They announced it directly after the MoU was signed (obviously they were prepared) and they kept their word for a month, while Israel was bombing Beirut every single day.

Bla bla bla. Do you deny that Hezbollah agreed to stop attacking Israel?

I’m not interested in a “who started it” between genocidal colonists and Hezbollah. Hezbollah didn’t exist when Israel occupied Lebanon, it exists because it did, and it continues to have widespread suppory in Lebanon because Israel continues to be aggressive against all of its neighbors.

What’s interesting is whether the war could have stopped or not. As you know by now, Hezbollah agreed to stop fighting and kept their word while being bombed, giving Israel ample opportunity to get to their senses, if they had any sense to get to.

The point being that the USA did nothing to pressure Israel to stop bombing Lebanon, and hence thr MoU didn’t hold, since that was clause 1.

They have and it sucks but we still have decent health care. It’s just that the overhead is increasingly siphoned off to some tax haven.

Hezbollah agreed to stop fighting and they virtually kept their word for a month while Israel bombed Beirut every single day. We know who the real aggressors are, incapable of making a deal, and it’s the United States and their dog Israel.

I’m explaining why world events are unfolding how they are. Right or wrong, Iran’s view is that the USA could wield massive influence over Israel’s actions with regard to their genocide and their war against Lebanon. The USA and Iran agreed that an end to the hostilities in Lebanon was §1, but the USA did nothing to honor it.

You’re correct that Israel didn’t get a seat at the negotiating table. Nor should they have one. They should get told in no uncertain terms to stop their fucking genocide or face consequences, by their master the USA. Failing that, it’s going to be Hormuz blockade and Red Sea blockade, and now those things are a reality.

The next step is to fuck over Israel’s gas shipments via Azerbaijan by the way.

Okay, let’s clarify. The Islamabad MoU was signed on June 15. As per clause §1, the parties agreed to end hostilities on all fronts and explicitly in Lebanon. Hezbollah agreed. Israel did not, and continued to attack Beirut every day, with the USA’s blessing. The USA could have done any number of things to try to reign in their rabid dog, even something performative, but elected not to do so.

That’s the breach of the ceasefire, and it’s the background to the other breaches of the MoU by the USA that I mentioned above.

Actually no. The USA breached several of the clauses in the MoU immediately after signing it. Including threatening the life of negitiators (in violation of #1 and #2), and trying to divert traffic through the shallow southern coast of the Persian Gulf (in violation of #5).

There we go. Now we’re getting somewhere.

The argument in OPs image is confused and badly presented. The parts relating to physical strength have been factually refuted.

We’re fucked if we let the right own the facts. Yes it’s often used as ragebait or a transphobic dogwhistle, but please, take a moment to consider why it’s working.

No, it is not this argument. That’s a different argument.

Among top performers in physical activities, men dominate for genetic reasons. That’s not only because men are significantly stronger than women on average, it’s also because men tend to have more variability for a lot of traits, so the really high-performing men in many physical fields really are freakishly good at what they do.

That’s not a political statement and has nothing to do with values or culture. It’s sex, not gender.

The comment you responded to gave you the perfect evidence for this. There’s no men’s sports, there’s just an open league and anyone regardless of gender is free to participate if they can compete. It’s a fact that from soccer to chess, women tend not to qualify at the very top. (And neither do 99.9999% of men for that matter.)

That’s why women’s sports are exclusive, gender-separatist spaces.

Now pay attention because the next part is important. The right is playing culture war over this issue and targeting trans women, using a bait-and-switch with the actual fucking scientific facts stated above and the non-sequitur that anyone who was born with XY chromosomes has an unfair advantage over someone who was born with XX.

The latter statement does not make sense, is not scientific and does not follow from the first. That should be our focus, not trying to deny facts.

No, Europe is not learning anything. Trump got his way with Greenland, we’re passive on the wars on our doorsteps, and the way things are going it looks like the next push will have us buying Russian again.

The idea of workers funding the state is that workers own the state, and everything that comes along with it including the ability to write and enact laws as well as the monopoly on violence. Workers may then own education, the healthcare system, the infrastructure, research institutions, resource extraction and various industries. These conditions are prerequisites for a democracy. (Preconditions, not the realization of.)

This is, or has been, normal in most countries including Europe and the United States. However, in the past couple of decades, the worker-owned state has been dismantled and a monopolistic oligarchy has formed, often working closely together with the bureaucracy of the state.

So essentially the model of parliamentary democracy with taxes on labor has failed, as it allowed other entities to grow stronger than the worker-owned institutions.

The fix isn’t to tax the rich. It is to disallow power to consolidate into opaque institutions. This isn’t something we should regulate, it’s something we should quench.

Doctor by association.

I see your point, but is that not partly because weapon sales to Ukraine is very limited? They’re not getting fighter jets, they’re not getting good offensive weapons (or if they do, they come with significant strings attached, like they have to promise not to hit certain regions or targets within Russia). But there are no such limits for interceptors. And interceptors are very expensive, so it’s small wonder that they’d quickly eat through your budget.

I mean, Ukraine is quite conservative with their use of Patriots, so they might only use them for missiles and only use a single interceptors (rather than throwing 2-3 Patriots at a drone like Israel does). But even so, they could have gotten a Gripen F for the price of 25 PAC-3 interceptors, if we’re just considering the price here. The problem is to get approval for the purchase (not gonna happen) and even if you did, get the planes delivered within a reasonable time frame (not gonna happen, would take years).

So there are the limits on what the West actually allows for export to Ukraine, and also the actual supply. A lot of the export has been theoretical, and slow to deliver, because the West wants to keep a lot of weapons in case they need it. And they know that they’re slow to produce more.

I’m not convinced of the utility of Patriot/David’s Sling in modern warfare. In the early phase of the 2026 Israel/USA-Iran war, Iran was shooting about a dozen missiles per night at Israel, and there’s good indication that a substantial amount got through. Of the (admittedly limited) number of videos that leaked out of Israel, Iranian rockets were often not even met by interceptor fire at all; some videos show how infrastructure get hit during daytime while no sirens are on; and in the cases that there was successful interception the kill rate appears to be less than 1/3.

Without speculating too much, it appears that these systems are not suitable for neutralizing hypersonic missiles. Further, they’re useless against cluster munitions, and using them on attack drones is a waste. Shahed-136 is getting a range extension and a 3x speed boost by the way.

Conclusion: Israeli weaponry is shit. It’s good for fighting asymmetric warfare when you’re the overwhelmingly stronger party. It’s great taking makeshift rockets made by an underground guerilla out of the sky. Against a real country, it’s a flawed doctrine and an impossible technology.

If the USA can’t defend their bases against Iran, then what exactly is the use of these missile interceptors against an enemy like Russia?

So maybe use those billions of Euros at home developing a real strategy.

For context, aviation is also about 2% of emissions. So it really isn’t nothing.

But the lower-hanging fruit for me is all of the kerosene used to cook. That’s also about 2% of global emissions and it’s a good candidate to be fixed with solar panels and wind turbines.

Nobody’s asking you to cycle for 110 km per day, and the Dutch don’t fo that either. It’s about building cities that are bicycle-friendly, and where people can live in reasonable proximity to their job and all services.

If you’re in the US or Canada the problem is likely zoning and suburbia.

Unironically, I often think about how maybe we should invite r/Europe to europe.pub, and then I’m like “nah fuck those guys”

I remember when the most upvoted Reddit posts had about 1k upvotes, and it was the golden age of reddit.