Regan would have died laughing if that was the bill to cause this much of a headache to the Soviet Union.
Yes, but Russia isn’t the Soviet Union. Europe’s persistent fake befuddlement over why the party of Reagan doesn’t want to support a pack of deracinated, satanist, bioleninist bureaucrats over the (nominal) defenders of autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality isn’t helping.
You didn't need to call on Article 5 post 911, but you did and found it useful in so many ways
The other members of NATO pushed to invoke article 5, the United States rolled its eyes and agreed. Then you cucked out the second it became inconvenient and left the United States and Britain to fight alone.
Several EU countries sent tripwire forces into Greenland a few days ago.
Do the Europoors understand how insulting and alienating this is given their concurrent begging for US help against Russia? Even under Trump something like half of the military aid Ukraine gets is from the United States alone. This Greenland thing would be good cause to pull out of NATO if it wasn’t so impotent and pathetic.
In part because they seem to hate Filoni too for some reason
Filoni is a creatively middling hack, he only looks good because he’s been standing next to Kennedy for the last ten years, and at least he doesn’t despise the source material he’s working with.
ABigGuy4U
8hr ago
Andor season 2 debuted with record viewership numbers.
If you actually run the numbers to get around the “minutes watched” dodge, it’s about 4.8 million viewers. That’s not abysmal but it’s definitely not great either.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
Ukraine is allowed to have nationalism because it’s a convenient meat shield against Russia, and can only maintain it in practice because it’s too inhospitable for anyone else to want to live there.
If you see signs of entire military units defecting or walking off the job or refusing to open fire on civilians.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
There’s three countries that have a shot at being the regional power that controls the Middle East: Israel, Iran and Turkey. That’s why they all hate each other! You notice that they weren’t constantly at each other’s throats back when Iraq was still a major military power.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
Iran and Israel have adverse geopolitical interests. That isn’t going to change just because Iran isn’t being ruled by fanatics anymore. Iran having a government with popular support that actually has its shit together could very well turn out to be worse for Israel, especially in the long run. Israel probably knows this, and you would probably see an effort to break it into different countries by ethnic group the second the Islamic Republic is gone.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
But I'm surprised what sort of outlets are carrying it.
The Gulf Arab states and Turkey don’t like Iran much either, nor do liberal Americans.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
The fact that they are calling for a return of the Shah with a straight face is a pretty big sign that they already have no legitimacy.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
If US/Israeli air power was so great, why haven't they been able to destroy Hamas? That was their goal right?
I’m increasingly starting to suspect that the Gaza war was intentionally fought with the aim of going on forever while still leaving Hamas intact. It’s not great for Israel’s security, or the IDF soldiers deployed there, or for the civilian population of Gaza, but it is pretty good for having a permanent excuse to skip your court dates.
Typically I would agree, but for Remedy games it only adds to the slight Twin Peaks-esque unreality of it. The only one it really hurt was Quantum Break.
ABigGuy4U
5d ago
Netanyahu was banking on pushing things to such a critical state that large scale US intervention and regime change would be required. Failing that, it would justify using nuclear weapons.
ABigGuy4U
5d ago
What a wonderful alternative theory of events. We had to hold Israel back for their own good.
Ok what’s your explanation? Trump strong-armed Netanyahu into stopping because he just loves Iran so much?
Israel knows and they seem fine with it. Solve the problem once and for all, you know?
Gambling is always fun when your losses will be covered by someone else’s money.
Here’s what you are missing that explains the reluctance to wade into the Iran thing, both by Trump and the security apparatus as a whole:
ISRAEL DID NOT ACTUALLY DO THAT WELL IN THE LAST SKIRMISH WITH IRAN
While it was happening you were soaked in a bunch of propagandized news articles about how Israel completely dismantled Fordow and blew up every single Iranian missile and bombed Iran back into the Stone Age and caused every single member of Hezbollah to drop dead simultaneously.
Meanwhile any successful Iranian strikes against Israel were not covered by the mainstream media at all and if they were the damage was downplayed. And there were quite a few: a major military airfield got destroyed, the Israeli equivalent of the pentagon suffered major damage from a direct hit, a large power plant was destroyed, Tel Aviv’s largest hospital was damaged from a direct hit, a major financial building was severely damaged, there were several hits on apartment blocks that probably caused mass casualties that were covered up. And all that was in the four days before the war ended, as the interceptors were running dry. THAT’s why Trump leaned on them to stop. It was becoming unsustainable without major US military action in support, or Israel chucking nukes.
Then over the next six months the truth started leaking out: The damage against Iran’s missile sites was less severe than anticipated, Hezbollah has maintained organizational cohesion and just replaced all the officers killed in the pager attack, the attack on Fordow was so successful that we actually need to do it again.
If the US starts major strikes against Iran, the leadership will start throwing everything they have at Israel in retaliation. Combine that with the fact that every single Iranian protest action of the last 20 years has turned out to be a giant nothing burger, and it’s just not necessarily worth it risking a giant fiasco in the Middle East over a shot at toppling the Iranian regime. That’s said I think there’s a good chance they end up going for it anyway.
I’ve seen that. I wouldn’t be surprised, I heard a lot of stuff about sonic weapons and pain rays 10-15 years ago and then it suddenly went quiet which means they are probably actually deployable now.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
There’s frustratingly little information available about what’s going on in Venezuela or Iran right now which dampens in depth discussion outside of speculation. There’s a lot of information about Ukraine but that’s been going for four years so everyone other than me is bored with it.
There’s a directors cut then an extra special directors cut with the animated Tales of the Black Freighter sections added (this is the only version I watch, without the pirate stuff you’re losing the backstory and motivation of one of the most important characters).
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
It’s also the only state in the union that went blue in the 1984 presidential election. Although admittedly Mondale was a local boy so that’s part of it.
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
I thought the concept of the directorship of a federal admin agency being a King Arthur sword in the stone type thing was really funny.
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
I think that’s also probably why you saw space horror start to pop up in the late 70s. It kind of petered out in the 90s because space feels too far away anymore to be creepy.
I wonder how far the Provos would have gotten if they had been made up entirely of middle aged women with not a single military aged male to be found.
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