are supposed to represent, or c) both. Thus limiting the "real world experience" they could possibly have. It's easy to run for office if your father is a wealthy lawyer, less so if he's a poor builder... The ancient Greeks considered political systems with elected offices as Oligarchies, and only considered those with offices chosen by lot as democracies. Obviously the ancient greek political systems were very different from our modern world, but still I do think they have a point.

I agree that having some life experience (also outside of politics etc.) is generally a good thing. Still my experience is that we underestimate the youth, especially the current youth seem to be more positively engaged with society in many ways than my own was. The fact that they are vastly underrepresented in basically all leadership positions, while the guys in those positions are mostly older (40-100) and/or male and still we are here we are with all our problems, the fact that we do have an aging population, makes me shift to the position that we should encourage participation of younger generations in the political sphere. As a side note one of the oldest written documents (I think in sumerian or akkadian, ca 4000 years old) says something along the lines: the youth of today is reprehensible and fucked up, our future is doomed... (I don't recall the actual words but you get the general gist). And yes there are also obviously young people that are trash, age is not a general sign of quality (l mean Trump and Bernie Sanders are basically the same age)

There were a number of things that made this I think: The rise of the evangelical right starting in 70s made it so that Republican presidents from Reagan onwards had to be as pro-israel as you can be to get the nomination or be elected in the GE. Funny thing is, that the Evangelicals want all Jews to be in the Holy land so that the Apocalypse can start and all the unrepenting jews (those that don't convert to christianity, aka all of them) die and go to hell. So their support for Israel is in fact anti-jewish... At the same time we saw a rise in Islamism in the whole Arab-muslim world. Pro Western Shah was replaced by Ayatollahs in 1979, the attack on the great mosque in 1979 ignited sunni-islamist movements, the civil war in Lebanon 1975-1990 saw the rise of Hizbullah, Iran-Syria-Hizbullah allied themselves against Israel and USA at least after the gulf wars were over, the first Intifada (1987-1991) saw the rise of Hamas, and the war in Afghanistan 1978-1996/2021 saw the rise of the Taliban and Al-qaeda, leading to 9/11 and the "war on terror". Since then I think we see this sort of unwafering US-Israel alliance... There was also a shift from largely centre-left governments in Israel between 1947 and 1979, towards more right wing governments after that, and since the 2000s a shift even further to the right, that made the alliance between Israel and the US-republicans and the centrist/conservative part of the democrats much easier, due to an overall more similar ideology. Finally the US dependence on middle eastern fossil fuels is now smaller than it was back in the day, due to things such as fracking, oil sands, more diverse fossil fuel suppliers, green energy etc. Making the various arab-muslim countries less valuable as allies...

According to Spiegel magazine (think of it as the german time magazine / economist) US State Department alleges that Russia uses chemical weapons such as PS (aka Nitrochloroform/chloropicrin) against Ukraine. This chemical was first used by the Russians in WWI and became widespread there (as Green cross in the Imperial German army f.e.) nowadays its also used as pesticide. It attacks the lungs. If true, this would be a serious breach of the Chemical weapons convention(which Russia is part of) and a war crime. Meanwhile Ukraine has announced that it would partially suspend its adherence to the European convention of human rights so that it can fully apply martial law in its territory. Ilia vituk the head of the SBU cybersecurity team has been dismissed by Zelensky, apparently because of suspicious financial activities of his wife and harassment of journalists. A russian national stabbed 2 ukrainian soldiers to death in Murnau am See in germany...

Some addendum to the above: Kazakh economy is almost entirely dependent on the export of the vast amount of natural resources, which made a few filthy rich but did not translate much into the greater population and their regime is extremely authoritarian. Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine they called on Russia and their military alliance to crack down on widespread protests in Kazakhstan, that they couldn’t handle themselves anymore. The current and the former dictator seem also have moved away from each other. Together with the ethnic minorities in Kazakhstan, the relatively small and ill equipped/ trained military makes me somewhat doubtful if the Kazakhs would actually defend their own government like the Ukrainians did…

I wasn’t sure if it was true, only when I saw a relatively reliable German news source reporting it, Alongside some more partisan/dubious ones, I thought it might be true. But apparently not. Thanks for the clarification

The USA bought 81 old no longer flightworthy Soviet fighter jets like Su 24 and MiG 29 from Kazakhstan at 18000 dollars per jet. There are two probable uses for Ukraine: first these can be cannibalized for spare parts, second they can be used as decoys so that Russia targets them instead of actual flightworthy planes. It’s also noteworthy that Kazakhstan a country that is part of Various military and political alliances with Russia has agreed to sell them.

Maybe she should volunteer as Bidens VP instead of Trumps. Trump doesn’t have any dogs. While Biden has an especially aggressive one @Relic while I agree with you general statement, Afaik she refrained from eating the dog she put down didn’t she? Maybe that will be the next republican VP candidate: I put my dog down and ate it with some fava beans and a nice Chianti… take that you woke vegetarian animal Justice warriors South Dakota: where dogs go to die (I am joking)