This is the closest question in the survey to the article title (which I couldn’t bypass the paywall on):

Looks like net favorability is still positive for continued support to Ukraine even absent more US aid outside of southern Europe.

The leaks were legit, the guy got prosecuted and everything. Snopes thinks they’re legit as well as every other major media outlet:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/04/13/ukraine-war-plans-leak-discord-server/

The Pentagon leaks should give some insights here:

https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-ukrainians-killed-putins-war-leaked-documents-2023-4?op=1

The US estimated that about 16.5k UA soldiers were killed in about the first year and change of fighting so the 31k estimate is possible after 3 years but seems pretty low. It would extrapolate out to about 45k, but the fighting has been different every year.

Edit: apparently it’s only been 2 years of fighting, my bad, numbers from Zelensky look pretty legit to me then.

Well Germany didn’t acknowledge the Namibia genocide until 2021. They’re fine with acknowledging the Holocaust since they can pin that on a rouge actor, the Nazi’s. Since they can’t pin their support for Israel on anyone else, they have trouble acknowledging Israel’s conduct.

Well in your scenario she would become the problem of Syria, and whatever you think of the Asaad regime there’s a reason these types of exiles are not accepted under international law. When a large county uses a smaller society as its de facto prison it doesn’t tend to work out too well for the natives (see Australia), so it’s just not allowed in principle. In reality the British are trying to say it’s Bangladesh’s problem since her parents are from there which doesn’t really make sense.

In addition to what others have said NK spends about 1/3 of its GDP on its military. It definitely punches above its economic weight when it comes to war.

India hasn’t sold any weapons to Russia at least since the war started.

I’ve have not read any analysis that has not said the Czech weapons were superior, but I’m not a weapons expert. The Israelis also had more fighting men than the combined Arab forces. This Israel underdog narrative is mythology.

Israel was supplied arms from Europe during the war.

Framing the Arabs as the mighty over the Europeans is a new one for me.

Might makes right arguments don’t resonate with me.

You skipped one step at the beginning where Israel took power by force in '48.

I agree with the article here that the increased spending has more to do with the Russian invasion. On the other hand Trump’s comments on NATO in 2016 were where we saw NATO sentiment explode as people saw supporting NATO as resisting Trump. It really was key to rehabilitating the image of NATO after Libya and Afghanistan.

Well it’s a backward looking model which explains why it aligns so perfectly with the last 2 recessions. There is certainly value to models like this, and all economic models should be based on data, but it really should show more than 20ish years of history. My guess is that it is only made based on those years, and it doesn’t fit the rest of history nearly so well which is why those years are omitted.

I watched, but it truly is a bunch of rambling.

Putin pushed the CIA sniper incitement conspiracy theory, but didn’t present evidence.

On the Nazi thing, he seems to be pivoting to he invaded because Ukraine doesn’t have strong enough laws to prevent Nazi speech. Again not very compelling.

He again brings up the conflict pre-invasion in east UA, but fails to mention that Russia was backing the insurgents.

He brings up that the change of power in 2014 wasn’t done to the letter of the UA constitution, but fails to mention that the current government clearly has a popular mandate.

He rehashes all the arguments that the West has been the aggressor since the fall of the USSR with NATO expansion.

Other than that it was pretty off topic. Tucker doesn’t press him much at all, and when he does Putin deflects and Tucker gives up.

Overall nothing you wouldn’t expect.

ETA: just remembered, this was kind of strange. The Nord Stream pipeline blasts were brought up and it was one of the few things that Tucker pushed him on for evidence that UA/US were behind it, but Putin doesn’t want to talk evidence. It’s kinda weird since this might be the one point where Russia has some ground to stand on, but Putin just defects. Maybe he doesn’t want to set a precedent that evidence is required.

Close. The CIA is thought to have funded the Mujahideen, funneling money and arms through Pakistan. Some of them would become the Taliban later.

As for Al Queda, it’s possible that they did as well, but generally thought to be unlikely. The reason being is that Bin Laden had more than enough money personally since his dad was a wealthy construction magnate with ties to the KSA royal family.

As a side note, the push by the US and KSA to put religious extremists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets undoubtedly played a role in the strength of the Taliban and Al Queda in the 90’s.

And who is complaining about 17bn? For what the LHC accomplished and the potential of a new collider. This is about understanding the fundamental nature of the universe and reality. The implications for future tech are limitless.

He’s not a dictator yet, but he’ll have the opportunity to rewrite the constitution with the numbers his party will get in the next election. He seems to have signalled this is what he plans to do. Given his economic policies and the fact that he runs a police state (even if it was temporarily needed to get rid of gangs I doubt it will stop), he looks a lot like Pinochet which gives some people pause.

That said it’s up to the people of El Salvador to decide if it’s worth the risk to hand one party all the power.

Edit: current election not next election

This is a discussion about what the people who live there want, not what the government does, are we not on the same page here? The fact is the Iraqi PM is facing internal pressure to expel US forces and he is in the process of doing that.

You sure do talk a lot about this for someone who doesn’t understand the basics. The groups Iran backs in Iraq are there to prop up the current Iraqi regime since they’re afraid of another Sunni leader emerging if the current regime falls. They’re mainly worried about an Islamic State takeover, and Iraq accepts their presence.

Jordan has a dictator who lied and said the US base that got struck was in Syria instead of Jordan most likely to avoid backlash from the population about the presence of a US base in their borders.