And another important thing that I think its not talked about often enough.
Putin is hiding very large amounts of war debt. This is not the first time, he has done it before although at a much smaller scale. You can read all about it in this full report by Harvard economist Craig Kennedy - fair warning though, its a very long read.

The way it works is that before he invaded Ukraine, he passed a law that forces Russia’s biggest banks to give private loans at very preferential rates to private defence companies. Everything that these companies gets buried in Ukraine, and as they do so they keep on accumulating debt.

How big is this debt? At the time when that article was written, one year ago, it summed up 36.6 trillion rubles - more than 20% of the country’s entire GDP. Meanwhile they have probably accumulated even more debt. (I’ve yet to see any further significant data on this and that’s mainly because Russia has stopped making this data public)

The question is then: what happens when the war stops? Well, the chicken will come home to roost.
These companies aren’t profitable, naturally. So the least bad option is that the state will have to chime in and cover this private debts, or some other crazy shit (like letting Russia’s banks take the hit)

They have really fucked Russians over in more ways than one. Doubt they’ll stop anytime soon.

Perfectly reasonable

Sometime in the future we should also include countries like Australia, South Korea, Canada, and others. Although, for the time being I hope the focus is to extend trade partnerships - especially finishing the FTA with Australia and a new one with ASEAN, that’d make me very happy.
This shouldn’t really be about some sort of euro-nationalism, but rather a pragmatic approach that allows us to best counter USA and China.

“We demand that the Islamic Republic of Iran ​clarify the matter in the shortest possible time, provide an explanation and take the necessary urgent measures to prevent such incidents from ​recurring in the future.”

Something tells me they won’t.

Wouldn’t be the first time Americans have fucked Kurds over.
I can’t help but wonder what the Kurds have been promised this time, besides the obvious (autonomy, statehood, etc)

Also, I imagine this won’t sit well with a lot of the westerners who have expressed pro-Kurdish views in the past

“The Kurds and the Jews are natural allies in the Middle East,” he said, adding that many Kurds view Israel’s establishment as proof that independence is achievable for stateless nations.

They’re too busy with their siestas, drinking wine and talking very loudly to read international media.

Straight up lying about what other governments agree to.
Like, I don’t even know what the purpose was here… what did they think, the spanish won’t be hearing about it because its in english?

“We had no choice but to escalate and start a big fire so everyone would see,” the regime insider said. “When our red lines were crossed in violation of all international laws, we could no longer adhere to the rules of the game.”

As opposed to before when you adhered to the rules of the game? Bruh, c’mon bruh.

“this war is going on gracefully with [Khamenei’s] designing”

Well great then. Apparently everything is peachy.

I do wonder where the balance is, because it has to be one. Basically they want to hit them hard enough to get them to pressure USA/Israel into stopping but not hard enough that they start seeing the short-term cost of this war as being bearable for the long-term benefit of no longer having neighbor ruled under Islamic rule.

Doubt it. Solidary with Spain doesn’t necessarily translate to agreeing with Spain, but defending Spain’s right to sovereignty.
Similar to how someone’s defense of others’ free speech doesn’t translate to agreement of whatever it is that they say.

A whole lot of slop when the article should’ve started from the get go with this point here

According to the Times, Israeli officials estimate that they have destroyed 50 percent of Iran’s missile launchers.

If that number is remotely true, then its an insane number.
Maybe Israel is lying, wouldn’t be the first time. Let’s halve it to 25%. Even with that number, removing 25% of Iran’s missile launch capabilities in a couple of days is fucking crazy.

And its that kind of thing that completely changes the military calculations. Sure, they’re a lot more expensive, but if you fuck up your enemy’s capability to launch missiles, they’re very much worth it.
And missile launchers cannot be built at the same fast rate, it goes without saying.

Its things like these that make me (extra) distrustful of western media. Do an actual genuine effort at estimating capabilities and stop it with the clickbaity slop, I’m tired.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the killing of the Iranian leader as a cynical violation of international norms, while Russia’s Foreign Ministry called on all sides to immediately cease hostilities.

FUCKING LOL

But the 27-nation bloc isn’t capable of speaking with one voice, because the war in Ukraine (and Hungary and Slovakia’s lack of support) once again weighs in, alongside Brussels’ dependency on the US across a range of sectors, from energy and defence, to tech and finance.

The author seems to forget another crucial matter. Its not just that Europe relies heavily on American weapons/military both for its defence and for the war in Ukraine, it is also that the Islamic occupiers of Iran have directly and explicitly involved their military industrial complex in an European war on the side of the aggressor.

They have built an entire drone industry inside Russia and for years they have directly helped Russia in its imperialist quest of conquering Ukraine with the thousands upon thousands of drones that have struck hospitals, schools, residential areas, energy infrastructure, military infrastructure, etc.

The Islamic occupiers are directly invested and benefit directly from Russia’s war of aggression.

And that’s another matter that I argue weighs heavily on the European choice of silence.

Can we ban those usaian monsters from the whole union, please?
Its bad enough that many EU countries have already so many cars, we don’t need those micro-dick-energy metal death boxes to clog our streets too.

On the good side LNG tankers don’t do much damage to the environment when compared to oil tankers, also they cost a lot more - like 3-4 more than oil ones, on the bad side there is no bad side.

Iranians have long carried a grievance that global powers exploited their country’s resources while neglecting their democratic aspirations.

They are correct.

History shows that popular uprisings gain confidence when they sense the world is watching – and supporting

at least as far as our protests were concerned, I remember how good it felt when we got the “Europe sees you” response, really emboldened us. Who knows if we would’ve succeeded without international attention.

Unfortunately, both in our case and I believe in this case too, Europe is slow to act. It has always been slow. “it’s not a bug, its a feature”

Sources in ​Sri Lanka’s navy and defence ministry said the vessel ⁠had been attacked by a submarine and at least 101 ​people were missing in the incident that took place off ​Sri Lanka’s Indian Ocean coast.

that’s the best confirmation that I saw, but I guess we’ll see more information later on

Ez fix: just take the cage door off before you transport people?

Around 500 to 1,000 out of 50,000 lorries in Singapore have caged decks. Such lorries may still be used to transport goods.

If only so few even exist, I wonder how many of them have been used to transport people

For anyone else wondering what the warship was doing all the way over in Sri Lank, it seems there have been some military exercises that Iran took part in India, hence it was moving through the Indian ocean where.
Ofc, this hasn’t been confirmed yet, nor have they confirmed whose submarine attacked the warship (although we can make some fair assumptions)

There are language schools, but I can’t find any details about full education being available in a minority langauge.

I mean… Belgium literally has three different full-fledged education systems in flemish, french and german; all of them with their own curricula, schools, universities, etc.

Due to their similar language they are mostly bilingual and can relatively easily understand each other.

This is just flat out wrong??? Finnish and swedish are not similar languages and they’re not mutually understandable. A finnish speaker cannot understand a swedish speaker. Swedish is a germanic language, Finnish is blood uralic, its not even part of the indo-european family. Perkele, mita vittua?!
Did you just go “oh, they’re both in the north, they sound similar to me sooooooooooooooo”

Spanish is the only official language in Spain, only autonomous regions are allowed to have their own official languages per the constitution.

By definition its not the ONLY official language if areas in the country have extra official languages.
The very constitution of the country allows for co-official languages.

And overall it makes sense that these minority-language schools are present only in particular regions. Why would you want to have schools for language X when there’s not a consistent minority that speaks language X in that area in the first place? Complete waste of resources.
And naturally you can’t have schools for every minority, especially with modern-day migration, but its not economically feasible to have a school where only 3 kids can attend.
If would’ve just said that not every minority in Europe gets its school, I would’ve agreed. That much is clear. But that is a very different point from the one initially made.
The dominant model in Europe is certainly not one similar to the one China is pursuing, in fact I’d argue that there’s few EU member states that come close to that. And the ones that spring to mind are the Baltics - Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia - which is an entirely different bag of chips and a whole conversation to be had about how right or wrong they are to pursue something like that in their present geopolitical context.

and Finnish have the same status as Swedish in Finland due to language similarities

Please, stop saying that. The two languages are not similar. That’s not the reason for their status. Its because Swedish imperialism. They occupied Finland for centuries. To help you better understand, percentage-wise the similarity between Swedish and Finnish is CLOSE TO 0% (ZERO)

There is a strong push to encourage foreign languages as secondary

Strong push? I don’t agree with this framing. It makes it seem like its just beginning, like only now we’re moving in that direction. When the reality is that its completely normalized across most if not all EU member states.
Teaching at least one foreign language is a long-term standard of the education system of EU states.

In 2023, 89% of pupils in upper secondary education in the EU were learning English as a foreign language: this share was 96% in general programmes and 80% in vocational programmes.

Out of all the feasible outcomes from today’s point of view, Pahlavi might be the least bad one, which is why I don’t think its going to happen.
More feasible seems to be a situation in which the IRGC&co continue with their occupation of the country and USA/Israel strike some kind of deal with a new ayatollah (which for now seems to be the old one’s son, go figure). Either that or the conflict continues for X time and it gradually simmers down, no deal struck.
Very unfortunate reality for Iranians, I’m afraid.