Dr. Gonzo

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.

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

You’re back!

You still have Mirallas?!?

Please oh please let him fuck off to Italy

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48365241 That's not great

Nah when we vote for MPs we use the first past the post totally dogshite way of voting.

Here’s a story that is pretty unpleasant: https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/north-korean-women-and-girls-tell-of-slavery-and-gang-rape-in-chinese-cybersex-dens-20190521-p51ppi.html

I doubt he ever finishes the books now tbh.

You mean to tell me Farage is a... snowflake?

He doesn't have cerebral palsy

Brb showing this post to everyone in my office

Even that scene doesn't really make sense. Jamie and Cersei were at the top of the pile of bricks, they weren't standing on a pile of bricks before the roof collapsed... why weren't they at the bottom? And if they wanted that powerful on screen moment of him finding his brother and sister and mourning their deaths... they probably should have killed them in a different way, as opposed to revealing it in a way that... really just doesn't make sense. Whole lotta continuity errors in a show that was once famous for it's fantastic writing. Honestly, it's a huge shame. The cast and staff of the show deserved better than the sloppy writing it received in it's last season (I'm willing to forgive the standard of previous seasons, I think Season 7 got a lot of slack from fans despite pacing and writing issues... because the expectation was it was a season setting up more for the final season. HBO shows and unsatisfying final seasons, though. I don't know why I expected anything different.

What, Westeros's government structure by the end of the story? It's still a feudal structure, but with the Lord's having say in who is King (and by the looks of it, still has basically absolute power) - so an oligarchy mixed in with feudal society.

The number of times I've heard my of uncle insisting that all Brexiteers agree on what Brexit is, while his position on what Brexit means to him has changed since the last time he's explained it absolutely just blows my fucking mind. At this point though, I think it's too late to properly clarify it and leave Brexiteers satisfied. So many promises were made that are just inconsistent, it's really just impossible for Brexit to live up to all it was claimed to be. Meanwhile, the option of "No Brexit" is extremely unappealing to these people and they've had 2 years (and a much longer time before that of the EU being made a scapegoat for various failures of past British governments) of having the EU vilified and 2 years of these Brexit promises made - that I don't think they'd ever come to terms with the idea of Brexit not happening. Ultimately, whatever happens, there's going to be a large group of the country that's unhappy with the end result. I don't think the UK's political culture is going to become any more stable, or at very least less polarised, any time soon. Only time will really heal the political divisions in the country, and that can only happen when the UK can move on from Brexit... which will only happen after Brexit has happened and the dust has settled.

That's been the thing to do since the referendum. I'd argue that the Brexiteers maybe should have had a more unified stance before the electorate voted on it, but that wasn't really physically possible with the mechanism put in place for a country to leave the EU. They'd be promising something they couldn't really guarantee... although, it's not like that stopped them in the reality we live in But yeah, the first obvious step to assessing how to go forward with Brexit is to have a concrete set plan on how we're leaving the EU, because then we'll be able to at least make a guess of what that actually means. So far, the only time an agreement was reached between the government and the EU, parliament rejected it pretty emphatically though - so we know there is one vision of Brexit that is pretty roundly rejected. I think this is just far too divisive of an issue for there to be a truly satisfied majority.

Lol fuck Bran

I think the boy saying that and the "attempted" scolding indicates that the father is a racist fuck. And that his usage and acceptance of slurs is probably going to pass down that racism to his son. But yeah, no shit, it's hinting at racism. In fact, I wouldn't even say it's hinting at racism... it's a racial slur. Slurs are overtly racist. My comment wasn't saying "well saying Paki isn't racist, it's something English people have said for decades." It's me saying it's racism that's been engrained in British culture for decades, and racism is a societal problem that includes football, but reaches far beyond football as well. For Dr. Zaf it's obviously going beyond football. He's taken his kids to a match of the club where he works as the club doctor... and he and his kids were called Pakis by a little boy raised by a racist. That clearly goes beyond football, that's impacting his family life - so it's not just impacting his job (because it's fans of the club he works at), but it's his young children being slurred as well.

Tbh I don't think using Paki as a slur in the UK is anything particularly new - pretty sure Pakistani/Indian descent Brits have been called "Pakis" since well before I was born (which has to be particularly irritating if you're Indian and not Pakistani). But Dr. Zaf is right, racism isn't just a football problem (obviously).

He’s supposed to be out for almost a whole year - that’s shit, hope he gets better as fast as he can

It's like Skyrim, it's a pain in the arse to go somewhere the first time. But once you've found a new location you can fast travel Has anyone asked why the fuck Dany didn't destroy all the ships when she was down to 1 dragon after the other remaining dragon? Because it didn't seem like it took Drogon much effort to burn them all in Blackwater Bay. *edit* Yes, they have

Yeah the best defensive I've heard of it is "it's not about Sean Cox, it's about the incident in Kiev where some other thugs with weapons attacked your fans." Oh alright then, it's okay to sing about that I suppose... just because it's a bit less fucked than singing about the same thing happening to someone, because nobody was put into a vegetative state. City's PR response is shambolic. Basically saying their players glorifying fans getting attacked with weapons & making a Hillsborough slight ("always the victims" - which even Manchester United condemns and apologises for those chants of when we play against them around that time of year... and that's from our actual fucking rivals and when it's a minority group of idiot fans rather than the fucking players) in that song is something that's been imagined (even though there's video of it) and they're not sorry. But I think the worst thing of that response and the chant, considering they're the City players - so they're professional football players, is their glee at singing "Kompany injured Salah" was completely ignored in their PR response. I can only imagine the outcry if there were a video of our players winning the league and singing a song glorifying Sterling. As I said before, if it's just fans singing stupid shite it's a non-story. There's plenty of morons supporting football clubs all across the world. But the fact it's the fucking players is just a very bad look. Some of the defenses I've seen of it on social media are pretty appalling. I was told if we'd won the league, we'd be insufferable. I assume that's because we'd probably sing songs about us and be a bunch of dickheads on social media. Now that City have won the league, they're singing songs about us (their fans and players) and being dickheads on social media. Or is it a different standard for Slave Trader FC?

Starting playing Sea of Thieves with my friends again. They've added a lot to the game, which is good because that was my biggest criticism of the game - probably should have held off on releasing until they added more stuff to do.

It’s still stupid to have it before a final.