Dr. Gonzo

We were honestly terrible other than 40 minutes of that match. And our substitutions absolutely killed our momentum.

Looking forward to Jota being back because the less we see of Diaz and Gakpo the better, honestly.

Ffs

Dogshit that from Nunez

Wooo back in the lead!

The fuck do you mean they should have just “accepted” the Nakba? The world should have condemned it as the atrocity it was. The fact so many people on both sides are absolutely blind to their own wrongdoing is astounding. The Germans try to morally act in a way to right the wrongs of the Holocaust, maybe Palestinians and Israelis need to look at them and stop acting like children. It takes 2 groups of people not recognising the humanity of the other side for this conflict to keep festering the way it has.

Haha get fucked United

Get in!

We’re playing like shit

All of my friends with kids still play video games!

I've heard if you're an Israeli you at least know someone who was impacted by what happened on Oct 7th - and I get that there's a strong emotional connection when you've got friends and family potentially sitting as victims for a horrific attack. Israel is just one of many middle eastern countries where most people live their day to day lives feeling like they're under the barrel of a gun that can go off at any moment. But Israelis aren't alone in that fear, lots of Middle Easterners live their day to day lives in that sort of fear. And for Palestinians, they're not too different from Israelis in that regard. Many Palestinians are like you as well, your grand parents survived the Holocaust - most Palestinians are descendents of survivors of the Nakba. The Nakba was not the same scale as the Holocaust, but it was a systematic atrocity nonetheless. While Germany has done a lot to try to atone for their sins of the Holocaust, can Israel say the same of the Nakba? I don't think it can. For a lot of Palestinians who want peace, it's just a wound that's been allowed to fester and each conflict since the Nakba has just picked at it. As an outsider who was looking in at both September 11th for the US & the attack on Israel on October 7th - they're both horrific terror attacks. But the US response let nationalism flow into something weird - the US used the excuse to go after Saddam Hussein to take their eye off the ball in going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They then turned Iraq into a free for all where the effect of long years of brutal warfare led to ISIS popping up and they were more horrific than Al Qaeda. And at the end of the day when the US did get Osama bin Laden... he wasn't in either Afghanistan or Iraq - he was in Pakistan and had been there for years. They didn't do anything but end lives prematurely and create the worst Wahhabi group of extremists the world has ever seen. The hindsight was right there in living memory for Israel. Subjecting Palestinian civilians to bombing campaigns, telling people to go to "safe zones" then bombing them, dropping bombs and firing machine guns in areas Palestinians are receiving aid... these aren't strategies that are going to fix the problem of extremism in Gaza. It's not going to make Israel any safer with this strategy.

I like how he tries to play himself off as some sort of intellectual. "Russia borders Europe, Asia, and the Middle East" - dickhead, the Middle East is... in Asia. To Shapiro's credit, he's accurately describing how shit of a job Putin's done managing Russia as opposed to Tuck the Cuck Carlson, who went over to Moscow to give Putin a blowjob before giving him the biggest softball interview in the history of journalism - including blaming Poland for the Nazis starting WW2 (which I assume Russians teach in school so they can blame someone else other than the Nazis, who Russia were initially allied with as they both carved up Poland - thus meaning Mother Russia did nothing wrong at all in the second world war). The biggest highlight is halfway through the video, Ben Shapiro suddenly and swiftly transitions into an advert to sell gold to his followers. The grift never stops with these people, even if they're saying the right things. But actually on the whole, that video isn't too bad - if Ben Shapiro is giving the radicalised right-wing fans around the world an off-ramp from supporting Russia blindly and has them questioning all the weirdly pro-Russian bullshit they've been spreading around the world... this is a good sign. Sure, it might just be telling them things about Russia that people have been saying about Russia for years... but some people simply won't listen until their youtuber of choice tells what they need to think. So this is a rare moment where Ben Shapiro doesn't come off as a complete and utter clown, tbh. Still has a face and a voice that only a mother could love, but taking a step away from the normal far-right bullshit that's fed to his followers to present a more accurate picture.

I'm sure there is, but the way Israel has gone about fighting this war is foolish at best and malicious at worst. Israel's done nothing but bolster Palestinian propaganda because they've done nothing but show disregard for Palestinian civilian life. It is just going to create another generation of Palestinians that think Israelis and Jews see them as pests to slaughter, so they will be very easy for radicals to take advantage of and use their lives as pawns in a greater geopolitical game - just like their parents are at the moment. What's the end game? Nobody in Israel seems to know. Will they occupy Gaza like the West Bank? It seems to be an unpopular opinion amongst both Israelis or Palestinians. Is Israel just going to make the size of Gaza smaller - concentrated into a camp to live in? I think Netenyahu's popularity rating is actually dogshit right now and if Israel held an election tomorrow, he would get crushed. A lot of people view him as the guy who let October 7th's attacks happen. A ceasefire will probably let Hamas regroup a bit, but I'm sure they've been massively devastated after months of this war dragging on. Let's not forget it's one of the most heavily armed militaries in the world with nearly the full support of the West against a starving group of people with terrorists amongst them. The primary reason to have a ceasefire is because Gaza needs humanitarian aid. If you don't view Palestinians as people, you probably won't see things this way - but the fact is the way Israel fights wars creates humanitarian crises. Indiscriminate bombing campaigns, gunning down starving people trying to gather aid, and bombing refugee camps is going to do a hell of a lot more to indoctrinate the populous against Israel than a ceasefire will. This is the biggest problem with the way Israel tries to fight terror. There is no attempt to actually do anything to combat the ideologies - instead just moving in, killing people, and disregarding the human rights of the territories they occupy... it does nothing to halt extremism & this doesn't make Israel any safer. A ceasefire and Israel actually taking steps to demonstrate they respect human rights and don't have a total disregard for Palestinian life would go a long way. I'm sorry, but there is no true existential threat to Israel at the moment. If Israel was seriously facing any existential threat, the US military and likely other countries like France, Germany, the UK, etc. would all come rushing to make sure that Israel's safety is guaranteed. So that's not really any justification for Israel's continual refusal to follow international laws and for the continued illegal settlements. If anything, these illegal settlements put more Israelis at risk as they give West Bank Palestinians good reason to hate settlers and hate Israelis. A two state solution hasn't been on the table since Rabin's assassination. And has been far from Israelis minds since the day Netanyahu first took power. We're talking about the mid-90s here. So no, it's not really fair to characterise the failure of any progress towards meaningful peace just at the feet of Palestinians. There are people in both groups of people that have a longing desire to put this conflict behind them and move on to have normal lives, they've been let down by leaders who are all too happy to have the extremism grow. But in the eyes of most of the world, the failure of any two-state solution lies firmly at the feet of both Palestinians and Israelis. If the UNSC had done its job in the 90s, Netanyahu wouldn't have been in power for so long and the illegal settlements in the West Bank wouldn't exist. But the UNSC has no real legitimacy in this conflict, imo. Of the permanent members, there's 4 countries that have such close historical ties to Israel... they're basically culpable for the present day situation - especially the US, UK, and Russia. That leaves China as the only one that can truly claim to be neutral... and China's currently conducting an actual genocide of Muslims in Xinjiang. An international coalition is probably needed, but I think it doesn't necessarily have to be a UN led mission and it needs to have a significant Arab presence as a counterweight to the US/Israeli side that would be involved. I don't know if you noticed, but the US had far more success going after terror groups with targeted special forces operations and drone strikes than outright warfare on Iraq & Syria. Targeted and less sloppy strikes that actually do something to remove the source of extremism. Israel's making a strategic decision to choose to fight this fight as a conventional war. And they've ignored warnings from the US government "not to make the same mistakes we did in Iraq" in doing so - and just as the US found out in Iraq, turns out treating a civilian population as a hostile terrorist population doesn't really do a single thing to stem extremism and terrorism... I suspect Israel will find the same thing out. I suspect Israel already knows, but the leadership in Netanyahu and his little war tribunal, don't really give a fuck about the blowback from the war today. They just want to be seen as strong while simultaneously dragging out the war for as long as possible to cling to power. And it's not like Israel's incapable of precision special attacks - they made a robotic machine gun to kill a nuclear physicist in Iran that was accurate enough to kill their assassination target while simultaneously leaving his driver completely unharmed. Israel is 100% capable of actually fighting Hamas in a way that doesn't put the vast majority of Gazans in harms way. They are choosing not to for political reasons. And not political reasons that have any benefit to anyone other than Netanyahu and his coalition - just literally doing what they can to cling to power while playing with Israeli and Palestinian lives. Honestly, I think Europe generally has a lot to answer for when they decided Palestinian Arabs should pay for Europe's crimes against the Jewish people for hundreds of years. But it was such a horrifically miscalculated decision with no real thought as to the blowback that we'd be dealing with for decades that I do think Europe should generally be doing a hell of a lot more to stop the bloodshed, rather than just sit on the sidelines and refuse to condemn pretty blatant war crimes and human rights violations.

Yeah I think on form it's absolutely right to drop Sterling. He's dropped off a cliff since leaving Cheaty - and as one of the senior players at Chelsea, he's demonstrated an astounding lack of leadership. I don't see him suddenly improving unless Chelsea have a sudden improvement tbh. From the outside looking in, it just looks like a guy seeing out his career in the least stressful way possible. By the same token, I don't understand how Henderson still gets in the squad. Was shit in Saudi Arabia. Now getting a lot of flak from Ajax fans. Experience is certainly valuable, but just on paper... there's got to be better midfield options than him who are performing at a higher level than him.

NATO's been keeping Ukraine in a fight against a much larger military by sending off their decades old equipment to Ukraine though? The war has shown that basically all NATO allies but the US don't have war readiness, but that's also because the EU (and UK) have defacto decided that if war comes to Europe, the US will be their protector. Also Turkey is... in NATO... so not really a potential enemy.

I wonder if it's a case of him burning out from having played so many matches since he was a teenager. Although I wonder how much of his recent dogshit form is due to him playing in an incredibly dysfunctional side with a manager that's got less of a clue than LFC Brendan Rodgers post-Suarez. When he left Man Cheaty, I didn't think he looked like he was a completely spent force. Been very surprised by how far he looks from the player he once was since joining Chelsea. And what do we make of Ben White asking to not be considered for a call-up to the national side? Previously when players have retired before their playing career looks close to being over, they've sometimes received a lot of criticism - I've often though it's because of either who they are/the club they play for/possibly a mix of both. Now White's not retired, and last left the England fold due to "family matters" - but it's interesting that months on he's still asking not to even be considered to play for England. Rift between him and the manager? Family issues still continuing but easier to deal with while playing for his club?

Most of the international community have been calling for a ceasefire - it's mostly been Israel and the US resistant to that. And even now the US is beginning to put pressure on Israel to stop fighting the war as though all Palestinians are enemy combatants. The simple truth is that Netanyahu sees the war as his "stay out of jail" card - he's got no incentive to stop the war, he benefits from it going on longer. His coalition sees the war as an excuse to back the illegal settlements in the West Bank as well, so he sees supporting them as supporting his coalition and retaining his tenuous grip on the country. It's only Palestinian leadership in Hamas and Israel that aren't interested in stopping the war at this point. I also find it interesting, your fervent support for Russia and their foreign policy goals - yet your strong opposition to Iran's foreign policy goals. Iran and Russia at this point are allies out of necessity, being the two largest economies cut off from being normal participants in the global economy. And as a result, they see instability as the only way to even the playing field - they can't build themselves up like their allies have been able to, so their plan is to drag the whole world down with them. Meanwhile Russia's taken advantage of US politics having a 20 second attention span and used the Israel-Palestine conflict as a wedge issue to break up US support for Ukraine, and Putin's probably laughing his arse off at how easy it was to cause this wedge.

He definitely doesn’t need the extra games but he definitely deserves national plaudits for how good he’s been this season

Missed the part of the circle where they get Palestinians and Israelis to kill each other for some reason prior to cycling back to the beginning of the cycle, but fairly accurate.

Any chance Gomez gets back into the England fold? He's been pretty great for us this season - he's played in 4 different positions this season and not looked out of place in any of them. Probably a useful sort of player to have in any squad and he's got the experience of going far in cup competitions as well as needing to be consistent enough to be playing regularly at a team in the title race.

I would not eat balut because... just look at that, I'm not eating that

Looks like Robert Hur lied about Biden's memory when he produced his report to Congress - and now the full transcript has been released and it shows that Biden didn't forget when his son had died & Hur even made a comment about Biden's memory being photographic. I'm sure it's not illegal for Hur to be a dishonest partisan hack, but surely there must be some kind of repercussions for lying to Congress and the American public with the attempt to influence the election - certainly something more than a loss of reputation.

Wait... mole poblano is a type of chocolate chicken. I've had it, it's really good. It's a very dark and bittersweet chocolate they use in it. It's delicious tbh. @CaaC (John) they're not just melting down a Cadbury bar for the chicken's sauce. Anyways, if you voted no - I strongly urge you reconsider because it's very good and you're doing your tastebuds a disservice by immediately ruling out eating it.

It's probably good, it's at least worth trying once. And if it's shit maybe twice but made by someone else, you should probably try it twice more like @Coma - but maybe this time having it made by someone else. Out of curiosity, where's this particular dish come from in the world? Because there's some places where they've got enough good food, I'm a lot less scared to try something that seems "weird" just cos it's way different to what I'm used to - because they've got the track record of making tasty food. *edit* Just googled and found 2 recipes. One's Italian, the other's Mexican. Yeah, I'd try both of those. Those countries know how to make delicious meals more often than not.

Wasn't Kante out for a while with a hamstring injury last season? And now he's playing in the Saudi league - which is basically just league one with a few big name players sprinkled in, so I'm not sure it's the same physicality as expected of the premier league.