I think you are thinking of Qatar which Israel struck nearly a year ago. Israel and the UAE are close partners who have similar goals for the region.

I was just freaking out from reading into the Nutty Putty Cave situation from many years back, how awful!

Unsurprising. Hezbollah was hard carrying Assad’s Syria while the big man was busy playing Candy Crush… now that the Assadists have nowhere else to go Hezbollah is the only option. The rest of Lebanon hates the Assadists for partially occupying Lebanon, Turkey hates them because they were also fighting each other in Syria, the neighboring mostly Sunni northwestern parts of Iraq generally also hate Assadists from Baathist era rivalries out to modern sectarian tensions, Jordan is extremely uninterested in bringing in controversial groups that could upset its relations with neighbors and the group had officially still been at war with Israel since 1967. Not many options left for those without the contacts to get to Assad’s gamer pad in Russia.

Hezb found the time in its schedule to shell Syria in March and recently Syria uncovered and liquidated some Hezbollah cells in the country that they say were intending to do some sabotage and assassionations. Not really sure why those are on the priority sheets at all while Israel is occupying their home turf.

Pakistan is not allying with Iran. It is in an emerging block with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt. Since Pakistan and Turkey border Iran they are very sensitive to destabilizing events in Iran that could spill out as massive refugee flows, separatists gaining power on their shared borders, damage to their linked economies and so on. So the block as a whole is advocating to ease tensions. Actually allying Iran would damage their relations with block members, particularly Saudi Arabia which supplies massive amounts of money and cheap oil to Pakistan, to say nothing of the US. All they would get is the military might of a bombed out country that does not border India and that’s a poor trade.

India on the other hand is in an emerging block with the UAE, Israel, Ethiopia and Greece. Of those Israel is obviously extremely against Iran and the UAE’s relations with Iran have crashed amidst the bombing. The crippling of the UAE’s exports other than what can bypass Hormuz is bad for India since they’d just recently struck a massive gas deal with the UAE. So certainly they will be positioning more aggressively against Iran but I would expect this to be a naval and sea affair and not involve Pakistan. If India ever presses Pakistan too hard they open themselves up for problems with China which does not want India to become too powerful as they have border disputes. China was recently confirmed to have provided Pakistan support in the earlier air fighting.

The Taliban were founded in Kandahar in 1994, their founder and many of the experienced fighters who joined them had previously been Afghan mujahideen though. There were a lot of factions that were fighting each other in the aftermath of the Soviet-supported government’s collapse since the broad group of Afghan mujahideen agreed on fighting the Soviets but not on all the other things.

Anything that triggers the reward pathways in your brain has at least some addictive potential and eating is no exception. Not all foods are created equal, either - adding ex. sugar boosts the reward and makes the food more addictive. Now many foods have huge amounts of added sugars for the sake of preserving shelf life and getting recurrent customers, that sort of thing increases the power of the reward. Over time you become habituated to it though so you can’t get quite the same good feeling with the same amount you ate before - you have to eat even more to get there.

It’s certainly a weaker effect than in drugs, but unlike them EVERYONE has to eat food to survive and over their entire life. There’s a lot of money to be made by enhancing the addictive potential of food so many efforts have been made towards that over time, plus as the obesity rate has risen and people eat more cultural expectations around food on portion size and the like have also been increasing. When I cut weight some years ago after getting overweight and almost at the edge of obesity some of my coworkers were wondering why I was bothering to do so because in their eyes I was a relatively skinny guy, even though I was 197 lbs.

Huge order sizes for military industries keeps the costs of production low in addition to exports bringing in cash from outside. So generally if a country wants a strong military but getting the money for it from taxes is problematic due to the political situation or state of the economy, they’ll try to export as widely as they can. Downside is that if someone you exported to does something nasty with those weapons then everyone who didn’t care for that will give you the side-eye

Store klemmar til dere i Noreg! 🇳🇴

All these reports beg the question… have they found a country that ISN’T carrying out covert schemes in Canada?

Is this supposed to signal against Azerbaijan and other countries that have arrested Russians vaguely recently or is this just a show to prop up the domestic situstion? Either way I don’t think they’re in a situation to do another “special military operation” any time soon…

Beating prisoners with plastic pipes, forcing women to undress, ripping their hair out by hand and slicing off random patches with scissors while laughing, beating people in a tire, calling the women whores and interrupting praying Sunnis to tell them they deserve to burn, demanding prisoners to shout Assadist slogans, blasting A/C in the cold and cutting it in the heat, rescinding food if they took >3 min to eat, tossing water on prisoners are leaving them soaking wet for hours, not allowing use of the bathroom so women had to relieve themselves in their cells… how could you do all that and think, hm, our regime fell, this is a good time to move to the capital. Her buddies at the beauty salon even said a dude told them all he recognized her from the prison well in advance of her being detained, so she had a flashing red button indicating her past could catch up with her.

Can’t help but agree with her victim Hiba when she said, “How dare she not flee Damascus?” The stupidity really boggles the mind.

I am not sure how reliable this other site is but they claim that mixed results came from the emergency meeting becuase the UAE rejected strong language directly mentioning Ethiopia or referring to external support. The meeting apparently did get language of condemnation of attacks against Sudan generically and that Sudan has a right to defend its sovereignty.

https://sudanhorizon.com/the-arab-leagues-decision-on-sudan-behind-the-scenes-the-significance-of-the-positions/

Idk for other ships but their aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov became a meme for always being down for maintenance and/or on fire

Unsurprising, they are quite tightly aligned.

Is there a big push in the EU to expand deportations or something? Since this article seems to indicate that’s a focus of the talks on the EU side. I read something similar as an aside on the news that the suspended cooperation agreement the EU has with Syria is being revived, that said they were looking to send 80% of Syrians back or something like that.

The “Good Taliban, Bad Taliban” theory really did not age well at all for Pakistan

Why do you expect it to fall? Amish and Haredi Jews intentionally stay at arms length from wider society. They maintain strict social pressures that encourage their members to focus on children and discourage the dizzying alternative uses for time socially available to Catholics and the wider US population. Certainly in Israel the Haredi growth rate is remaining stable and has taken them from a marginal groups of a few tens of thousands up to one and a half million, 14% of the population.

Anyway say they do defy their customs and assimilate and follow suit, then other currently marginal groups that do find some way to keep birth rates propped up over time or raise them will eventually inherit the world. Not in our lifetime to be sure.

Amish and Mormons and Heredi Jews continue to have large families be they poor or rich. Culture is definitely a factor.

Cultures that don’t have kids will be replaced by ones that do so this is a shame. Incredible that they insisted on one child policy for so long (though it had its exceptions), the transition will be so painful

The war situation has developed not necessarily to the Malian government’s advantage…