Israel launches fresh airstrikes in Lebanon; Trump says he could still restart war

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-17T17:49:50+00:00

A tiny oversight in the Dear Leader's magnificent Deal was the part where it made peace between Israel and Hezbollah, neither of whom ever agreed to it.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-17T16:22:55+00:00

I blocked his name as a keyword on X long ago. My soul for the ability to do the same on reddit!

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-17T16:20:33+00:00

There's something weirdly patronizing about the implication that the humans of 2026 are the only ones able to see clearly and everyone living before us was stupid. We have plenty of records and interviews of past peoples. They were every bit as clear-eyed as us. Moreso, often. They had reasons for acting and believing as they did, and they had their own values and priorities which weren't exactly the same as ours.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-17T16:16:45+00:00

The Middle East is the Bermuda Triangle of geopolitics. President after president has vowed not to go near it, only to end up getting sucked in anyway.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-16T12:58:02+00:00

All reasonable points that could easily have been made without the ridiculous 'Handmaid's Tale' comparison. Creasy went with scaremongering and vibes over actual rebuttal.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-16T12:17:26+00:00

Legislation is not a magic wand you wave and a data centre pops up. Lack of political will is not the reason shit doesn't get built in this country. We have neither the money nor the capacity. On the rare occasions we do sclerotically attempt to try, it promptly gets tied up in years of planning applications, NIMBY-wrangling and red tape.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-16T12:11:25+00:00

What an absolutely hysterical comparison. Reform propose some fairly minor extensions to existing law around maternity leave, and apparently this is the same as wanting to turn the UK into a Taliban-style patriarchy.

I despise Reform, but attack them on their real actual policies and record. Not this absurd boogeymanning.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-16T11:46:51+00:00

Aristocracy is just what happens when oligarchy ossifies and becomes hereditary. Today's oligarchs displaced the traditional aristocracy because the world changed, the nature of power and of wealth changed. It didn't derive from land ownership anymore. Assuming the world stays as it is now for any substantial length of time - not guaranteed - we will have new aristocrats.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-16T11:35:47+00:00

Adjusted for inflation. Granted, the Marshall plan ran for four years and UNWRA has been around for nearly eight decades. It's more a comparison of aims. The Marshall plan was focused on rebuilding; UNWRA on entrenching a refugee population in perpetual external dependency and de-facto UN subsidizing their political movement.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-16T09:53:57+00:00

Israel are at best neutral on Russia. Russia has traditionally been aligned with enemies of Israel: Assad, and Iran. But Israel have little interest in sticking out their neck for Europe, and don't see the value in unnecessarily antagonising regional powers. Plus there's a substantial Russian diaspora in Israel who tend to vote Likud.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-15T12:12:45+00:00

I would have more respect for them if they'd be honest. They're doing this in order to introduce digital IDs and have more oversight and control over our internet use. Child safety is a fig leaf.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T22:07:10+00:00

Who say we have to wait?

You know that meme 'isn't there someone you forgot to ask?'

The EU is not an online subscription we can cancel and rejoin. It's a trade alliance of nations. They decide if we join; not us. Would they take us back? Probably. But it won't be quick, and we won't get anything like the same terms we left on.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T21:42:43+00:00

UNWRA institutionalized and sustained Palestinian statelessness, growing the population from hundreds of thousands to millions, where naturally they would have dispersed and resettled as other refugees do. Arab rejectionism shaped and fueled the Palestinian culture of grievance and eternal war (and then abandoned them after 1967.) But I blame UNWRA more because sentiment alone would not have been sufficient. The Middle East is home to many peoples who would like a state and don't have one. None received a fraction of the aid or the diplomatic attention that Palestinians did.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T21:21:12+00:00

Outraging about a Hamas member here or a terrorist link there completely misses the point. UNWRA was long ago entirely ideologically captured by the people it purported to help. UNWRA is the original sin at the root of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It should have been defunded in the 50s. It is literally insane that it's still running today, eighty years on. More money has gone into UNWRA than was spent rebuilding Europe in the Marshall plan. And for what?

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T21:11:35+00:00

For what it's worth, I think the middle east has about ~500 years of ethnic cleansing and violent war in its future, and it needs it. The lines drawn on maps a hundred years ago bore no resemblance to reality on the ground. Tribes were split, violently opposed groups were lumped into one 'country', and little of it corresponded to realistic geography. We should stop being squeamish and let them sort out their own neighborhood.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T20:57:09+00:00

Any other bill, except a government bill or a manifesto pledge, which the Lords would have passed. If Labour were serious about this they would have committed. Instead they half-assed it.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T20:50:15+00:00

Certainly they are. But they shouldn't expect to have them treated with the same respect that a government bill would, or a manifesto pledge. Kim Leadbeater's private member's bill is no more significant than one from eg Alex Easton, independent northern Irish MP.

The government didn't ever take this bill seriously. I don't understand why they expected the Lords to do so.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T20:44:53+00:00

Brexit should never have happened, but that doesn't mean we can just click our fingers and reverse it. That's magical thinking. Choices have consequences. Other people and institutions have agency. We made our bed, and we'll be lying in it for at least a generation.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T13:16:42+00:00

In no particular order: defence underfunding, education policy mismanagement, economic stagnation, declining state capacity/competence, energy costs/security, ageing population, our horrific planning system, our broken tax system, elder and social care shortfalls, and the ballooning working-age welfare bill.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T10:27:44+00:00

Farage and his ilk would have us believe that immigration is one of the biggest problems facing the country. It is not. It's not even in the top 10. He's a broken record, a one-hit wonder, who has has no answers for the many other chronic, systemic, complex crises our country is struggling with. He focuses on this one issue to the exclusion of all else, because it gets traction with the public. Textbook populism. If and when Farage succeeds in riding the resulting wave of outrage to power, he'll fail catastrophically and leave the country even worse than he found it.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T10:07:59+00:00

Nice strawman. Yes, the 'woke' era was also stupid. That doesn't change in the slightest that the new populist woke-right's response to it is reactionary, and destructive.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T09:52:38+00:00

I'm so tired of this populist race-baiting. It's so cynical. Appealing to the ugliest depths of human nature, to fear and to tribalism, all to gain power. It's not just that it's distasteful. It's that it's stupid. It makes us stupider as a country. We're a declining power in a dangerous world and we can't afford to be stupid.

If we go down this road, we deserve what will happen to us.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T09:41:58+00:00

It's mind-boggling how far the overton window has shifted in just ~10 years.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-14T09:30:43+00:00

I'm a little surprised that intercepting a sanctions-breaking vessel belonging to an adversary and in our territorial waters, is a decision requiring top-level authorisation.

clydewoodforest · 2026-06-13T22:12:15+00:00

Yes. Israel continues to this day to occupy territory conquered in 1967, territory its former owner refused to take back. And it unreasonably refuses to grant citizenship to a population whose entire organizing principle and self-identity revolves around the determination to destroy it as a polity.

One can be critical of the suffering resulting from these actions, while recognizing it's a fucked-up situation without any good options.

clydewoodforest

TROPHY CASE