A better analogy would be that if you had thrust your head so far up Putin’s arse that you could taste the pirozhki, then you too would probably find your mouth constantly full of his shit.

Orban is scum.

Businesses buy out other businesses across borders all the time. This is normal behaviour.

As for whether it’s a good idea: in short, competitive markets tend to be a lot more efficient than protected markets - which ultimately leads to lower prices for consumers. Nippon Steel thinks it can operate US Steel more efficiently than the current owners and managers of US Steel, hence Nippon Steel thinking it is profitable for them to buy it at a price that is higher than what the current owners value it at (as reflected in US Steel’s share price).

The fact that more efficient companies can buy out less efficient companies is an important part of what keeps market-based economies successful and dynamic. If you want to know what it looks like when economies don’t allow this, take a look at the economic malaise in somewhere like Britain in the 1970s after several decades of protectionism and state support for failing industries (or if you take protectionism to a logical extreme, North Korea…)

There’s potentially a line of argument about monopoly risk (monopolies are economically inefficient) but that seems limited here - US Steel is only the 24th largest steel producer and the combination of Nippon and US Steel will still be smaller than the biggest players in the steel market like Baowu and ArcelorMittal.

No, I get that, and that might explain if the US changed its policy on the two-state solution. But it hasn’t - Biden has spoken publicly on two-state being the only viable outcome even within the last few weeks.

The two-state solution is - and has long been - UK official policy under governments of all three parties. So it’s unsurprising the UK would vote in favour.

The weird thing is that this is also US policy. Why the hell would the US vote against this?

Addressing the Middle East, the Assembly took up the report “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources” (document A/78/467), adopting the eponymous resolution by a recorded vote of 158 in favour to 6 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Nauru, Palau, United States), with 13 abstentions.

Why would the US vote against this? The two-state solution is US government policy!

New Nokia, who dis?

Mate, even if it was the mayor of Upton Snodsbury in Worcestershire who had made this comment, I would be glad to see the Auschwitz Museum had responded to them. The fact it was a mayor in the country in question makes it even more relevant.

Never again means never again. It means challenging genocide and ethnic cleansing every time, at every step along the road that leads to these outcomes - not just waiting until the trains are already on their way to the death camps before your raise your voice.