Did I not see something about warnings in Pakistan for synagogues and churches? Seems the warning was off the mark.

But I didn’t think wind and solar every produced any gas?

But most important educate them. Give a bottle of whiskey to a redneck...

> lack of dialogue, and if more efforts had been given to diplomacy, the war could've been avoided.

That’s a suckers response for defending a partner nation who has invaded its neighbor to steal its lands while it indiscriminately murders, terrorizes and tortures the civilian populace. This ‘war’ is a direct result of Putins imperialistic desires, there’s no diplomatic resolve with a tyrant. Putin was coming for Ukraine regardless of what they did or said. His entire pretext for war was right out of Hitlers playbook with Poland.

except conversely the islamic republic being crazy religious has made the people of iran less and less religious. only 30% of Iranians identify as shia muslim.

This reminds me of the fake news "Russia offering bounties on Americans killed in Iraq/Syria."

I swear this war has more BS going on than any other lol

Terrorist government + tyrannical + censorship = North Korea in making.

Add a nuclear bomb to the equation?!

> I don't like using sports to make political statements. One of the virtues of sport is it's ability to put aside the politics and allow countries to interact/compete on positive terms.

Alas, since sporting events often do become infused with nationalism and athletes are not just representing themselves but also a country, that ideal is beyond reach.

In something like the Olympics or World Cup, we don't have a gathering of individuals from across the world. They are explicitly grouped by national representation. As long as that is the case, taking political action is valid. You can't let countries just have the good parts of representation without consequences for the bad stuff.

> If flags/countries are banned from sports, it needs to be done consistently and not just for western interests. Eg. Why wasn't the US flag banned during the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan?

I mean, the only reason Russia tended to be flagless had nothing to do with overall geopolitics and a lot to do with them specifically cheating at the sports. But generally countries simply apply their pressure and organizing committees act in their own self-interest. Why "Chinese Taipei"? Because the committee found it more beneficial to kowtow to China for their support than to stand against their draconian politics.

Was there any serious pressure to stop US representation? Apparently not enough.

I don’t see how this will be beneficial to train them on our systems if the French government doesn’t have the balls to deliver at least a couple of Rafale/Mirage to them very soon.

It’s already a big problem with the Leclerc tanks. Macron is tiptoeing over what to do… it wouldn’t be good to send our tanks to them because that’s another system to learn when they already have the Abrams and leopard on their plate. Now we want to train them on rafales when the F16 are eventually gonna drop? What is Macron doing here exactly?

Either be firm and send shit their way and train them, or give them other stuff like the recent Franco-Italian Samp-T in more quantities. France has been so weak in sending weapons, I’m really ashamed of my country…

Fuck China

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A hypothetical. What happens when NATO gives all the weapons and Russia just takes over or Ukraine switches course?

Folks really don’t like hypotheticals.

Happens in Civ when you’re allied with a C/S and supplying them military units, to keep them sovereign and offering the benefits, then a spy for another Civ has a successful coup and now those units you supplied are attacking you.

Caesar Howitzer a good drink for a hangover

How dare a bird repeatedly flap its wings??!!

It says eighth

They should not outsource API production outside Europe

The bird did bird things?

It's been interesting to watch Brazilians revel in being rid of Bolsonaro while also reconcile vile shit like this at the same time on this website.

Great to get good news from Brazil, not gonna lie.

Do you even follow the conversation? We were talking about Crimea in the 90s, "in a newly independent country", where, as you were claiming, Russia was playing mind games to suppress the pro-Ukrainian sentiment among the sympathetic pro-Russian population. Except I haven't seen any examples of that.

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Thats because iran uses religion and china is not really religious. Religion makes people even more crazy

I can see the logic in that, especially Soviet Union / Russia launches a surprise attack.

Can't say the people of the Baltic State would be very happy about such plan though.

Even if they eventually send any, what difference is it going to make? Russia is planning a massive offensive. Those jets won't be there when ukraine needs them. Plus it takes a hell of a lot to deploy air platforms. I don't know how well the S-400 Russia deployed in Syria worked. The Israelis seemed to have avoided them in their bombing runs across Syria. So I'd view the S-400 and S-500 to be legitimate reasons why the West has been hesitant up to this point. The F-16 and Rafael haven't really been tested against near peer anti-air opposition. While this may look like a great time to test them, I'm not sure anyone will be pleased to see their vulnerabilities exposed by the Russians even if the US has more advanced platforms.

baltics