291–300 of 1001 posts
A core trait of my personality can be summed up as "always look on the bright side of life". To that end: This war seems more than likely to drive up oil prices not only in the near term, but in the medium and long terms too! In addition, petroleum usage seems likely to become dependant on sucking Iran's proverbial dick, a notion that very few people in The West will find palatable. Optimistically then, perhaps this…
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As someone with it on, I'm very glad off is the default.
The majority are spam and rage baiting but a large enough amount to be concerning seem to be simply middle of the road opinions by otherwise fairly normal users who have strayed to far from the group in terms of some combination of tone or politics.
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> iran's dickhead move... Remind me again, which country started this whole mess? > what choice do the gulf nations, or even all the asian+european (strait users) nations have? They can go "yeah, you know, the US has been less than reliable as an ally recently, what with absurd tariffs, saber rattling around greenland, belitteling NATO, etc., and they seem unwilling to change, so we're just gonna pay the piper, and g…
> which country started this whole mess? what has already started, is already started -- I agree on Trump being dick, but does that make iran's "making new enemies" a wise move? > NATO already told trump no, other countries won't give different answers. of course it said no BEFORE IRAN started the $2M toll (and other countries don't like trump due to tariff-for-everyone) if the current iran regime was strategically w…
There is no downside on making the Gulf states enemies. Quite to the contrary: they might lobby the USA to end this madness. It's a serious damage to the importance of the USA in the region if it can't or doesn't want to open the strait again, either by force or by making a deal.
A core trait of my personality can be summed up as "always look on the bright side of life". To that end: This war seems more than likely to drive up oil prices not only in the near term, but in the medium and long terms too! In addition, petroleum usage seems likely to become dependant on sucking Iran's proverbial dick, a notion that very few people in The West will find palatable. Optimistically then, perhaps this…
> Wether it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property of renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide. If your sovereign territory happens to support them geographically. This is true for many, but not all countries. Also, without large storage capacity, you might end up being self-sufficient during sunny, windy days, but find yourself very dependent on your neighbor countries for imports on over…
A war continuous until one side has caused the other more suffering than it can take. When dealing with the Middle East we keep underestimating the amount of hardship the people I these countries can endure or be forced to endure.
For all his faults and there are many. The no more wars aspect of Trump's campaign actually made me mildly optimistic. I'm not an American so I'm not sure if the voting base actually believed him.
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I'd be curious about a citation for the "lose half of their babies" statement. This review of the data & papers has some grim numbers, but nothing remotely that dramatic. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7903104/
From over a decade ago .. its still happening: https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/2/e004166 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277304922... But of course, it depends who you ask. American institutions cannot be trusted, obviously.
Nothing in any of the links seems to support the assertion that “Even still today mothers in Baghdad lose half of their babies to deformities caused by the US' criminal use of depleted uranium”
I have no doubt that what happened, and is still happening, is tragic. I do doubt that statement.
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The Millennium Challenge 2002 is discredited because it had motorcycle couriers that moved at light speed handling all communications and 10' speed boats launching 19' missiles.
> The Millennium Challenge 2002 is discredited because it had motorcycle couriers that moved at light speed handling all communications and 10' speed boats launching 19' missiles. This is not what Wikipedia's summary describes. Now, maybe Wikipedia has the wrong summary, but according to it the challenge wasn't "discredited". By that point the exercise was over, but 13 more days were budgeted for, so the analysts req…
The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. In the fantasy im…
You elect clowns, you get a circus. The US has turned into a Wall-e society just getting off on entertainment and bored with civilized, thoughtful politicians. This is the end result of TOO MUCH prosperity for the average American. They haven't experienced true hardship in generations and we (the rest of the world) is paying the price of their hubris.
>Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time.
>It should go without saying that creating the conditions where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error, precisely because it means you end up in a war when it is in the junior partner’s interests to do so even if it is not in the senior partner’s interests to do so.
This situation is not just because we elected a clown, these people donated hundreds of millions to Trump's campaign (Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Elison, etc). The same lobby (the Israel lobby) has contributed hundreds of millions more to almost every US senator, to the point that both political parties are pretty much aligned when it comes to serving Israel. There are plenty of politicians in the Democrat party who are quietly supporting this war because at the end of the day they've been bought by the same lobby.
Kamala (the alternative candidate in the 2024 election) has her own ties to Israel, and publicly said "all options are on the table" to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Which means had she won the election she likely would have also invaded Iran.
It goes beyond just who we elected, it's huge sums of money flowing through our political system and effectively buying our politicians.
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woah so you read this as "iran is morally wrong"? well, that's secondary thing right now what's dumb is dumb what's the least thing you should do when fighting a war? making more enemies. even on moral side... if someone in walmart bullies you, and you bully back to your classmates, does that make you morally justified? plus, if you showed your cards ("decades-old deterrence threats"), you're out of options
Iran is targeting direct US/Israeli interests, which includes military facilities, military personnel, and energy facilities with substantial US/Israeli partnerships. That latter part is particularly key here, and what pro-Israeli propaganda is anxious to suppress.
> plus, if you showed your cards ("decades-old deterrence threats"), you're out of options
Yes, it is a desperation move after undeterred US-Israeli terrorism and brazen violations of international law. But it's also working.