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Yeah and it wasn’t that long ago the US was arming Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons (when it was okay if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction lol) to use on Iran. Unfortunately, I fully anticipate the US to go to war with Iran. John Bolton has been wanting war with Iran for decades, he’s a key advisor to Trump. He helped manufacture the WMD evidence to invade Iraq. He’s got the Saudi’s pulling him by the strings and dictating his Middle East policy - and they would love to have their biggest rival crushed. The fact that the US president domestically always mired in scandal, is seemingly unable to get legislation through anymore, and has falling poll numbers make me think war is more likely. No US wartime president has ever lost their reelection. I think as things get more desperate with him, the more war looks appealing to him. For me, personally, I think it’s a fucking disaster. I’ve got family members who are probably going to be bombed because of an idiot president and the evil people that pull his strings. What seems to be the US (or at least John Bolton’s) plan for regime change in Iran is to topple the Islamic Republic and put Mujahideeh e-Kahlq (MEK) into power. That plan is fucking insane. MEK were actually instrumental in removing the US’s puppet from power in the revolution - they were initially formed as an Islamist-Marxist (weird mix, I know) party in opposition to the Shah’s forced secularisation and against the Shah’s crackdown on left leaning political figures (which ranged from things like censorship to having SAVAK, the secret police, kick in your door at night and drag you to Evin prison for torturing, and anything in between). In the aftermath of the revolution, however, MEK and many other political groups (like the Tudeh party) were purged more brutally than anything the Shah did. The MEK took this betrayal as an act of war. They left Iran and set up shop in Iraq. In the Iran-Iraq war they fought alongside Saddam’s forces gassing Iranians, so virtually every Iranian considers them traitors. Since then, both Iran AND Iraq consider MEK a terrorist group (the US did as well until very recently) - that should clue you into how MEK have operated in the Middle East since the 80s. What I’ve actually noticed though is that a lot of MEK members are all over the west. They are the Iranians who cheering the loudest in support for Trump to go ahead and devastate their country. When you couple that with the news that’s John Bolton takes money from MEK it really explains itself. The history of MEK should explain why Iranians wouldn’t want MEK in command of their day to day lives. A history of western intervention in the Middle East, particularly Iran, demonstrate to everybody why nobody should want this. It will cause shitloads of death, destabilise the region, and likely cause a headache the rest of the world will have to deal with for decades or more. I think what’s most sad about frustrating about this is Iran has a pretty young population that has shown it will push for political reforms through their own political processes. They have very very high voter turnout, so despite the oppressive government, they believe their votes matter. And since the 80s Iran has reformed pretty significantly. And relations with Iran and the US were reaching their highest point under Obama after the JCPOA was signed by Iran, the US, the EU, Russia and China. This led to big big support for reformist politicians over hardliners. Gradual political reform in Iran is possible without bombing anyone or killing anyone. Soon all the people associated with the revolution will be dead. But the hardliners who were against making a deal with the US said things like “you can’t ever trust America” and “this is a trap, they want to invade and they don’t want us to be able to defend themselves.” For a while it looked like egg on their faces. And then Trump proved them right. He backed out of the deal, he reimposed and introduced new sanctions (which affect ordinary people the most, the Mullahs are corrupt and will smuggle the oil they can no longer export - then they’ll get their money) and is threatening them with war. This must be devastating to the reformists in Iran, so much political momentum lost. But that isn’t so important to them if they’re about to go to war. You could not have made better anti-US propaganda for the Islamic Republic of Iran. They made a deal with the US, they followed through with the deal - the US broke it. They kept following through with the deal, to try to at least keep relations warming with the EU, the US introduced new and harsher sanctions. Iran looks to the EU and sees they aren’t willing to violate US sanctions and also sees the US park a fleet next door, then says they’re going to have to violate parts of the agreement to protect themselves. But you know how the hardliners will spin that story? “The reformists let our guard down and trusted them, now invaders are here to destroy your country like they did to Iraq.” This is why a mentally handicapped person shouldn’t be president of the United States

A Birthday prezzie from our daughter, a Glasgow Rangers top, the wife said "You better not walk around outside with that on down Leith, this is Hibernian territory"

Frankfurt fans are brilliant: over 300 of them donated their tickets for the Europa League final to kids from SOS children's village in Baku. https://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/uefa/startseite/750029/artikel_eintracht-fans-spenden-ueber-300-finaltickets-an-kinder-in-baku.html

How dare Iran choose to set up their country in the middle of American military bases.

Just finished watching it! (at last). A good one... Episode 8 is out now as well

I think if Iran is invaded, Iran's proxies will be mobilised and their job will be to make life hell for the Saudis and Israelis if there is a war. To create at least some semblance of a "home front" for these countries that pushed for war with Iran to have to deal with while Iran deals with the invasion. I think everyone knows the US military would (and tbh probably will, unfortunately) destroy Iran and leave it as a pile of smoldering rubble while patting themselves on the back for the liberating they've done. I imagine Iran's first move would be to lash out like a desperate cornered animal and try to inflict as much pain to it's enemies in the region if it is staring destruction in the face. You can bet that Iran and Iraq will target each others oil fields if it comes down to that. And the Straight of Hormuz will be mined by both sides, so oil exports will probably go to a crawl. And then after the "defeat of conventional forces" we'll probably see an insurgency like we saw in Iraq. Then we can think about things like what a US war in Iran would mean, because if Iraq was a long and bloody war (it's still going on ffs) - Iran's a population that's over twice of Iraq's. And the geography of Iran seems much less friendly to an invading force. So it'll probably be absolute hell on earth.

Rumored to be valued at over $7 billion makes you wonder if this whole new manufactured Iran crisis was meant to primarily grease the wheel for this and probably more to come Arm deals to these Arabs ? but it aint like they have the skill and the man power to use them with any great effect, that's why they want us to join. Its becoming more and more evident that the US is incapable of creating a big enough internal rift in order to unseat the current regime, so their next best move is to prop up another Sadaam like figure in the region and start a more serious conflict with Iran and their proxies in the region. I doubt Trump would be stupid enough to start a direct conflict with iran, unless he feels that his presidency is becoming clearly untenable otherwise....

The thing is it's crystal clear what's on offer, it's the deal Theresa May negotiated with the EU. That stands regardless of what form of Brexit we choose between now and October. The EU have repeatedly stated that the deal is the deal and it's not going to change aside from a bit of window dressing here and there. For some reason everyone associated with Brexit and leaving seems to live in this fantasy land where their version of Brexit is a possibility. This even applies to a no-deal Brexit. Whilst we'll initially revert to WTO terms when we eventually get round to trying to negotiate a proper trade deal with the EU, our largest and closest trading partner, the terms of any trade deal are the deal that was agreed with Theresa May. That £39bn will be paid whether we leave through the back door or jump off the cliff because it's a small fraction of the £200bn+ a year the UK makes from EU exports.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/friday-in-nerd-film-news-sonic-delayed-to-fix-its-vfx-star-wars-kotor-rumors/ @nudge theres a KOTOR movie rumor flying around.

Congratulations, you will only have 40 years to go to catch up on me and Liz, we will be celebrating 45 years come this December.

Had a filling today. Without an injection. Tough as fuck, me.

The Trump administration is apparently also considering an "emergency exemption" that would allow it to make an arms shipment to Saudi Arabia without the approval of the Congress. Reagan did this in the 80s and both Bush presidents did it right before the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 Iraq war. What a bunch of monumental cunts.

Those that found it shite find WWE entertaining.

@Berserker @Cicero