The French and Germans have turned into little bitches.
“In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support
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The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.
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Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S.
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“In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical.
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The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war.”
The reasons for current military action against Venezuela given by Trump and his allies are various. And the list of reasons to justify war sound a lot like Putin before and after invading Ukraine and W Bush before and after invading Iraq. Reasons for action in Venezuela include: drugs, terrorism, the influence of Russia and Iran, stolen land, stolen oil, opening up Venezuelan oil to American companies, and Maduro being the illegitimate ruler of Venezuela.
Russia has threatened to invade Kazakhstan. Russia is producing more weapons than it has in a long time. If it didn’t need them in Ukraine, it could use them to invade Kazakhstan.
“For Russian men, war now advertises itself like any other job.
Offers for front-line contracts appear on the messaging app Telegram alongside group chats and news alerts, promising signing bonuses of up to $50,000 — life-changing money in a country where average monthly wages remain below $1,000. The incentives go beyond cash, with pledges of debt relief and free childcare for soldiers’ families and guaranteed university places for their children. Criminal records, illness and even HIV are no longer automatic disqualifiers. For many men with little to lose, the front has become an employer of last resort.”
Pistols have never determined who won a war. In WWI, they were less than .1% of kills and wounded. Modern, more compact rifles are more useful than pistols. Rifles have more range, accuracy, and can better punch through modern armor. For some troops, it may be better to carry more rifle ammo than a pistol. Modern pistols are like modern smartphones, there isn’t a huge difference between brands and the chance that one company’s pistol saves your life when another company’s would not, is low.
““On the territory issue, Americans are simple: Russia demands Ukraine to give up territories, and Americans keep thinking how to make it happen,” a senior European official familiar with the negotiation process told POLITICO on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
“The Americans insist that Ukraine must leave the Donbas … one way or another,” the official added.
Ukraine has insisted that any peace deal must involve the war being frozen on current lines. At present, some 30 percent of Donbas is still in Ukrainian hands.”
Defenders are more likely to win longer wars. So, the idea that Ukraine can’t win because the war is going on so long, is backwards. The U.S. revolution was an eight year war.
The Americans were largely getting their asses kicked and were dependent on foreign aid, but in the end, they won.
The aggressor usually sustains more casualties compared to the defender. The defender often gains resolve the longer the war lasts, while the invader questions why they are doing this in the first place. The defender is fighting for their homes, their territory, and their independence, while the invader is fighting to gain something.
“Back in early September, he declared that the newly renamed Department of War would favor “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”
The secretary of war clearly meant it, judging from a story in The Washington Post. The paper reports that Hegseth issued verbal orders to the military forces striking suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific to “kill everybody.”
When the inaugural strike in this campaign against a boat off the Trinidadian coast left two survivors clinging to the wreckage of the craft, the commander in charge of the operation, in accordance with Hegseth’s spoken directive, ordered a second strike to take them out too.
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The administration’s officially secret legal justification for these strikes asserts that “narco-terrorists” are using the money earned from trafficking drugs to finance their war against the United States and its allies. Suspected drug smugglers are therefore, it claims, a legitimate counter-terrorism target.
Many international law experts have retorted that the boats themselves pose no imminent threat to Americans, and that the people on board the boats are not combatants but suspected criminals who one would normally expect to be arrested, not executed.
The administration’s position “can justify almost anything the government wants to do to anyone,” wrote Reason’s Matthew Petti back in September.
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Even if one accepts the dubious idea that these strikes are legal, the second strike described in the Post report would violate the laws of war. More plainly, it would be murder.
An order to kill boat occupants no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations, told the Post.
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The Trump administration is using the military to target people suspected of breaking criminal laws against drug trafficking. It’s choosing to kill these suspected criminals when they pose to immediate threat to anyone, instead of simply arresting them.”
If reports are true, the Secretary of Defense broke the laws of war according to U.S. law by ordering killed, people in the water whose vessels had already been destroyed.
Also, because this war has not been authorized by Congress and criminal suspects are entitled to due process, not killed on suspicion, even those killed on the boat were murdered.