> And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. By and large this is not true. The US and Israel have hit Iran tens of thousands of times, and have never hit a pure civilian target on purpose. They've hit dual use targets, and accidentally hit civilian targets, but not ones on purpose. They could flatten Tehran if they wanted to hit civilians. > Plus its idea of regime change is to keep r…
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" - Sounds pretty wanting to harm the average Iranian to me.
Fair. Still though, the rhetoric does not match what's happened on the ground.
>I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth. >except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate…
> Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, No? https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-t... > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional > revenue from oil sales because of higher crude prices, as well as the fact > that the United States temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russia to rein in > global costs
> > Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional
What's the data and how many extra billions did the make from China and how much increase is that in %?
I will say, this past inflation spike has completely broken the assumptions I had from 1970s economics that employers would raise their 'cost of living' raises to keep pace with inflation. My employer seems to think 2.5% is fine, as they've done it multiple years in recent past with only one extraordinary year netting 4%. I am now very skeptical of any so called 'wage price spiral'
Employers will increase your wages just enough to keep you from leaving. With structural disincentives to leaving (medical coverage in the US), that is almost always a less-than-inflation amount. Do employers even call it a COL increase any more? My employer "rebranded" the annual raises as "merit increases" many years ago.
All of my employers, current and past, have or had only merit increases. COL increases are unheard of.
1) Iran has been naughty v. shipping for a long time, directly and indirectly 2) Iran has been naughty v. USA's allies for a long time, directly and indirectly 3) Iran has been naughty v. USA itself for a long time, directly and indirectly So, in the interested of stable trade through Hormuz, someone decided to push Iran out. The intent was not to close the strait. The effect was to create a situation unsafe for trad…
Definition for "naughty" and examples thereof might help. Because it doesn't mean "closed". The point isn't to make a moral argument for Iran's position, just a realpolitik one. We fucked with them, they fuck with us. They're winning, unfortunately as it might be. Ergo, we shouldn't have fucked with them.
Oh, well that's your point. My point was just that entering the war is consistent with the principle of ensuring bad actors can't act badly, esp re: trade and allies. So we both made our point.
I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. We have * Demonstrated that the US simply can't offer any meaningful security guarantee to it's middle east partners. * Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran * Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates…
i don't own a car, i bike everywhere with young kids. i like public transport. we're not talking about that. people fucking LOVE cars. they LOVE single family homes. everywhere, in every community.
You're mistaking cause and effect. We're beholden to corporate interests that abuse the commons for maximum profitability. Single-family homes and cars are only 100 years old in our tens of thousands of years history as humans. I would LOVE to not have to have a car. I would LOVE to live in a multi-generational home or local community with nearby third places.
You are in the vast minority. The data shows almost all people (in the US) aspire to detached single family homes if they can afford it. In the UK too, from what I can tell.
> It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people. I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters. I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to…
> I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this. They are not entirely closed off. Apparently there is a communication going on around closures, because I have seen fairly inside Iran info in French media (about executions, about people leaving Teheran etc etc). They are more guard…
Why did the Islamic government import militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and put them on the streets if they already have organic support that wants to fight for Iran? That makes no sense, especially when the Islamic government is running short on funds, hiring foreign enforcers that they don't need would be a waste of limited funds.
> And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. By and large this is not true. The US and Israel have hit Iran tens of thousands of times, and have never hit a pure civilian target on purpose. They've hit dual use targets, and accidentally hit civilian targets, but not ones on purpose. They could flatten Tehran if they wanted to hit civilians. > Plus its idea of regime change is to keep r…
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" - Sounds pretty wanting to harm the average Iranian to me.
I love this 'death to America, death to Israel' crowd saying 'it's just metaphor' getting so worked up over this metaphor as if such statements out completely out of line.
Did you get upset when the Islamic occupiers took over Iran in 1979 and stated 'we have defeated/ended Persian culture/civilization'?