I watched, but it truly is a bunch of rambling.

Putin pushed the CIA sniper incitement conspiracy theory, but didn’t present evidence.

On the Nazi thing, he seems to be pivoting to he invaded because Ukraine doesn’t have strong enough laws to prevent Nazi speech. Again not very compelling.

He again brings up the conflict pre-invasion in east UA, but fails to mention that Russia was backing the insurgents.

He brings up that the change of power in 2014 wasn’t done to the letter of the UA constitution, but fails to mention that the current government clearly has a popular mandate.

He rehashes all the arguments that the West has been the aggressor since the fall of the USSR with NATO expansion.

Other than that it was pretty off topic. Tucker doesn’t press him much at all, and when he does Putin deflects and Tucker gives up.

Overall nothing you wouldn’t expect.

ETA: just remembered, this was kind of strange. The Nord Stream pipeline blasts were brought up and it was one of the few things that Tucker pushed him on for evidence that UA/US were behind it, but Putin doesn’t want to talk evidence. It’s kinda weird since this might be the one point where Russia has some ground to stand on, but Putin just defects. Maybe he doesn’t want to set a precedent that evidence is required.

Close. The CIA is thought to have funded the Mujahideen, funneling money and arms through Pakistan. Some of them would become the Taliban later.

As for Al Queda, it’s possible that they did as well, but generally thought to be unlikely. The reason being is that Bin Laden had more than enough money personally since his dad was a wealthy construction magnate with ties to the KSA royal family.

As a side note, the push by the US and KSA to put religious extremists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets undoubtedly played a role in the strength of the Taliban and Al Queda in the 90’s.

And who is complaining about 17bn? For what the LHC accomplished and the potential of a new collider. This is about understanding the fundamental nature of the universe and reality. The implications for future tech are limitless.

He’s not a dictator yet, but he’ll have the opportunity to rewrite the constitution with the numbers his party will get in the next election. He seems to have signalled this is what he plans to do. Given his economic policies and the fact that he runs a police state (even if it was temporarily needed to get rid of gangs I doubt it will stop), he looks a lot like Pinochet which gives some people pause.

That said it’s up to the people of El Salvador to decide if it’s worth the risk to hand one party all the power.

Edit: current election not next election

This is a discussion about what the people who live there want, not what the government does, are we not on the same page here? The fact is the Iraqi PM is facing internal pressure to expel US forces and he is in the process of doing that.

You sure do talk a lot about this for someone who doesn’t understand the basics. The groups Iran backs in Iraq are there to prop up the current Iraqi regime since they’re afraid of another Sunni leader emerging if the current regime falls. They’re mainly worried about an Islamic State takeover, and Iraq accepts their presence.

Jordan has a dictator who lied and said the US base that got struck was in Syria instead of Jordan most likely to avoid backlash from the population about the presence of a US base in their borders.

And most of the people that live in those countries for the record.

Yes, both stock and bonds. But the stock and bonds have been trading near zero for a couple years so the damage was done in '21.

Yeah, I’m sorry but this is stupid. I think you’re on to something here in that technocracy has led to a situation where corporate stooges are put into positions of power as “experts” who just make policy that benefits capital. On the other hand economics is a legitimate science with rigorous case studies to back up at least some of its theories. The real problem is there are a lot of junk theories out there that have been implemented through the political weaponization of faux-expertise. Chicago Boys’ economics is a good example of the problem.

Yeah basically admitting it’s state sanctioned. Should save the South African lawyers some paperwork.

Yeah I’m pretty sure this is Israel’s methodology for calculating Hamas deaths, 100% of adult men are soldiers. It’s obviously a lie but I do believe that’s where the number comes from.

Yep between the mountainous terrain and Iran’s advanced missile program it’d be a disaster. If a president got involved in a war like that, the opposition party might end up with 70 senate seats instead of the 60 the dems got after the Iraq war fell apart.

ETA: the other problem is that Iran has a much, much stronger central government than Iraq or Libya did in terms of control over the population.

Biden seems to be making a habit of making statements that contradict US intelligence and then having to backpedal so we’ll see.

This being the most high profile example of Biden doing this: https://theintercept.com/2023/10/31/gaza-death-palestine-health-ministry/

That’s definitely a big factor here, but NK does have some leverage over China. China for example has not been happy with NK nuclear and missile tests, but they have continued anyway. I guess it’s just a question of how far NK might stray from China’s authority.

I think you might be misinterpreting China and NK relations here. China moreso sends aid to NK since if the regime collapsed, they’d have to deal with the refugees. It’s not as simple as China pays the bills therefore Kim is their puppet. If he went against their wishes they could use force or withhold aid, but that would also just lead to them dealing with a refugee crisis.

Although an invasion is unlikely it’s worth keeping an eye on since the result would be a disaster for every party involved.

The timing of this discovery seems awfully convenient, no? Even if it’s true, it looks like the Israelis sat on this info.

Not that it’s anything new, but it’s crazy that 2 ICBM-armed states have a massive border standoff.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-militant-bases-attack-05c7530d66fb05dd6f2868527003ba2d

AP article is a bit more detailed here. Looks like the militia is not affiliated with the Pakistani military which lowers the stakes of this fortunately.

People like to thumb their noses at comments like this, but the Saudis bombed the Houthis for the better part of a decade and that still couldn’t stop them from taking potshots at Saudi oil infrastructure. Note that the Saudis were using US weapons and intelligence to attack the Houthis so not totally different from the current situation. In the end diplomacy was what got the Houthis to stop. I’m skeptical that this time is going to be significantly different.

ETA: by comments I mean the comments of the Qatari PM.

https://www.businessinsider.com/neri-oxman-plagiarize-wikipedia-mit-dissertation-2024-1?op=1

The original story they’re referring to.