leicsmac

Perhaps, if I may shed a little light; Those driven entirely by destructive short term self interest tend to assume that everyone else is too, so those that aren't tend to confound them. The standard thought is to believe it to be some kind of deception (because everyone really is selfish like them, really!), so the person is "dodgy" rather than not buying into the me-centric worldview that apparently "everyone" possesses deep inside.

Oh, look, it's only what the global climate science corps have been warning about in terms of consequence for decades. Now, imagine for a moment what humans will be like when that bottom tier of Maslows Hierarchy gets kicked out from underneath them on a massive scale?

Would it really have mattered if he did? That area of the press will be looking to pillory him by any means necessary and if they can't get an easy reason, they'll fabricate one that their readership will swallow like taffy anyway.

It's all part of the ridiculous dance that nation states appear to have to undergo. Of course they know. And we know they know. And they know we know they know. Like you said, the outrage here appears really performative. That's what the press regulator is supposed to be for, but seeing what the Mail, Telegraph and Express can print without apparently being pulled up for it, they don't seem to want to do much actual regulating.

Oh and, once again, the Chinese must be pissing themselves laughing at all this as the US continue to hand them the global primacy for the future pretty much on a silver platter.

I'm reminded of one of Boris Johnsons anecdotes about some American going on about how medieval wind power is, and then him responding by saying that if that's medieval, then burning stuff to make power is Paleolithic. It might have been made up, and the man may have been wrong on so much else, but in terms of thoughts on energy policy he was right.

At least the Operative had the honesty of purpose to explicity admit he was a monster.

"Nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with God." - Mal Reynolds, Firefly.

That's right, but the truth is that people can make whatever geopolitical or economic arguments regarding oil and gas that they like; either fossil fuels used for energy generation and the "nationalism" that the current US administration seem keen to export become a thing of the past or human civilisation does. Rather quickly. The current geopolitical games that people like Trump enjoy playing while ignoring the very human cost of them cannot and will not survive the way the world is changing.

Fair enough. Personally, I think that among that class with power and money there is a rather obvious distinction between those who want to use that power to guarantee a future for themselves and everyone else, and those who simply want it to abuse it at the expense of everyone else until the world burns. And rather than accept that abuse of power as a seeming fait accompli, rather people might seek to resist it in whatever way they can, however small, as opposed to simply stating it as a fact of life and so making the doom of us all a certainty rather than a probability. I think this is an entirely possible motivation. Let's hope as much of the rest of the world sees it for what it is - crude Might Makes Right abusive behaviour - and chooses to leave both him, and such behaviour, back with in such knuckle-dragging times with such knuckle-draggers, where it and they belong.

I'm pretty sure @Dunge would agree that, having seen me play, putting me as a centre forward would be about the only thing capable of driving the club further into the mire than it already is.

Begging pardon, but this whole post has the tone of the bolded being absolutely justifiable, if not outright acceptably good.

Peter Mandelson would be proud of that level of spin.

People lamenting low birth rates in various places around the world are totally misguided in one of two ways: either intolerant enough to just want more babies of one particular ethnicity (rather than more wholesale), and/or not acquainted enough with the problem to know that the incoming problems resulting from such a gradual decline are in fact the best bad option and all the other options are worse for the future.

Also, I wonder which one of Trump's buddies made an absolute killing on Polymarket betting on oil prices just before the announcement?

But overall, looks like we're pretty much back to where we started in terms of overall geopolitical situation, only with a rather large economic shock and quite a few people killed. All seems very much worth it, right?

Castro had over six hundred documented attempts on his life by the US. He didn't throw his toys out of the pram as a result. But then it was always obvious that the current incumbent in the White House has skin as thin as it is orange.

Which at the present time and place is an impossible task, and Trump knows that as well as anyone. So we're back to the idea that he and his view the lives of the Iranian people as totally dispensable in a way that suits no clear objective, which comes back to the sadism.

Yep, we should never have turned away in the first place. Imagine where we'd be now if we hadn't. Instead, we're playing catchup and have barely got to where we were a half century ago.

If this is true (and it may well be), then it obviously serves no geopolitical or strategic utility whatsoever. Which only tends to leave motivations based mostly on pure sadism.

Speaking personally I've thought for a long time that any directly attributable use of a nuclear weapon in this day and age, no matter the method of delivery, would cross a threshold it is not possible to come back from. Hopefully we won't have to rely on a "rogue" general or other officer in a launch command centre willing to sacrifice everything to ensure that doesn't happen.

Firing from a SSBN would certainly be playing with armageddon unless the right people were told explicity what, where and how things were going to happen. And even then it would still have some of that risk.

Mentioned this on the cvnts thread, too. There were quite a few folks about here going on about overreaction, "he won't be that bad" and "the world didn't end in his first term".

Could use an SSBN rather than a land-launched ICBM, with the aforementioned warning to other nuclear armed parties. But I really don't think it's going to come to that.

As much as I'd like to see it happen, it would need widespread support from within the UEFA and CONMEBOL nations, at the very least. Not really sure how likely that is.