Highgate

Except I don't think we'd live with it, anymore than we lived with referee's mistakes before VAR or we are happy to live with the VAR shambles as it's operating now. Chuck VAR in the bin. We tried it, fair enough it was worth an attempt, but it's sucking the life out of the game (I'm in complete agreement with you there) as well as creating nearly as many controversies as it solves.

And when the ref reviews a decision, and it looks like the on-field decision was wrong but not glaringly wrong, what then? He upholds the original almost certainly incorrect decision? I think that would be a route to even more controversy.

That seems reasonable, but then you might find that people would disagree about what is 'clear and obvious'. If fact people definitely would. What's clear and obvious to one person is marginal and debatable to another person.

Yeah you can never be sure if the action has been stopped at precisely the right moment or not. But if you introduce a margin of error, won't the debate just switch to whether the toenail was within the margin of error line or not, rather than whether it was ahead or behind the last defender? Whatever criterion is used, whether it's offside by any amount, margin or error or 'clear daylight' between the players, the decision will often come down to judgement calls based on millimetres. I'd be happy to bin VAR altogether and go back to best guess by the officials. At least then people could go back to celebrating goals naturally when they occur.

I've no idea how much of an issue Iranian oil is for the US these days, but I'm sure the current US president wishes the whole Israel/Gaza/Iran problem wouldn't have exploded like it did in an election year.

Hopefully the damage done isn't too significant, Israel will feel it's proved its point that it can strike Iran whenever and wherever it wishes while Iran won't feel it necessary to launch another retaliatory attack. That may de-escalate things between the two countries for now.

Yeah, nothing to disagree with here. Seems perfectly plausible to me that the Iranian regime is trying not to look weak in response to Israeli aggression while at the same time it wants to suppress any dissenting voices regarding it's policies among it's own population. Those two points don't seem like a contradiction to me. I don't think anyone needs any convincing on how awful the regime in Iran is and how unfortunate Iranians are to have to suffer through it.

I think to discuss him in any depth would bring us into areas prohibited by the forum. He was only mentioned here because of his direct comments related to Palestine.

Speaking of incongruence, we may be both falling into the trap of speaking of a monolithic Iranian public opinion. It's a broad and complicated spectrum, brought about by a fascinating but tragic history of malevolent foreign interference as well as homegrown oppression. There are those that support the theocracy and their actions and there are those that oppose it. Likewise there are those that support the regimes proxy war against Israel and those that completely oppose it. And yet there are very few people in Iran, I would imagine, that support Israel's destruction of Gaza or the direct attack on the Iranian consulate. And given that we can all agree that Iran's regime's very obvious position is one of violent opposition to Israel, it can't possibly let itself get attacked by Israel and not respond, to do so would damage it's perceived credibility enormously. Not only would it anger and disappoint those who still support the regime but it would also give it's opponents yet another reason to criticize it.

I don't dispute at all that the Iranian regime have real ideological motivations for their foreign policies, such as their support and arming of Hamas and Hezbollah. But I definitely think that even the most authoritarian regime has to be concerned with how their rule is perceived in their own countries, (After all when an authoritarian regime falls....it doesn't usually end well for those who were in charge). They definitely don't want to look weak, but that's exactly how they looked when Israel was able to destroy their consulate and kill their generals as they pleased. The fact that they are basically lying about how effective the strike against Israel was seems to suggest that they really do care about how this plays out in Iran. As you rightly say, it's not a popular regime with much of the Iranian population so a strike against Israel was calculated as necessary so as not to add weakness in the face of Israeli aggression to the list of the regime's shortcomings. That's my guess at least.

I'm not sure it was a political own goal. I think the main reason for this attack was to so the Iranian government could maintain credibility with the Iranian population. After Israel's attack on the embassy in Syria, or the consulate building next to the embassy I should say, the Iranian regime would have lost all credibility at home had it done nothing. So it launched this very publicized attack on Israel, and despite most missiles being shot down it did manage to hit the very military base from which Israel launched the attack on the embassy/consulate. News reports in Iran are, as you'd expect, exaggerating the damage caused in Israel enormously, suggesting the base has been completely destroyed and so on. So far, as a domestic PR operation, it seems to have been a success and the Iranian regime are saying they are satisfied with what occurred and their retaliation is complete. Unfortunately despite most of the world urging Israel to do nothing in response..... it's likely that there is a very serious response coming Iran's way.

Difficult not to look at the crazy comments sometimes though, I'm sure a lot of people are falling into the same trap. Like the orange fella over at Truth Social, love him or hate him the nonsense he spouts is very hard to ignore. I suppose that's the model that X and other social media platforms are running with, promote the crazy, the controversial and the confrontational and people will pay attention.

That Matt Walsh seems like a perfectly reasonable bloke too... 🙄. Is X full of those loons now?

This really shouldn't be news to anyone....Netanyahu didn't want serious negotiations about a 2 state solution with the Palestinian Authority, much better to have Hamas in charge with whom he could refuse to negotiate with and therefore maintain the status quo. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ I'm sure the intent of the Israeli government was that there were never be an event like October 7th, but to state that Hamas wouldn't be as strong without Netanyahu's policies over the years doesn't seem to me to be controversial, and definitely not conspiratorial. I've disagreed with your views numerous times on Climate Change, more often than not really, but I don't ever recall calling you a conspiracy theorist.

What's the alleged conspiracy that you are objecting to? Also who have I ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist?

Hamas are an appalling organization and it's regrettable that they gained power in Gaza. But it's not an accident, it's been a deliberate ploy by Netanyahu and his ilk for decades to sideline more moderate Palestinian voices and centralize Hamas and thereby create an enemy which they can use to justify their imprisonment of Gaza and apartheid like conditions in the West Bank. There isn't a single good thing to say about Hamas and their years or murder and terror, and while many Palestinians probably just see Hamas in relation to the struggle with the Israeli state, there is a clear strain of religious fundamentalism in Hamas' worldview and obviously that tends to prohibit reason and compromise. The sad thing is, each day of violence that's been inflicted on Gaza will only make Hamas more and more popular, that's just inevitable in these situations. I'm sure that right now, the large majority in Gaza who has lived through this horror would want to hit back at Israel in any way they can. Unfortunately that's just human nature. When the hardcore element within Hamas use the 'river to the sea chant' it may well be that there is genocidal intent involved. But obviously the phrase itself need not have such implications. It could just mean that the political state of Israel be removed and replaced by a state of Palestine where both Muslims and Jews could continue to live, but the state would no longer be a 'Jewish state'...and therefore Palestinians would be 'free'. It all depends on who is saying it and the context. Either way though, I can't see anything like that happening for generations to come. Interestingly Likud's party manifesto has has the same aspiration but in reverse, 'From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, there will be only Israeli sovereignty'.

Two horrible blokes.

The fact that this Israeli government is managing to alienate it's perennial ally the US, which currently has an avowed Zionist as president in Biden, should give us some impression of just what an extreme regime they are. Not that any further convincing of that fact should be needed now, looking at the remains of Gaza.

At this stage he probably should just stop doing interviews. He doesn't need to do them, and always seems so uncomfortable and unpleasant during them, so why bother?

Olga suggests that all global terrorism originates from the US. All of it? I think she maybe somewhat biased...

We don't know yet.....there is still time.

Yeah like @Tamworthram says I think the ones that were actually allowed to stand in the election had Putin's permission so they'll be fine. He wants them there, so he can claim it was an actual election, even though we all know it's obviously a nonsense. Any brave soul who actually wanted to be a genuine opposition candidate was simply denied the right to stand in the election (for various spurious reasons), or murdered in a Siberian prison. The sad part is, what does all this mean for Ukraine, is there any real hope of removing the invading Russian army from their land, while Putin remains in power in Russia? And what will happen to them if the orange entity gets re-elected in November? Are they going to have to come to terms with losing part of their country to Russia?

And yet it was still important for Putin to go through with this pretend election, with carefully selected opposition candidates trying their best not to do well or annoy Putin in any way. It's interesting to consider why he even bothers with it, clearly he feels that it serves some purpose.

Thoroughly deserved victory for England today no doubt. Disappointing to see a win at Twickenham snatched away in the final minute, but that's sport, the better team on the day won and I thought England played superbly throughout. Heaslip's arrogance is legendary, both from his Leinster and Ireland days and now as a pundit. Best thing to do is to ignore everything he says.

Worse for both Israelis and Palestinians I suppose, although we have to acknowledge that since the 1940s things have always been worse for the Palestinians. You are right, we have no way of knowing how things would have worked out. But it would have been a good place to start, having the US being an impartial player rather than blatantly picking one side at the expense of the other.