No argument there. I really do wonder what the supervision / oversight is of the ICE teams.
They have free reign, it’s been well advertised they can do what they want with no consequences.
1 Like
As all this heats up, I can’t help but wonder why I’d not considered the Tommy Ten Names movement and the broader effect of all this ultra conservative money flowing into UK politics and other movements. It started with the anti-abortion stuff I think, but is much deeper.
Yes it’s about the culture war, but it’s also about forming a strong trans-Atlantic identity. These people want a world view to spread, but they also need allies willing to follow them into the abyss when they upend all their traditional relationships and the values upon which they’re built.
I’ve lost track of the number of all ranks mess breakfast conversations I’ve had where people express views that wouldn’t look out of place in Trump’s inner circle.
We’ve been conditioned not to call this stuff out because of the importance of diversity of thought, freedom of expression (you know, our wonderful, liberal democratic values we all say we share) but it has spread.
I also see it in the context of education. I’m not allowed to talk politics with the kids, or our cadets for that matter.
This makes sense, because in a way it protects them and means we avoid all the tense stuff about which we may disagree (see this forum).
But then you realise their only other vector for learning and influence is mainlining TikTok, Insta, Facebook, and YouTube algorithms — and look who controls them… it’s the people claiming that teachers etc shouldn’t be able to talk about these things (it’s like sex ed all over again, but the stakes are even higher!)
A generation + of damage has been done and by the time we find Trump expanding his sphere of influence while eradicating his “enemy within”, we’ll finally find out whether they waited long enough to guarantee our commitment.
If this is to be full-blown WW3 or not, I’m not sure our nation will find itself on the right side of history.
2 Likes
The anti-globalists have globalised…
1 Like
I think that highlights wonderfully that they’ll say whatever they need to to win the argument of the day.
Zero honest principles behind any of this. They’ve got to hide the long game!
2 Likes
It’s all about power.
Let’s take one of their key arguments: energy security. It’s tosh.
In terms of fossil fuels, we don’t have sufficient supply within our current territories to meet the demands of domestic energy consumption. As such we would have to conduct international trade to meet the aims this way, or force society to accept a huge downgrade in living standards. So achieving energy autarky through fossil fuels is impossible.
With renewables, we may be able to achieve great things with wind & solar power, but the components required to build the infrastructure require huge quantities of rare earth materials. Guess what we don’t have in the UK? That’s right; rare earth materials (not in any sizeable quantity anyhow) meaning we can’t build from scratch what’s required to achieve energy autarky through renewables and have to trade internationally.
So ultimately we have no viable option to achieve so-called “energy security” without improving our trading abilities and leaning more into a globalised, freely trading world, achieving energy security through collaboration with other states as opposed to withdrawing and isolating ourselves. The ONLY other alternative would be expanding our territorial extent to capture foreign territories that contain these resources, like Trump is trying to do with Greenland under the pretence of ensuring it doesn’t become Russian or Chinese.
This is quite an interesting development that seems to have largely gone unreported.
Earlier this month, Trump used an executive order to reverse the 2024 sale of one American chip manufacturer to another American chip manufacturer because the latter is allegedly under Chinese “control…” (I’m writing about international trade in semiconductors and happened across this).
Energy security as a reason to stay with oil has always been utterly mad, considering who either supplies most of it or the routes it needs to go through to get to us.
1 Like
It made sense 80 years ago when we owned all the places with Oil.
Now it’s just dumb, especially when we can be energy secure with renewables
1 Like
Is that domestically or militarily?
Iceland has energy security but doesn’t have access to the oil to maintain military forces to any great extent.
Domestically mainly.
Good news that I realised only today; we’re a quarter of the way through this term! 
You mean we have at least 3 more years of this 
1 Like
Depends whether the next wannabe Lee Harvey Oswald is successful or not, I guess. And I’m fairly certain there will be more attempts given the internal disquiet within the domestic US population.
1 Like
There’s the whole.“don’t wish ill on people” thing, but I think he’s more likely to have a stroke than be shot.
I’m hoping that the second half is a bit less effective after the mid-terms.
For a different perspective on the impact of current U.S. policies on alliances and soft power, have a listen (or watch) the current Aviation Week podcast.
There’s also the case of better the Devil you know, as bad as he is he’s a stable genius compared to Vance.
The issue is that he uses Executive Orders to bypass the system, so a spanking in the mid-terms won’t rein him in. The biggest hope is that it will make the Republicans see sense come the Primaries and pick a better candidate for the next election. If they don’t pick a MAGA candidate they can kill the movement off.
With MAGA neutered it will take the wind out of the sails of like minded movements they have been fostering around Europe.
1 Like
I dunno, if the midterms go really badly, the Dems may have the numbers to impeach him.