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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#911
post #905
post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of weak arguments that aren't based in real historical context. Xi Jinping absolutely believes in Marxism-Leninism. You could argue there were reformers in past decades that held sway, but he doesn't want to see himself get replaced with a reformer. There has never been a communist state, when we talk about communists we talk about movements that aspire to communism. Maybe the old CCP operated thi…

> Xi Jinping absolutely believes in Marxism-Leninism. Good. It also doesn't make China Communist, let alone establish that "Communism = bad" as you assert. > ... which did leave Japan and Germany operating below their potentials, but communism threatened them bot Are you really saying that Japan and Germany had to do Imperialism and the Holocaust because there was a Communist movement in their countries? Really? That…

You're ignoring things I already stated, such as communism is an aspiration. So of course China is not realized communism, because communism has never been realized at the national scale. The people in charge however, are absolutely communists.

Do you know why Hitler blamed the Jewish people and had them separated out? He blamed the Jewish Bolshevik revolutions in Germany for causing Germany to lose World War 1. Hitler's actual belief was that Bolshevism was a Jewish mechanism to achieve global control. Bolshevism is born out of Marxism and is essentially communist. The "headquarters" of communism was Comintern in Russia. Many of the leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia and elsewhere were Jewish. Marxism also comes from Karl Marx, who was Jewish.

This is why he put Jewish people in concentration camps, because he believed with conviction that they were a threat to German sovereignty. This is also why he planned from the very beginning to attack Russia, even while temporarily allying with them. Japan also saw Marxist revolution inside China as a threat to its sovereignty, but it ended up fighting both the communists and the anti-communists.

Obviously many atrocities were committed in these wars. We are lucky that the US saved Russia and China, because they are much weaker adversaries than an expansive Germany or Japan had they conquered their respective regions.

We didn't start World War 1, but we helped finish it. We didn't start World War 2, but we helped finish it. We didn't start the Korean war, the communists did backed by Russia. We didn't start the Vietnam war, but it probably started similarly.

We didn't put Saddam Hussein in power and he was never our puppet, but Iran was a much greater threat than Iraq was and that's why we provided him weapons when he was fighting Iran. Saddam Hussein was afraid of the Islamic revolution and saw it as an existential threat. There were border fights even beforehand. Saudi Arabia also saw the Islamic revolution in Iran as essentially the next Hitler. The reason that war started, was because Iran was trying to export its Islamic Revolution into Iraq, which is the same thing it's been doing again in recent years. Yes, Saddam eventually became a problem for us, but it's more nuanced than you present it.

There are a lot of details around 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan that maybe you aren't aware of, but I don't feel like going into them at present.

Both Marxist movements and Islamic movements have these kinds of extreme radical qualities about them that countries feel the need to defend against. When a country has any sort of power, it gains some capacity to export its way of thinking through investing people, funding and even hardware into that goal.

China is simultaneously threatening to export its ideology in psychological warfare and expand militarily.

I guess you'll never believe any of this, anything else I say or research any of this objectively to decide if it has merit. I can't fix that, that's up to you.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can try. I don't think they'll like the consequences. Imagine if Saudi Arabia decides it's not friends with the US anymore and won't send any more oil here. That'll shake things up a bit, won't it? And Iran will be even more pissed off and determined to get a nuke than before, probably still choking the strait. You're talking about the US and Israel leaving the biggest, most obvious turd in history on the entire…

> don't think they'll like the consequences Sure. The point is strategic depth absolutely gives America this choice. The way it could actually happen is with a regime change. Special election in Israel or midterm full switch of the Congress together with war-powers resolutions in America. To be clear, I’m not advocating for this. But it’s a bit silly to say Iran gets a veto on this at a kinetic level. They don’t. The…

Not sure what "lecturing" has to do with it. The US has the physical power to withdraw, and Saudi Arabia has the physical power to decide where their oil goes. That we started this mess is another argument for them finding a way to retaliate if we somehow decided to leave them hanging. I don't know if that's the most realistic consequence, but there would definitely be some that, at least if they were known in advance, would make us wish we had done something else.

That's the point. We have the power to leave, we absolutely don't have the power to leave without severe consequences. Similarly, if someone points a gun at you and tells you to stay, you still have the physical power to leave unless they also strapped you down. But that's cold comfort.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#913
post #714

I think this analysis is missing the big picture. (1) reducing oil shipments to China is good posturing for the US; hence Venezuela and Iran ahead of 2028. These are shaping operations. China suffers more from these conflicts than the US. (2) Iran isn't the only one who can control passage throught the strait. All gulf countries can do so. If Iran can cheaply cut off passage, so can Saudi Arabia and UAE and everyone…

The tl;dr here is, with all due respect, that your premises are basically all wrong. > (1) reducing oil shipments to China is good posturing for the US No, it isn't. For several reasons: 1. China has stockpiled ~1.4 billion barrels of oil. it'a net importer. Supplies from Russia aren't disrupted. At present, Iranian oil is still gointg to China; 2. China is rapidly decreasing its dependence on fossil fuels with renew…

I just want to point out one disagreement I had:

"Take desalination plants as an example. Yes Iran has those too but Iran also has significant snow melt as a source of water, Mountains, remember? Iran has ski resorts they have that much snow."

Iran is in a dire situation with its water supply. It used to rely on an ancient system of ancient Qanat wells that only provide a fixed amount of water that can't be overdrawn, but in their quest to be self sufficient in terms of food they have gone to groundwater instead. The Qanats haven't been maintained so their output has reduced, probably permanently to some extent, and the ground water table is running dry to the extent that they are considering moving their capital.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second link: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/... Maybe you didn’t read it.

Right, 15 years ago in a recently heavily bombarded city 50% of children were born with defects, according to one study. Terrible even if off by an order of magnitude. Nothing in that document, or anything else I've found, supports the claim that today in Baghdad half of all children are dying from birth defects. Things were bad. Are still bad. But throwing around inaccurate numbers does not help matters.

>Right, 15 years ago in a recently heavily bombarded city 50% of children

In a lot of the bombarded cities, not just Fallujah. Wherever US forces went they left a heinous legacy which is still paid for by the mothers of Iraq.

>Baghdad

There’s another study for Baghdad out there, I’ll link it if I can find it.

>inaccurate numbers

Straw man argument. The numbers are inaccurate because the studies are obfuscated by US-led institutions such as NIH, which have a vested interest in avoiding the truth. Like was done with Agent Orange as a precedent, of course.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#915
post #905
post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of weak arguments that aren't based in real historical context. Xi Jinping absolutely believes in Marxism-Leninism. You could argue there were reformers in past decades that held sway, but he doesn't want to see himself get replaced with a reformer. There has never been a communist state, when we talk about communists we talk about movements that aspire to communism. Maybe the old CCP operated thi…

> Xi Jinping absolutely believes in Marxism-Leninism. Good. It also doesn't make China Communist, let alone establish that "Communism = bad" as you assert. > ... which did leave Japan and Germany operating below their potentials, but communism threatened them bot Are you really saying that Japan and Germany had to do Imperialism and the Holocaust because there was a Communist movement in their countries? Really? That…

[dead]

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indochina and SEA remained communist free ... according to the domino theory the whole point of USA involvement there was to contain the spread.

> Indochina Huh, that should be Indonesia... Because Indochina (as in the former French colony) was well and fully communist after the Vietnam war

Indochina is the name of the whole peninsula. Only cambodia and vietnam were. The domino theory was that Thailand and Myanmar will fall too.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#917
post #911
post #905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xi Jinping absolutely believes in Marxism-Leninism. Good. It also doesn't make China Communist, let alone establish that "Communism = bad" as you assert. > ... which did leave Japan and Germany operating below their potentials, but communism threatened them bot Are you really saying that Japan and Germany had to do Imperialism and the Holocaust because there was a Communist movement in their countries? Really? That…

You're ignoring things I already stated, such as communism is an aspiration. So of course China is not realized communism, because communism has never been realized at the national scale. The people in charge however, are absolutely communists. Do you know why Hitler blamed the Jewish people and had them separated out? He blamed the Jewish Bolshevik revolutions in Germany for causing Germany to lose World War 1. Hitl…

> Do you know why Hitler blamed the Jewish people and had them separated out?

Yes, Hitler did blood libel [1], a tradition continued by Donald Trump [2].

> He blamed the Jewish Bolshevik revolutions in Germany for causing Germany to lose World War 1

Are you arguing Hitler was right? Or that it was a useful tool and a lie? Because you've blamed the Communists for WW2. Multiple times. This makes me think you've been hiding your power level and I'm usually pretty good at spotting that. I should've recognized it from blaming the Communism. It's specifically "cultural Bolshevism" [3]. That too has been recycled today as "cultural Marxism" [4]

> Bolshevism is born out of Marxism and is essentially communist. The "headquarters" of communism was Comintern in Russia. Many of the leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia and elsewhere were Jewish. Marxism also comes from Karl Marx, who was Jewish.

I get it now [5].

> We didn't put Saddam Hussein in power and he was never our puppet,

He was our foil against Iran. We gave him weapons to fuel the death count of the Iraq-Iran war. We didn't care when he used nerve gas on the Kurds. All of that is established historical fact.

> I guess you'll never believe any of this

No, I don't buy into neo-Nazi conspiracy theories. You are correct.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

[2]: https://www.axios.com/2023/12/30/trump-poisoning-the-blood-r...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_power_skinhead

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aluminum is recycled... but because recycling is less energy intensive then production of fresh aluminum So what? > Recycling of EV batteries will lose between 1-10% of the valuable metals How much gasoline, coal, and natural gas can you recycle? > The worst kind of recycling is decreasing the costs of recycling by outsourcing to third world countries That's going to happen as long as those countries are poor. They…

I just wanted to show that there no such thing as perfect recycling technology. If you want to choose least material intensive source of energy, you choose nuclear energy. By choosing nuclear energy you get the benefit of almost decarbonizing you electricity production as can be seen in France.

Nuclear isn't perfect either. You can be embargoed for uranium way more easily, if you don't already have it. It's more expensive to build than solar and takes much longer (and don't BS me with "it's because of the regulations!" - everything, even solar, has regulations that drive up the cost and construction timelines).

If you can build price-competitive nuclear energy without government backstops or insurance, you have my blessing.

I personally think nuclear's time is in the far future when we have more advanced, exotic materials that make it radically safer and cheaper. For applications where solar isn't sufficient, such as space propulsion.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that highly intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things -- I've seen it first hand. The correlating factor for those two acquaintances is that they are both devout Christians . I find that to be beyond ironic but also makes sense, as that devotion parallels the appeal to authority and many churches are run by leaders who believe in Supply Side Jesus. I don't mean this to be inflammatory as it's only…

I agree with your last organized religion comment somewhat, but the jump to devout Christians based off some anecdotes comes off as a bit prejudiced. The "not trying to be inflammatory" is a decent pre-emptive hedge attempt, but still falls flat when reading. This is a pattern I see here sometimes, which is criticism of religion drifting into assumptions about specific groups, and it tends to weaken an argument that…

I take no pleasure in my assessment at all, and I would love to be proven wrong.

Let me give you one of countless examples of why I said what I did: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/26/hegseth-pray...

There plenty of other criticisms of groups and systems and people in general. But the "God Says So" crowd is very real and has been with us the whole time.

I consider myself to be deeply spiritual and understand the appeal and would even join in the faith if I thought it was real. But I don't. I wish I didn't have to pay any attention to it or care about it or think about it at all. But I do.

The reason I care, and I speak up about it, is that there are factions in power that embody exactly what my "prejudice" criticizes. This is everyone's business because they are making their faith everyone's business.

Edit: I believe this dialog is germane to HN because the subject is literally about the hacking of democracy itself.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#920
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: >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…

> it's huge sums of money flowing through our political system and effectively buying our politicians I disagree strongly with this assertion. But for sake of argument, let's assume it's true: American politics is permanently captured to Israel's interests. That still doesn't explain this war. "I think most folks understand that this war was a misfire for the United States, but I suspect it may end up being a terribl…

That is why this conflict is so interesting and momentous, this is a fundamental change in the Middle East.

Israel had 2 major opponents remaining the region: Iraq and Iran.

We invaded Iraq and regime-changed them at the behest of neocons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...

>Calls for regime change in Iraq

>Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, specifically advocating regime change through "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq". The letter suggested that "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq", even if no evidence linked Iraq to the September 11 attacks.

>https://www.twf.org/News/Y2004/0111-Before911.html

The neocons are/were a group of American Zionists, both Jewish and Christian.

Now we are working to eliminate the only remaining rival to Israel in the region: Iran.

Israel will be free to grow into a global superpower after this is complete, Israel is the only nuclear power in the region, they sit at the nexus of the eastern and western hemispheres and on top of abundant energy reserves. _They will not need US support anymore_. This is the fundamental gamble that they are taking with this war. They know that they will lose US popular support both on the left and the right, but if it pays off they will not need that support anymore and will be free to dominate the region.

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