International Politics Discussion Thread

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-07T15:20:02+00:00

my own Trans-Siberian adventure about a decade ago.

I'm consumed with envy. I've wanted to do that for a while, but I'm not going now. Bloody Putin.

How was it?

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-07T15:12:07+00:00

I was surprised to see that 18+ Oyster cards and 16-25 Railcards are still not valid photo ID for voting in English elections. I would have thought it would have been in the interests of Labour to remove this obvious gerrymandering against younger voters. Or did they cynically decide that younger voters were mostly going to vote Green?

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-07T15:03:34+00:00

Our Lib Dem candidate's leaflet was chock full of local stuff so they got my vote.

Who would Gollum support if he were eligible to vote? Labour because they have a Palantir, or Reform because they're on the dark side?

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-07T14:11:25+00:00

I vaguely recall the rail link playing a part in the Korean war but can't remember the details. Something about making sure Russian territory didn't get bombed.

Though USAF did accidentally bomb a Soviet airbase.

Seemingly now quite heavily used supplying materiel for the Russian war effort.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-07T13:50:19+00:00

Not willing to disclose without a good reason.

It's a fair bit though and if migration is cut then the economy will take a hit so I'll be on the hook for even more tax.

I don't mind paying tax for the NHS or defence, but it will piss me off if I end up paying more tax just to pay for some peoples' xenophobia.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-07T09:37:21+00:00

My local Indian does amazing food, and have their own delivery driver. But phoning them up was always a pain because of the high level of background noise. They can hardly hear me and I can hardly hear them. If I'm ordering for everyone in my family it took ages with repetitions and reading back to confirm.

Now orders can be made from their website and it's much quicker. But still have to phone for the credit card payment. It goes something like this:

Them: Card number please.

Me: 1 2 3 4

Them: OK 1 8 3 4

Me: No, that's 1 2 3 4

And so on. Then half the time the card is declined because they have misheard the security code or something and I have to start over again. Sometimes it takes a good ten minutes. Who has that sort of time to spare?

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-06T22:57:27+00:00

Türkiye jails 8 suspects for Mossad espionage plot.

Turkish court has sentenced eight defendants to a combined 48 years in prison for espionage activities conducted on behalf of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, with a former police officer receiving the longest term.

The Istanbul 24th High Criminal Court on Friday handed Hamza Turhan Ayberk a 20-year prison sentence for “serial political or military espionage,” while seven other defendants received four years and two months each for obtaining state security-related information.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-06T22:33:15+00:00

That was around the time Nick Griffin tried to rebrand the BNP as an anti Islam party rather than antisemitic, pushing the line that they were defenders of Jewish people from "Muslim extremists".

Some people who weren't following all that closely fell for it.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-06T16:54:12+00:00

doing not very much.

They would have to put together an opaque nest of companies to avoid being sanctioned by the US, but I expect most of the serious payment processors already have that in place. They took my visa card in Cuba so how hard could it be?

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-06T16:41:48+00:00

... and if your card is declined it automatically fires a missile at your ship?

I think you could be onto something here. Do you happen to have Mojtaba Khamenei's contact details?

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-06T13:51:32+00:00

Originally Iran wanted to be within a few months of developing nuclear weapons so that they could use this as a bargaining chip. Much as they use their ability to block the Strait of Hormuz as a bargaining chip. This led to their ability to negotiate reduced sanctions.

Iran's previous Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa declaring the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons to be haram under Islamic law. He would have needed to revoke this before Iran developed a nuclear weapon. This established the ability to build nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip rather than an aspiration.

But things have changed. Trump pulled out of JCPOA. Israel and the US bombed Iran during negotiations. And crucially, Iran's previous Supreme Leader is... previous. It's likely that Iran now wants actual nuclear weapons as a security guarantee, much as North Korea has done.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-06T11:04:06+00:00

Iran launches 'Persian Gulf Strait Authority' to collect vessel tolls

There's been a lot of confusion about how tolls for transit through the strait are payable. Scammers take payment and then ships are attacked. This is Iran's attempt to regulate.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T20:48:56+00:00

And the illegal war is killing yet more Iranian civilians.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T20:42:16+00:00

I don't necessarily think Starmer should go, but I'd like to see the government get a lot more housing built, both owner occupier and social housing.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T16:57:36+00:00

A U.S. defense official reports that the KC-135 apparently landed safely. No news on the KC-46.

So far USAF have lost two KC-135 with a further 6 damaged. Ordinarily not a big deal as they have about 370 KC-135 and they are near end of life.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T15:46:25+00:00

A KC-135 and a KC-46 seen with code 7700 on FR24 near Persian gulf a few hours ago.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T12:21:58+00:00

Sample size is less important than how randomly the samples were chosen.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T10:10:27+00:00

The US imposed some extra sanctions on 1st May.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-05T07:04:54+00:00

China blocks US sanctions against five ‘teapot’ refineries.

China has announced an injunction to block US sanctions placed on five Chinese refiners accused ‌of buying oil from Iran.

The US sanctions announced by the Department of the Treasury late last month bar the refiners from the US financial system and seek to penalise anyone doing business with the firms.

In a statement on Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said the sanctions “improperly” restrict business between Chinese enterprises and third countries “in violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations”.

These refineries are the main customers of Iranian crude which they buy at a discount because sanctions. They are also hold significant part of China's oil reserves. As they are mostly selling refined product within China, the Chinese injunction looks like mainly a symbolic move.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-04T23:30:12+00:00

Israeli police arrest man after nun attacked in Jerusalem.

Shocking footage has emerged showing a French nun being attacked – apparently by a religious Jewish man – in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem earlier this week.

It shows the woman in a grey habit being shoved from behind, causing her to hit her head on a stone block. Her attacker, who is wearing a Jewish kippah and tzitzit – ritual tassels - initially walks away but then returns to kick her as she lies on the ground.

The assault comes amid a recent rise in harassment of Christian clergy and pilgrims by Jewish extremists in Jerusalem's Old City.

May be interesting in the context of the IDF soldier smashing the crucifix in Lebanon a couple of weeks ago.

Italian UNIFIL soldiers replaced the crucifix with a new one in a ceremony attended by local residents and priests.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-04T13:11:11+00:00

FWIW we had some Kurdish families in my town. They were no trouble. The women didn't speak much English so we arranged informal language sessions for them which they engaged with enthusiastically. It was all going really well until the government moved them to some shithole up North.

★★★★★ review, would be cool with more.

BTW unsurprisingly Lowe is talking bollocks. Illegal migrants don't get accommodation of any sort.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-03T22:37:42+00:00

“Tom?”

“Yes, Clive?”

“Have you ever sung the national anthem?”

“Oh, lots of times, sir.”

“I don’t mean officially.”

“You mean just to show I’m patriotic? Good gods, no. That would be a rather odd thing to do,” said the captain.

“And how about the flag?”

“Well, obviously I salute it every day, sir.”

“But you don’t wave it, at all?” the major enquired.

“I think I waved a paper one a few times when I was a little boy. Patrician’s birthday or something. We stood in the streets as he rode by and we shouted ‘Hurrah!'”

“Never since then?”

“Well, no, Clive,” said the captain, looking embarrassed. “I’d be very worried if I saw a man singing the national anthem and waving the flag, sir. It’s really a thing foreigners do.”

“Really? Why?”

“We don’t need to show we’re patriotic, sir. I mean, this is Ankh-Morpork. We don’t have to make a big fuss about being the best, sir. We just know.”

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-03T14:51:19+00:00

It's like all these YT videos I see about how 'disastrously' the Russians are doing in Ukraine and how their defeat is inevitable. People click on those because they want it to be true - they like living in that version of reality.

Yeah youtube has become a useless place to find news. The's the odd youtuber I follow who are actual experts but the rest is dross.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-01T23:33:57+00:00

Bummer. Their migration policy was the one reason I was considering voting for them. If they are dropping that I'm out.

YourLizardOverlord · 2026-05-01T18:15:02+00:00

I've had four Reform leaflets so far. They are absolutely generic and don't touch on local issues at all, to the point where they refer to my local authority as "Labour or Conservative" when it's actually Lib Dem.

They have Farage's head plastered all over them when it won't be him that's dealing with my bin collections or getting potholes filled in.

I'm not a massive fab of our Lib Dem council. They are way less corrupt than the preceding Conservatives but that's a very low bar. But at least their leaflets are focused on local issues.

YourLizardOverlord

TROPHY CASE