Mantergeistmann
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User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Clearly the only logical solution is to just swap the populations of Taiwan and Israel.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Nowhere is the continued existence of Europeans demanded
It's close, but the continued existence of French Canadians is certainly demanded.
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
Blockading a strait that you control
By what definition does Iran control the Oman side of the Strait that doesn't imply everyone with an ASBM controlls all water within missile distance? Pakistan, too, has missiles that can reach shipping in the Hormuz. Does Pakistan control the Strait? If Israel had the capability to mine the waters of Oman, would you say they control the Strait? Or that China does?
Seems rather foolish to me.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
I remember once seeing a comparison of the "energy" used by a modern household vs. Classical household, and that it was pretty similar, the difference obviously being electricity vs. human slaves. No idea as to the accuracy/rigor of it, tho.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
That implies that if a nation is reliant on fuel imports, their foe must allow the fuel to continue to flow during a conflict. Hell, taken to an extreme, if a country goes to war with a nation that provides them their electricity, the second country must continue to provide it to their enemy? Sounds... kind of absurd, at least to me.
Mantergeistmann
3d ago
Here I thought the most famous Peter was Spiderman. Or one of the Russian Emperors.
Maybe it's just a sign I haven't been to church recently enough.
Mantergeistmann
3d ago
How hurt is the Iranian leadership and army though
Depends on if they can keep the paychecks going.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
cost trillions, killed millions
This is unfortunately hilarious to me, because my hyper-political family member regularly posts the phrase "Costing trillions, killing millions" on Facebook, often as part of particularly unhinged rants, and it's therefore rather difficult for me to take seriously just due to overexposure.
Contrary to your stance, however, she sees Europe being flooded with migrants as a good thing, because they're so much more virtuous and intelligent and hard-working than the average European national (and, of course, even the worst European native is far superior to any white American!)
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
That's my understanding as well. The strikes were coming, one way or another, but Israel saw a hell of a great chance if they started things off early.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
Specifically I'm looking for evidence that people thought Iran "controlled" the straits beyond simple area-of-denial.
So you're looking for someone who says "control" and means "control", which is not any of the people saying "control" and meaning "area denial"?
Bit of a tough ask, because you can always say that words mean whatever you want them to, but:
At the moment the Strait of Hormuz is under the de facto rule of the Iranian military
Tehran’s ‘toll booth’ system is now controlling Hormuz traffic
Lloyd's List, but I guess you could argue they didn't control the Strait, merely the traffic through it, and that those are two very different things.
Allowing Iran to continue to control the crucial waterway is likely to be highly unpalatable to Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.
Financial Times, and if they continue to control it, well, that must mean they already had control.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
A decent portion of the world's population is horrified by America's actions and psychopathic killing.
A decent portion of the world's population apparently also would have demanded the Allies sue for peace during WWII as soon as the first civilians were killed during D-Day, or the first reports of a soviet atrocity, or the first news that the Japanese on the mainland were struggling with food insecurity.
Look, every single civilian death is a goddamn tragedy, and the US military can and should do better, particularly in the opening salvos of a campaign against a long-hostile regime. But unlike the Iranian regime, the US appears to be trying to only target military and military-use infrastructure, and I refuse to accept special pleading as valid in this case.
Mantergeistmann
5d ago
an article [...] that examines what a systemic crisis caused by an AI squeeze might look like.
That's not the Citrini Report, presumably?
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
clearly viable babies who are likely to be severely disabled (like Down's) but Christian pro-lifers want abortion to be illegal in almost all of them
I'd assume Christians are also against euthanasia of infants in these cases, so...
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
Looks like Iran has claimed that the only place they've dropped mines--the "danger zone"--is Oman waters.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
Germany tried something similar with their unrestricted submarine warfare. Now you can argue that this was less of a proper blockade (U-boots are not suitable for searching vessels for contraband, so their only option is to sink any vessels).
I need to re-read Admiral Bauer's Das Unterseeboot, but despite his rather obvious bias, he makes two credible points: the German blockade should have been considered legitimate, and Germany should have never made the concession that its submarines follow the rules of cruiser warfare early on.
Mantergeistmann
8d ago
I found TWZ's coverage to be pretty comprehensive, and a bit more credible than that linked video.
I do agree with him that Ghost Murmur is probably bullshit, though -- CIA disinfo op. But if you're citing "this technology some unnamed sources told the NY Post about" being implausible as a reason to disbelieve everything else...
Mantergeistmann
8d ago
There are simply far too many analogous situations in the world. Just in the Strait of Hormuz Oman or the UAE could demand the same. For the Suez/Straight of Gibraltar you have the whole Mediterranean, Ethiopia, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan. This tactic is basically untenable
I maintain that it's worse than anyone thinks. Again, the only way for Iran to control the Strait is to strike ships outside their territorial waters, and specifically in another nation's waters. The precedent, therefore, is that one can declare control over any important waters within credible (at least, what insurers consider credible) range of their anti-ship missiles... I'm not up on the latest tech, but I believe there are some out there that can go over 500km.
Israel
Can you imagine the outcry if Israel were to declare that they were going to start attacking ships using the Suez without paying a toll to Israel "because of Hamas's illegal war against them"? It'd be hilarious to watch the comments.
Mantergeistmann
8d ago
Israel has been responsible for far more terror attacks than Iran. How much white phosphorus has Iran used against civilian populations?
Pedantically, there's a difference between "war crimes" and "terror attacks". Also pedantically, use of white phosphorous as a concealment is legal.
Less pedantically, how many cluster munitions has Iran used against civilian populations? Those have much less of a legal grey area than white phosphorous does, even if they weren't a key moment in Spec Ops: The Line.
Mantergeistmann
8d ago
I don’t see why else they’d have such a fixation on nuclear power in the most oil rich region of the world and while being sanctioned for having nuclear energy.
It's not even their fixation on nuclear power that they were sanctioned for, it's their fixation on uranium enrichment significantly beyond that which is needed for nuclear power.
Mantergeistmann
9d ago
Agreed. Bob is likely to defect if it looks like the Empire will lose (or that he himself might pay the cost), and Carol is likely to either begin sandbagging or resign entirely.
In terms of evilness? Well, as a true believer in an evil cause, that would again be Alice. But I would say she is still more virtuous than Bob, who's an opportunistic mercenary.
I would rather Bob be killed, and Alice survive to reconstruction as a matter of personal preference, but in terms of pragmatic effectiveness, she's got to be the target.
Mantergeistmann
9d ago
The game basically conditions you to fight the covenant and then does a switcheroo where all the standard tactics and tools backfire when used against the flood.
Wasn't that the point, though? To differentiate them, and force the player to go through a bit of panic when what they've been trained to do the entire game suddenly doesn't work? Seems in line with how that situation should feel in the moment from an in-game perspective.
Mantergeistmann
12d ago
Ah. Weird phrasing, but fair enough, I guess.
Mantergeistmann
12d ago
I mean, don't get me wrong, he had some great points, but I don't think he was benching 450 as a "muscular authoritarian type". At least not the image most people have of him...
Mantergeistmann
12d ago
Apparently he also grabbed a 14th century weapon?
behind closed doors at the Pentagon [...] one U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy
Seriously, 14th century is awful specific for a weapon's time period, unless it was one of the Swiss Guard's halberds, which, ballsy move there to try to threaten the Pope's envoy with one of his own guardsmen's weapons. Although even then, I think that'd have been 16th century...
Isn't "this is our (somewhat less than) ancient homeland" also the entire argument for why the Palestinians should have primacy in the region over the Israelites?
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