Highgate

We obviously definitely disagree then, what you say in your post is absolutely and demonstrably false. IPCC reports, grave as they are, actually tend to under estimate the concerns of the scientists involved. They are political publications after all. https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-scientific-consensus.htm Your skepticism regarding whether there is a real consensus among climate scientists is not justifiable. I don't know what else to say about it.

Well, apart from the contributions made by the El Nino/La Nina cycle,(which warmed the planet last year, but will warm it even more this year) the judgement from the IPCC and the overwhelming consensus from climate scientists is that we are responsible for 100% of the warming since 1950. And remember that 90% of the warming we have created by greenhouse gas emission has been absorbed by the oceans so far. I think you are mistaking some underlying very gradual climatic trends with this very rapid episode of human induced global warming. As for positive benefits...some tundra would become fertile agricultural land I suppose. That's part of the reason why Putin is quite in favour of climate change, he believes much of Siberia will become much more productive. However, such rapid redistribution of productive land and habitable areas, along with the coastal flooding would likely necessitate huge migrations of people. And you know how people feel about migrating populations. As for the rest of your post, yes governments have been making loads of mistakes and will continue to do so. And they are in favour of consumerism and will try to promote it in numerous ways. That doesn't really have any bearing on how big a threat climate change is, and to be distracted by that is a big mistake in my opinion. It's not the governments who are warning us about global warming, it's the relevant qualified scientists who are telling us, and their mountains of data. The governments have been trying to do as little about it as they possibly can for decades now, so ignore them when you are assessing the threat posed by climate change. That's my advice.

No, I don't think anyone could. And, in fact, could we blame anyone in Gaza at this stage? This was the obvious point from Day 1 of this bombardment. The support for Hamas is only set to grow because of this relentless murderous assault. This is going to have a lasting generational effect, the hatred will last for decades and beyond. There are members of the Netanyahu government now opening speaking of getting the Palestinians to migrate to other countries 'voluntarily', as a solution to the conflict. So ethnic cleansing then....I guess if that does become the stated Israeli policy, Biden will still have their back.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67861954 Confirming the inevitable really..

How countries voted in the UN general assembly, on the resolution for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

Despite his high profile military and government background MacGregor seems to be completely unreliable source for any information regarding Ukraine. His previous predictions have been proven wrong repeatedly, yet he continues undeterred. He had 48 appearances on the Tucker Carlson show (according to Wiki) and he has appeared on RT (the Russian propaganda TV station, which did produce some reasonable reporting alongside other material that was clearly state sponsored messaging). All his opinions would appear to the that of some one in the pay of the Russian state. I don't know that he is, but if they are paying him he certainly seems to be doing his best to give them value for money. In my opinion, anything he says on the subject of Ukraine can be disregarded.

The death toll from 2008-2023 seems to be roughly 20 Palestinians killed for every 1 Israeli. We'll be reaching that ratio again in this recent outburst of violence in a couple of weeks if the bombing continues. It seems a very odd thing to overlook when making an assessment of the crimes of both sides. There can be no doubt about which side has more blood on their hands.

I can't understand their logic either. I think anyone who thinks who thinks Hamas can be defeated like this is naive. Unless the IDF is going to wipe out everyone in Gaza, then they are just doing Hamas' recruiting for them and guaranteeing decades more violence for Palestinian and Israeli alike. Aside from the morality of the situation, I just don't understand their strategy at all. Maybe someone here does.

I think your fears are well justified in that regard. It seems inevitable now that opinions, on both sides, will polarize and the affect will be long-term.

There is little point trying to quantify Gazan opinion of the Oct 7th attacks, after the IDF bombardment began. Views will understandably be clouded by anger and hatred towards Israel right now, that much is obvious. The relentless bombing by Israel has hardened Palestinian opinions, even retrospectively, which is depressingly, exactly what Hamas would have wanted. So if the 'overwhelming support' you are referring to is support since the IDF bombs started falling, then that's a rather empty observation that should surprise nobody. What Gazans opinions were before October is what is interesting. Polls conducted in July by the Washington Institute (admittedly a pro-Israel American 'think-tank') found that 62% of Gazans supported Hamas maintaining it's ceasefire with Israel. It also found that 50% of Gazans supported a 2-state-solution based on the 1967 borders and the polling revealed that Fatah had considerably more support in Gaza than Hamas (+12%). I honestly don't know how reliable the Institute's polling is but the point remains, they were at least conducted before all the recent horror occurred. Trying to gauge public opinion right now is a pointless endeavour. Just seen from your recent post that those polls were taken after much of Gaza had been turned to rubble by IDF bombs and more than 10,000 Gazas killed, including thousands of children, as well as multiples of those figures injured. Garbage reporting that, what on Earth were they expecting to find?

I mean by definition we all feel that our own views, or those that agree with our opinions, are the correct and balanced ones. That's why those are our views in the first place. From my perspective you've got two feet planted firmly in the Israeli camp. But again, that's just my perspective, it might be me that's the biased one.

As I've been saying to @Leeds Ram I don't know if it is or isn't and I don't think it matters, nobody will ever be convicted for genocide for these particular crimes. It's a incredibly difficult crime to prove at any time, many historic examples that seem to meet most people's definition of the term have gone unpunished I agree it is a horrific loss of life on both sides, but I'd say it's even worse than that, as that terminology could be applied to an plane crash or an earthquake, what we have been witnessing is the deliberate taking of lives, by Hamas and to a greater extent the IDF.

Well we both agree the 53 Coup was wrong then, maybe for different reasons but at least that's a start. I think all that has been said here is that Iran should have been allowed to continue without the malign influence of the US and UK. Who knows what may have happened if the West hadn't interfered, it could be a democracy now or it could have regressed into something as bad as exists there now. The point was, merely, that it grates when Israel is praised in the West for being the only democracy in the region, when the West actively prevented another country in region from having any chance to become a democracy, as well as supporting friendly dictators in the region (against their own populations) whenever expedient. I think you are under representing the difficulty in proving genocide. It's always extremely difficult to prove not only that some event happened but also the intent of the perpetrators. And does it have to be the prime minister, or will a general do? Or a government minister? I accept that a few rogue soldiers is insufficient. How many successful convictions of genocide have occurred since WWII and how many actual genocides have taken place since then, by your definition of the term? Here is an interesting article on whether the current situation in Gaza should be classified as a genocide or not. https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-experts/ I don't really care how the unfolding events are defined, it's not like Netanyahu would ever be convicted for his crimes as the US will have his back regardless. All I know is what has been happening in Gaza is an atrocity, conducted by a state actor and that's all that really matters. Needless to say, the attack by Hamas was an atrocity too.

It seems to me that you almost support the decision to instigate the coup that removed Mossadegh in '53. If so then we definitely have different perspectives. Yeah, absolutely Israel has committed war crimes (as Hamas have). Are their actions better or worse than Assad? It's a needless comparison, suffice to say that Assad is awful in his own right. As for genocide, it's an unhelpful word really, mainly because the UN's definition is so vague. 'An intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a religious, national or ethnic group' or something along those lines. An intent by whom, the decision maker?, the army that carried it out? individual soldiers? everyone involved? And In whole or in part? How big is a part? Are 100 people a part? 1,000? Who knows? So vague, the definition is almost meaningless. To debating what is and what isn't genocide seems like a wasted endeavour to me. And yet we know war crimes when we see them, and we know that Israel have been committing extensive war over the last several weeks. It even announces them to the world beforehand. Orwellian because at a time when Israel was brutally bombarding Gaza, killing literally thousands of children, to be suggesting that the same IDF are some sort of world leader in the exercise of military restraint was just a bizarre moment on the DCFC forum.

Sounds like the West should have just left him alone to get on with it then. You've misunderstood me if you think I'm saying we should be making those comparisons, I've been saying that we should be judging Israel's actions on their own merits and forego relative judgements. I'm not sure Israel being a country that historically accepted legal limitations on how to conduct warfare is particular relevant now, given the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza that the world has just witnessed. Nor do I think the news would be much comfort to the tens of thousands of Palestinians who are currently mourning the death of a loved one. I'm not sure why anyone would bother mentioning it at this point to be honest. It's all a bit Orwellian if you ask me.

True, they've always been in a precarious position and with their particularly tragic history in the background their siege mindset is completely understandable. But the dodgy way in which Israel was created in the first place and the forced expulsion of so many Palestinians in 1948 are the injustices that have placed Israel in this unenviable position from the start.

This makes a lot of sense, for Mars especially. I think some of the timescales being mentioned for a colony on Mars are just wildly optimistic. And with a few billion years before the Earth is toast, we are not exactly racing against the clock here. I'm totally in favour of these projects in principal, but I don't see the need to rush anything. When you see the state of astronauts when they return from the ISS after a few months, in what is effectively a zero gravity environment, not being able to walk unassisted without the ground crew's support, you've got to wonder how we expect people to cope on Mars after a 6 month minimum trip, without any helpful ground crews to hold their weakened bodies upright. And we think those people would be in a condition to start building a base on Mars? it all seems unrealistic to me. For now. Now if we were planning building a giant telescope on the moon, I'd be all for it.

That's quite the understatement. From the instigators of the Coup against Mossadegh perspective, namely the US and UK, I would say you have their concerns precisely backwards. Their fear was that parliamentary rule wouldn't collapse entirely and Mossadegh (who was considered by the West to be impervious to bribery) would succeed in developing an independent democracy that would look after Iranian interests, and one that was unconcerned with Cold War politics or BP's profit margin. Incidentally, was it the nationalizing of Anglo-Iranian oil (BP) that you consider to be stretching the limits of constitutionality? Considering that Israel's neighbours have been the likes of Saddam Hussein, Assad, the Saudis and recently ISIS, that's a pretty a pretty low bar. Maybe we should just judge Israel on their own actions and forget the comparisons. Hamas too.

A weak argument I would say, considering the man involved, but by all means make it. Obviously, as with all historical counterfactuals, we have no idea how things would have turned out, but what we do know is that the US and UK had no interest in allowing the Iranian democratic experiment take hold as they perceived it to be a potential threat to their own political and financial interests. The reflexive support for Israel by many commentators in the West, on the basis that it's more democratic (provided you are not a Palestinian) than it's neighbours, has always been irritating, given the West's full support of many authoritarian regimes in the region and even their outright opposition to the birth of democracy in Iran. Furthermore, even though you'll get no argument from me that democracy is better than the alternatives, we still have to hold countries that are democracies (genuine ones as well as those that are merely democratic for some of their citizens) to the same standards as we hold other forms of government. There is a tendency in the West to be more lenient when judging Israel because it's a 'democracy'. The structure of a country's government is neither here nor there when that country is killing people en masse.

It is, if you are not a Palestinian. Especially one of those that was born there but never allowed to return to the country of their birth by the 'democratic' state of Israel. It's interesting to speculate what the situation in the Middle East would look like now if Iran had been allowed to keep it's nascent democracy in the 1950s, rather than having the US and UK destroy it, and replace it with a pliant, if brutal, dictator. I guess that's something we will never know. It seems to me that the Hamas attack was intended to prolong the war with Israel and prevent peace at all costs. A twisted and immoral strategy no doubt, but the overwhelming response from the IDF is probably exactly what they hoped for.

But how can you justify making, in my opinion, the most inaccurate and biased post on the thread and then ask others to 'dial it down'?

That's absurd. The state of Israel have been committing unarguable crimes against the Palestinian people since 1948. That's not even debatable. Hamas commit them too, no doubt, but to say it's only them...?? That's surely an example of a profound pro-Israeli bias.

It could happen to anyone I suppose...

I'm starting to realize I should be grateful that it was President Bush in charge and not President Leeds Ram. 😂 I mean what could possibly go wrong with the US invading Russia's biggest ally in the region as well as Iraq? Scary stuff.

'Bush's incomplete freedom agenda?' That's how you are summing up his Middle East legacy? I'm not sure we have enough common ground for a fruitful debate here.. 🤔