Apparently the polls are indicating the Americans’ disapproval rating of Trump hasn’t been affected either positively or negatively by the latest shenanigans.
Off Topic Politics Thread
- Thread starter ChilcoSaint
- Start date
-
Please bear with us on the new site integration and fixing any known bugs over the coming days. If you can not log in please try resetting your password and check your spam box. If you have tried these steps and are still struggling email [email protected] with your username/registered email address
-
Hasn't started to squeeze their pockets yet.
Ah, I misunderstood your initial post. I thought you were suggesting part of Trumps motivation was to stoke inflation for the benefit of others.
Quote from Rubio a moment ago when asked about rising oil prices: “Starting tomorrow, you will see us rolling out those phases to try to mitigate against that. We anticipated this could be an issue.”
Be interesting to see what steps they take. Whilst i do think they will have planned for the closing of Hormuz, I think the qataris shutting off the gas may have caught them by surprise.
Article by Max Hastings in The Times today is the best thing I've read so far on it. Absolutely spot-on with all points. You all know how to get around a paywall if you want, so I'm not doing your job for you!
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/trump-how-iran-operation-ends-ml5cr87zf
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/trump-how-iran-operation-ends-ml5cr87zf
You must log in or register to see images
The major difference is that one is dead from the neck up. the other is dead...
I think this quote from Ben Judah, who advised David Lammy during his time as foreign secretary sums up what is happening at the moment perfectly
“Our closest ally, traditionally, the United States, the superpower around which we have built our entire security, has become profoundly erratic, unpredictable, and emotional “
“Our closest ally, traditionally, the United States, the superpower around which we have built our entire security, has become profoundly erratic, unpredictable, and emotional “
IF only we had an abundance of oil and gas on our doorstep eh.
People just make up what they want to believe on Trump. The MAGA support is up in arms about this. Any idea that this is about driving support to him or his friends or the other righty's across the world is not looking outside their echo chambers! Even on right wing platforms a vast amount of Trump's support are very angry that the promise of a president of No foreign wars is being shattered!
Trump is likely to lose a lot of support over this so any idea that it is of benefit to him in the mid terms is just make believe.
One post above saying polling is unaffected by these "shenanigans" might have more to do with the lack of alternative but doesn't take much of a swing for that "we won all the swing states" to turn into "we lost all the swing states."
Doesn't work because it just gets flogged to the market for private profit (Thanks Maggie).
On the flip side it does just show us how ****ed we will be if Reform get their way with renewables, as the benefits of those are starting to come to fruition
Last edited:
Exactly. We are an island surrounded by wind and water for renewables. Oh and a load of Gas as well if we needed it.
And it didn't have to be bought on the international markets and was state owned similar to the Norwegian model. Using UK reserves to provide energy security is myth from the oil lobby and their puppets.
And renewable energy pricing wasn't linked to the gas price I.E. The UK electricity market uses a "marginal cost pricing" system, where the most expensive source required to meet demand—usually gas-fired plants—sets the price for all electricity generated, including cheaper renewables. Consequently, when gas prices are high, electricity prices spike regardless of the proportion of renewable energy used. This will become wider margin as more renewables come onstream along with improved infrastructure for transmission and storage.
Edit : The majority of oil and gas for UK fields is refined overseas, 80% plus due to a number of factors I can't be arsed to explain, it's a lovely spring afternoon we're off for a stroll along the canal and a glass or two of beer on the sunny terrace.
You must log in or register to see images
Last edited:
I think Hastings is right to be concerned about "how does this end?" not only because of the previous conflicts but because of comments coming out of America. The US seem to be saying to the Iranian people "we are giving you a chance to determine your future", which sounds like "we've done our bit, now over to you". What their "bit" amounts to remains to be seen but I can't imagine the Israelis leaving the nuclear capability intact or one set of extremist Mullahs to be replaced by something similar. For their own safety alone, there has to be more to come or they will be in the same situation in a few years time.
Where I do have a problem with the article is when he writes "it would have been much better for the world if Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu had not gone down this route. Containment is almost always a better strategy than military assault."
He doesn't say what form the containment would take. How do you contain a country that has vowed to eliminate Israel while pushing ahead with it's nuclear programme and at the same time funding terrorists in the surrounding countries? Israel couldn't afford to wait and with the Iranian public unlikely to be supportive of the regime after recent events, now was seen as the time to strike.
Personally, I think had it not been carried out by Israel and the US, there would be a general sense of approval that the main supporter of world terrorism has been eliminated, but because it does involve those two, the bombing is condemned by the usual suspects.
Iran's reach has been far and wide and although some people can't bring themselves to admit it, Israel and the US are doing the rest of the world a favour.
They are if they're seeing it through. And without putting boots on the ground (which nobody since Alexander the Great has done in Iran, and they're not going to either) I don't see how they can 'see it through'. That's the issue. So containment becomes your only option. Containment would mean either not tearing up the nuclear deal (like Trump did), or actually ending their nuclear programme through one military assault (which he said that they had - in fact he said they'd 'obliterated' it).
I do agree that some of the issue is it is Trump doing it. I am trying to detach my dislike of the **** and thinking what if someone else did it?Would I be so annoyed. Maybe not.
This by Jeremy bowen makes some interesting points about the regimes in Syria and Libya and that in Iran and it's capability to survive.
We still have no idea where this war is heading
It's hard to predict how the war will end - but those fighting know how they would like it to.
www.bbc.com
"The killing of the supreme leader and his top military advisers was a hammer blow to the regime. But it does not necessarily mean that it will collapse.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and its other founders nearly 50 years ago designed its institutions to survive wars and assassinations. It is not a one-man show. The Syrian and Libyan states under Assad and Gaddafi were built around ruling families. When the families were removed – Gaddafi was killed and Bashar al-Assad fled – the regimes collapsed.
Iran's regime is a state system, resting on a complex and dense network of political and religious institutions with overlapping responsibilities. It is engineered to survive wars and assassinations.
That does not mean it will. The Islamic Republic's system faces its sternest test. But it has planned for this moment."
"It has a powerful and ruthless apparatus of security, repression and coercion. In January its men went on to the streets, following orders to kill thousands of protestors. So far - and as I have said repeatedly, it's only day three of the war as I write this - there is no sign that the regime's armed forces are melting away, as Assad's did after he fled to Moscow in December 2024.
As well as conventional armed forces and well-armed police, there is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, with an explicit mandate to protect the regime at home and abroad. It exists to be the muscle behind the velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the jurist. That is the key doctrine of the Islamic revolution in Iran, which justifies the rule of Shia religious leaders.
The IRGC is believed to have 190,000 on active duty and as many as 600,000 reservists. Religious doctrine apart, it also runs much of the economy. Its leaders have financial as well as ideological reasons to stay loyal.
The IRGC is backed by the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force. Its estimated 450,000 members have a reputation for loyalty to the regime and for thuggery.
I saw them in action in Tehran as the regime's first line of defence during the protests that followed the disputed 2009 election, threatening and beating protestors on the streets with clubs and rubber truncheons. Behind them were heavily armed police and IRGC men. The Basij also had flying squads on motorcycles that raced around the city dealing with outbreaks of dissent."
"The precedents are not good. The removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to a catastrophe - long years of war that incubated jihadist extremist movements that still exist.
Libya, a country with enough oil to give its small population western standards of living, is broken and impoverished, a failed state 15 years after Gaddafi was removed from power and killed. Western countries who celebrated his fall and made it happen essentially washed their hands of responsibility after the country broke up."
"Military action by the US and Israel is pulverising Iran's military capacities. That changes the equation in the Middle East, even if the regime survives.
Many, most likely most Iranians, would rejoice if it fell. But it would be an immense challenge to replace a regime removed by force with a peaceful, coherent alternative.
Trump's gamble is that it will be possible, that this war will make the Middle East a better and safer place. The odds against that happening are challenging."
No way of predicting how this will turn out, the tangerine turd's messaging is at odds with some in his administration and will no doubt change day by day.
Regime change in Iran will be far more difficult than Iraq. It is far more than an issue with the clerics because many Iranian people are invested in it. Many of the ordinary people want liberation but i understood that there are businesses, police offices , Republican Guard who have an interest in retaining the regime. They can still get suffucient support out on to the streets.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the economic disaster in Iran and the extent this has been result of foreign sanctions . We should have tried to engage with them. Dropping bombs on school girls is not the answer.
This will be a bigger disaster than Iraq. Starmer had been right not to ally himself with Trump. I do feel we should also not let the US use our bases for air raids nor shared intelligence with them.
I will be interested to see if ICC pursue Trump. With Venezuela and now Iran , this must be an option.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the economic disaster in Iran and the extent this has been result of foreign sanctions . We should have tried to engage with them. Dropping bombs on school girls is not the answer.
This will be a bigger disaster than Iraq. Starmer had been right not to ally himself with Trump. I do feel we should also not let the US use our bases for air raids nor shared intelligence with them.
I will be interested to see if ICC pursue Trump. With Venezuela and now Iran , this must be an option.
More porkies from the torygraph. There was a tine under Bill Deeds when, although undoubtedly right wing, it was respected but now has fallen to the utter gutter press levels of the Mail, Express, Sun and Spectator.
"IPSO have finally published their verdict on The Daily Telegraph’s fake £345,000-a year banker couple who claimed they couldn’t afford five holidays last year due to Labour’s imposition of VAT on private school fees.
The paper declined to explain to the watchdog how the article came to be published, saying it was “not in a position” to provide further information because this related to internal and confidential investigations. It argued that, having already apologised, it had taken the necessary steps and would provide nothing further to IPSO’s Complaints Committee.
Our reporting at the time set out how the story came to be published - and what followed..."
"IPSO have finally published their verdict on The Daily Telegraph’s fake £345,000-a year banker couple who claimed they couldn’t afford five holidays last year due to Labour’s imposition of VAT on private school fees.
The paper declined to explain to the watchdog how the article came to be published, saying it was “not in a position” to provide further information because this related to internal and confidential investigations. It argued that, having already apologised, it had taken the necessary steps and would provide nothing further to IPSO’s Complaints Committee.
Our reporting at the time set out how the story came to be published - and what followed..."
You must log in or register to see images
You must log in or register to see images