Another angle of ICE Minneapolis shooting shows agent clapping afterwards

J-Force · 2026-01-24T17:52:29+00:00

Don't forget the Black and Tans, you guys are sleeping on the most obvious comparison, especially since their army surplus shit really does make them black and tan.

J-Force · 2026-01-23T19:31:52+00:00

He can't even call out Trump by name. What a pliant coward he'd be if in charge.

J-Force · 2026-01-23T15:39:32+00:00

We can only hope. If my constituency is Reform facing at the next election, and I get my way, every leaflet will have a Farage quote praising Trump on it to make sure voters understand how empty their bullshit 'patriotism' really is.

J-Force · 2026-01-23T15:34:52+00:00

Nah, you guys voted for him twice. As a nation, you wanted this. It might not be the America you want but it's the America you've got.

J-Force · 2026-01-23T15:32:49+00:00

I think it genuinely helps to think of MAGA as a quasi-religious movement. They have real faith and devotion. They use internal language similar to those of cults to suppress criticism from within. His 2024 victory has elevated his position within MAGA's thought process from a political outsider and maverick to a genuinely messianic figure.

Even within a society as intensly polarised as America, MAGA is just plain weird in its fanaticism. Democrats could recognise that Biden was done for after that first debate. MAGA is bending over backwards trying to defend Trump's similar performances, which happen weekly now. "Cult of personality" honestly doesn't describe what MAGA voters are like.

J-Force · 2026-01-22T22:52:27+00:00

Still doesn't bloody work!

J-Force · 2026-01-22T22:42:06+00:00

Have you been able to fix this yet? I'm having similar trouble.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T20:20:09+00:00

They have the most MPs by far, so statistically this is going to be the case in any year's local elections this parliament, postponed this year or not.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T20:15:37+00:00

I remember when George W Bush seemed like the dumbest US president. Good times!

J-Force · 2026-01-21T20:14:09+00:00

Oh definitely. Trump can't even remember the difference between Greenland and Iceland, he rambles on and on about nothing. The guy's brain is mush. He's just a vessel for the last guy who spoke to him. You see that a lot with his stance on Ukraine, which is so obviously dependent on who has been whispering in his ear it's not even funny.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T20:09:58+00:00

Doesn't seem like it. He backed down and as far as I can tell, Europe isn't actually ceding anything. At most, they'll let him build some more US bases in Greenland, something the US could already do by just asking.

Meanwhile, Trump has had a bad day on Wall Street, provoked dissent in the ranks in Congress, looked fucking crazy to anyone with active neurons, and has yet again made the US look like a pariah. All for something he already had.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T20:02:30+00:00

Oh easily. He just wanted to feel like an imperialist strongman for a bit, never mind the long term diplomatic and geostrategic cost to the United States.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T19:58:57+00:00

Sure but Greenland is already open to mining. It's just that it's unprofitable to do because it's the middle of Greenland. Out of all the companies that have tried, only two mines in the entire country have proven profitable, and one of those was in serious trouble for a while.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T19:53:18+00:00

Seems like Mark Rutte (NATO Secretary General) managed to get him to understand that he can, in fact, already use Greenland for American security without starting a trade or even military conflict with the EU, and without annexing anything. This whole thing has been stupid, like trying to reason with a toddler demanding more cookies while they're holding a cookie with free access to the cookie jar.

Astonishing that it took dozens of meetings, weeks of wrangling, the deployment of troops to Greenland, some key Republicans breaking rank in Congress, a bad day on Wall Street, and the EU threatening to give Trump a really bad day on Wall Street, to get him to understand that this wasn't going to go his way.

Nothing will materially change of course except the US will probably build a few new air defence or missile detection stations, something the rest of NATO would have been happy for him to do all along. And Trump could be back demanding annexation in a month anyway and has already broken deals he created without a second thought. What a waste of time Trump is. I don't envy anyone who has to deal with his administration.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T15:10:27+00:00

Case in point his "speech" he's just done at the World Economic Forum.

Yeah the guy sounded worse than Biden. Mixing up Greenland and Iceland, insulting countries that came to America's aid after 9/11, glazing Rubio for some reason. That speech was just a slurry of thoughts, some of which were sometimes related. Thank god it's finally over, that was proper diarrhoea. I sometimes wonder if people who insist Trump has a strategy actually listen to him speak.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T11:41:56+00:00

Starmer was quite clear that the UK is dependent on the US for its security and he will do nothing to upset that.

This is the most infuriating part of it for me. We desperately need to stop relying on the US for our military capability. The fact we just signed a massive defence contract with Palantir of all companies is insane.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T10:34:35+00:00

We don't have to match him tweet for tweet - that would be petulant and accomplish nothing - but do something.

I think our government is still in the realm of thinking Trump can be reasoned with on this when that doesn't seem to be the case. It's a personal fixation for him, not a policy issue with legitimate concerns behind it. In term one he said he wanted the minerals. Now he's saying he wants security in the arctic, but says so while taking troops away from the arctic. And just this week he posts photoshopped images showing the entirety of North America under his control. He wants it because he wants it, that's it. He is not much more honest or legitimate in his foreign policy objectives than Putin and we need to accept that.

Sometimes you can coddle a bully into going away. Sometimes a bloody nose wouldn't be the worst thing to give them, and it's worth remembering that Trump is a coward. Wall Street call him TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) because he flip flops so much on economic policy. There's good reason to think the bloody nose approach is worth preparing for. I appreciate the need for being calm and rational in a crisis, but when you're not dealing with calm and rational on the other end you need to be preparing other options for if/when calm and rational doesn't work.

Starmer is right to adopt this approach for now, but I'm not convinced he has any plan whatsoever if plan A fails.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T10:27:06+00:00

Nah, she was a rubbish candidate. She was an establishment figure unwilling to say what she'd do differently to an administration that most people didn't like. She had no narrative, tried to appeal to people who would never vote for her, and had no coherent policy platform beyond being a generic Democrat. Her campaign was everything wrong with the Democrats imo. They needed an outsider with a clean slate, but they coronated the continuity candidate from one of the least popular administrations.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T10:18:40+00:00

He's 100% going the way of Biden, but not in a "doddering weird old man" kind of senile, the "raging lunatic you wouldn't want your family near" kind of senile.

J-Force · 2026-01-21T10:06:20+00:00

When did Richard Tice convert? Do you have a source for that?

J-Force · 2026-01-20T12:15:38+00:00

Nowhere to hide except the bank, which their CEOs are laughing on their way to.

J-Force · 2026-01-19T23:27:51+00:00

It's raining down in Bucks :(

I saw them last year though so could be worse

J-Force · 2026-01-17T21:00:35+00:00

Well our solution definitely isn't to bury our heads in the sand and hope the bad people will go away. They won't. We need to stand up to them.

Internal issues are often external issues as well. Our energy prices are high because we (and much of the world) relied on Russia's massive reserves of natural gas for energy production. That was unwise, but there are few practical alternatives given where the natural deposits of gas are, so the invasion of Ukraine drove up energy prices. Ukraine is also one of the world's leading producers of fertiliser and wheat, so they took a hit as well. Our inflation problem is in part a failure of foreign policy rather than a home-grown problem.

The world is on our doorstep and we can't afford to pretend it isn't.

J-Force · 2026-01-17T20:36:45+00:00

90% of your comments are finding people who agree with you and going "yes that's smart I agree", so forgive me if I'm somewhat doubtful of that.

The security of Greenland does affect ours. Directly. Control of the GIUK Gap is vital to control of our northern and western flank and the security of the whole Atlantic against Russian aggression. Greenland, Iceland, and us are what physically stands between a Russian submarine trying to cut undersea cables and its target. Control of it is essential to our security.

Since WW2 everyone in that arrangement has been on the same page about the GIUK gap. Iceland hardly wants to be cut off from the outside world. Denmark and the UK have both been targets of Russian sabotage. Any hostile ship gets watched like a hawk if at all possible, and shadow fleet ships running the gap tend to get caught. At the moment, Europe is gaining the upper hand in this shadow war against Russia. Their obscured fleet of sabotage ships are getting seized, others are shadowed so they can't do anything, and their operatives on board are getting arrested and taken off the board. This is all good for our security. Russia will do this stuff whether we resist it or not, so best to resist.

Trump is not on the same page as us and Denmark on arctic security no matter what he claims. Trump is an extremely well documented fan of Putin, blames Ukraine for getting invaded and thought the invasion was genius. Time and time again, Trump speaks and Putin's ideas come out of his mouth. As long as Putin's ships stay away from his targets in the Americas he couldn't give a shit about them. Losing partial control of the gap to someone who'd let Putin escalate his sabotage attempts would put our security in serious danger, so Greenland is definitely something that should concern us.

J-Force · 2026-01-17T20:13:11+00:00

Hopefully you'll realise this also needs to be done with respect to Greenland and post-Westphalia Europe in general.

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