Oh, absolutely. Everything could change from one moment to the next. Any adult alive today has lived through at least several major global events already, each with ramifications that could last for decades or longer. As a battleground of three world religions and a place of strategic importance to pretty much everyone in the world for numerous economic, military, cultural, political and other reasons, the Middle East in general and Israel/Palestine in particular appear almost tailor-made for spawning yet another one of these events.

I would also go so far that the lack of a shared vision for the EU’s foreign policy isn’t limited to this issue alone. Perhaps it’s the inevitable consequence of the EU being an alliance (economic, political, cultural, military and geographic) of many independent nations with their own goals and interests instead of a monolithic, centrally led bloc (despite the dominance of France and Germany).

Unlike Russia, Israel is not an enemy of Europe, but instead a close partner, especially in areas like defense, intelligence and research. Your comparison doesn’t make sense.

While exports do of course help fund the Israeli defense industry, it’s still primarily supplying the IDF. There is no denying that the joint Israeli/US attack on Iran caused “chaos in the neighborhood” and has been - predictably so - a massive strategic blunder for both countries (but primarily America), but deals like this one tend to take years until they are finalized. Peace time military procurement is by nature unbelievably slow, so letting it being influenced by “chaos in the neighborhood” that is likely long over by the time these weapons are finally being delivered would be rather shortsighted.

There could of course be another different war in the Middle East by that point, but what else is new? Even over 200 years ago, German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was already observing how people in German were passionately arguing about news of violence in this region.

Eh? This isn’t an anti-air system. Did you even read the article you posted?

IIRC, some European countries are lacking modern MRL systems that cover exactly this range, so purchasing these from Elbit makes a ton of strategic sense, regardless of what one thinks of the country of origin. Even people who hate Israel would never accuse this country of developing subpar weapons.

Another positive side to this: At least one country, Germany, is replacing existing MRL systems with PULS, sending the older ones to Ukraine as military aid.

Saloon is another word for sedan. One of those subtle differences between British and American English.

There’s a third term, limousine, which can be used to describe more luxurious sedans (and not only those with a stretched wheelbase). In some languages other than English, limousine can refer to any sedan, even modest ones.

It does seem unwise. Rioters are only a tiny part of the entire protest, but they do get much of the attention.

If anything, threats like these will only embolden both peaceful and violent protesters. Does he really believe that this would calm things down or is he planning on inciting more unrest so that he can stage a crackdown? Looking at French history - even just since after WW2 - this rarely went well for those in power, so this would be a risky tactic.

Then again, he appears to have remarkable political instinct and an excellent ability to form and maintain alliances or else he would have long since been kicked out of office, given the enormous domestic political pressure he’s been under for years - often, but not always, for good reasons, given for example his efforts to erode the French welfare system.

Russia’s cloud infrastructure is highly centralized. There are very few, but large and juicy targets to hit that have a profound effect on the country’s ability to function beyond digital force projection. The first wave of Ukrainian strikes against Russian data centers already knocked many services and companies offline.

Ironically, this is a self-own by the Russian government, which mandates Russian companies to use local services instead of foreign ones while at the same time encouraging this centralized infrastructure that they can easily control.

Have you considered that he is just wearing a mask when he’s around you?

Me thinks listening to you is even less smart.

Whatever they are suffering from now, the Greek president must be desperate to distract the electorate from with this demand (which exceeds the nominal Greek GDP, by the way).

I suspect they are so deluded that they aren’t taking Poland’s increasing military readiness seriously.

This is just a short news ticker, not an in-depth article. Those are part of journalism as well, an essential part that has existed since the advent of the telegraph.

This Wikipedia article provides some good background information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Merz_government_crisis

And anyone who wishes him back.

Doesn’t look like there are issues with AMD cards:

Source:

https://youtu.be/hplfPjlnGMc

Edit:

It even runs on a low-end integrated AMD GPU (above 30 FPS with FSR set to performance):

https://youtu.be/TbkHG7XjXCA

Bloodborne can already be completely in an emulator, by the way. Runs and looks better than on PS4, which is not saying much, but still. If you have a decent system (I’m assuming you do, given your purchase of recent AAA games), go for it.

It has been successfully occupied by countless empires though. Just scroll through the Wikipedia page on Afghanistan’s history and you see empire after empire conquering and then occupying it for time periods ranging from decades to centuries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan

Since when were Abrams deployed against Iran? Also, Poland bought these on the open market from the US, just like they bought German and South Korean tanks, because they want to have a powerful tank force to defend themselves against Russia. Poland is an independent country, not a vassal of the US.

Not to mention, the whole US involvement in the Iran war under Trump and Kegsbreath is kind of like if you hand a toddler a loaded gun. The kid will probably do some damage, but not in a desirable way. Trump inherited the most powerful military in the world, but just like with his dad’s inheritance, he has absolutely no clue on how to use it and completely squandered its potential.

Not only would a different administration not have attacked Iran like this (or at all - Israel has been annoying the US with the idea for decades, until they found a moron who fell for it), even if they did, they wouldn’t have bungled it this much. The best weapons, intelligence, training and logistics in the world won’t help if you are systematically gutting military leadership and replacing it with sycophants, if you’re ignoring the advice of experts, leaving local allies unprepared and in the dark - and reveling in inane machismo, hatred and bloodlust instead of using even an ounce of strategic thinking.

Hell, they let sailors on an aircraft carrier suffer for months without resupplies in an idiotic attempt to hide the loss of a vital resupply base (which of course backfired). That’s the kind of “saving face” behavior you’d expect from vain autocrats the likes of Putin and Xi, not a Western nation.

I agree with most of what you’re saying, except for the whole Afghanistan kicking the ass of invaders, given that Afghanistan has been successfully conquered so many times throughout history, going further back than Alexander the Great (look at the genetic markup of the people living in the area to see that legacy still remaining, by the way).

Yes, occupying a country this underdeveloped and tribal is difficult, but that’s mostly because it’s difficult to administer a country (that isn’t really a nation state in the modern sense) this decentralized. Hell, even the Taliban (which aren’t even from Afghanistan) that “won” the war (because Trump handed the place to them to stick it to Biden) are finding out the hard way right now just how annoying it is to keep this mess together.

It’s a very barebones and buggy game right now. Might want to give it another year or two before buying, since it can’t even hope to compete with “the” life sim at the moment, let alone stand on its own feet. Right now, it’s just a foundation upon which a good game could be built.

As for the controversy, there isn’t one, of course, apart from manufactured nonsense. The usual “outrage” about the game allowing players to create people that exist in real life, but that conservatives want to kill.

This has been going on for at least 20 years in its current form (and in some ways, it’s a continuation of Soviet tactics from the Cold War).

Russian bots started invading comment sections on German websites pretty much exactly 20 years ago. It wasn’t just a trickle, it was a flood from day one, completely drowning out any kind of civilized discourse on major websites. Articles that would normally get four or five comments suddenly had dozens. Every topic where they saw an avenue for incitement, misinformation, hate speech and/or division was being brigaded to death.

They were also nasty from day one, aggressive in tone, immediately trying to offend as much as possible, often starting fights, sometimes even playing both sides in an argument, but intentionally badly. Moderators had no chance to keep up with this. Some sites even shut down their comment sections entirely for years, but when they reopened, the same thing happened again, just this time a tiny bit more subtly, trying to not get sock puppets banned immediately.

There should have been an immediate reaction to this, but policy makers pretended nothing was happening and left sites alone in this fight in order to not endanger the sweet flow of cheap Russian gas into Europe. Hell, this was seven years before Angela Merkel called the Internet “Neuland für uns alle” (“uncharted territory for us all”), for which she was widely ridiculed. Most politicians were likely neither aware nor cared, still living entirely in the world of print media and TV. This same generation of politicians is still in charge today, even if Merkel herself has retired. German secret services might only got the legal right to hack foreign attackers back this year, at least two decades too late.