2D3D
9hr ago
Yea that is a pretty strong possibility that people dislike Russia more than they dislike Hamas, as blindingly stupid as that is Nevertheless nothing obligates Israel to act as an occupier as well, and more importantly nothing obligates Israel to supply power water and food to Gaza. Without Israel the Gazan population would be 20% what it currently is because that strip of land cannot support a populations food and water requirements, much less power and shelter. As a foreign hostile state Israel will get the back and forth of rockets and militants and broken ceasefires, but Israel will not be obligated to give free water and food or open its borders to trade with a hostile neighbour. Let Gaza open its border with Egypt and set up its own port and airport, which still must be free of military function lest they lose their protected status too. I won't hold my breath
2D3D
18hr ago
Being an occupying power sucks. Being the external wrecking ball is fucking fantastic. Ukraine isn"t castigated for wrecking Russian power and economy, not in the same way whining libs protest Israel. You get so much less stupid shit lobbed your way when you are retaliating against an asshole. Even Saudi got cover in response to the Houthi attacks, its only the Kashoggi killing that tanked Saudis international support.
2D3D
20hr ago
Gaza was getting power and water and open borders for aid from Israel because Israel is an 'occupying power'. As a foreign state it is entitled to nothing, much less as a hostile one.
2D3D
1d ago
No munition is cheap. Artillery cheaper is cheaper than a missile only due to scale of production and complexity, but if you need 60 shells to decisively destroy a target you're shit outta luck compared to a high precision shell. CEP for GPS guided artillery is still not great, so precision missiles are best. The problem of course is that precision missiles are very hard to even get deployed in the area of operations, what with pilot skill and airframe being a very substantial barrier to entry.
Right now the meta is for cheap kamikaze drones, especially COTS DJI FPV kits which have the best in class flight controllers. These drones are all super vulnerable to electronic warfare, but even if that is solved the issue is that you need 1 operator per killshot. Max flight time is about 20mins per drone, so it is 1 guy for 2 shots per hour at best. An absolutely insane ROI by current military standards, but it is actually super taxing on the pilots. If you want to experience how draining it can be to be an FPV pilot try playing any flight sim game on oculus - the headset weight and physical disorientation can be extremely taxing.
A cost is borne to kill someone else. If it falls to a container full of sweaty dudes in killpods chugging DMD and an army of minions prepping new killdrones, it may be more expensive than a single fighter pilot with a full loadout.
2D3D
1d ago
USA was in a mood to punish Saudi Arabia following the Kashoggi slaying, and Biden made it a point to undo the designation of the houthis as a terrorist group once he came into power. I should clarify that the houthis had been unimaginably successful against the equally unimaginably incompetent Saudi forces, and continued support of the Saudis did not seem to be worth the pain. There was no indication that the Houthis would be inclined to further destroy themselves by pissing off more people. Saudi failures to engage in worse attacks on the Yemeni population largely stem from their support of the Hadi government (or what is left of it) who demand preservation of vital economic assets for the eventual potential of a government restoration.
The ummah DESPISES the saudis. The saudi government is barely able to keep a lid on its own clerics who espouse antiamerican hatreds, and the exported salafi clerics compete with deobandi and diyanet clerics who all espouse the same conservative rhetoric of 'the kuffar has subverted the arab governments'. Fervent dreams continue to exist whereby the ummah restores islamism to the political center of all their lands and expels the traitors who collaborated with the west, therefore being free to keep the spoils of their lands for themselves.
Arab politicians are happy to let the USA and Israel be the bogeyman responsible for starving out islamist terrorists because the governments are held back by their own populations eager to do Arab Spring 2.0 and cause new Syrian Civil Wars. The maghreb has been happy to export all its young aggressive shitheads to europe because europe spread its doors wide open, but the saudis and egyptians have no such easy means to let its young angry shitheads flow into other lands. The only western land rich with plunder and exploitable human rights is Israel, and the Israelis are happy to call an invasion for what it is and take appropriate action.
2D3D
1d ago
Destroying the Iran nuclear deal was probably Trumps most impactful foreign policy achievement, and spiting Trump is very much a democratic priority. Trusting Iran is obviously a mistake, and democrats need to view Iran as a a wayward good faith actor in order to justify continued concessions to their hostility.
2D3D
1d ago
Weirdo activists are disliked by normies all the way, and weirdo dem activists are much more distasteful than weirdo repub activists. However weirdo repubs speak up alot more and have a media ecosystem dedicated to exposing their crazy shit, while weirdo dems get memory holed or explained away.
CNN till now has not covered the pro hamas protests - and these are EXPLICITLY pro hamas, with declarations of 'hamas is coming', defacing of american monuments, replacing of the american flag with the palestinian flag and calls to kill all the jews. I specify kill because genocide is a term that includes 2:1 civ-mil casualty ratios in dense urban combat environments, and displacement of squatters, so genocide is just a loaded term now. The lack of coverage of pro hamas dem supporters is tenuous and even Harris has been forced to acknowledge it. If it gains further traction, normies will see dems supporting active threats against america, as opposed to butthurt republicans upset DMD is racist.
2D3D
1d ago
Exactly, but now it's a war against belligerent states instead of a heavy handed action by an occupying power. Egypt was begging to be allowed at a peace table after Israels counterattack in the Yom Kippur war, and so will the gazans when they discover the jew is not in fact a weak coward.
2D3D
1d ago
To be replaced by what? Get rid of one elite or overarching entity, and what replaces that? Revolutionaries get lined up against the wall by apparatchiks who then set themselves as the new elite.
Investor classes and wealthy elites and all the other preferred terms of derogation are precisely that: descriptors meant to evoke disdain for a victim and thus give moral cover to the perpetuator. The israeli kids raped and murdered on telegram live by armed men were not people, they were colonizers. The businesses looted and burned during the minneapolis riots were not citizens, they were gentrifiers. The peasants who didn't drink away their money and who were executed under collectivization were not people, they were kulaks or antirevolutionaries.
Speaking of laws and conventions as if they are not constraining the hated west is itself a misrepresentation. There is nothing lawful about shooting missiles at civilian ships in international waters. Giving moral support to houthis impoverishes everyone except the internal enemies of 'the west' who wish to seize the reigns of power for their own specific set of hands. Most of these revolutionaries are just too stupid and lazy to take up the arms themselves and blindly trust the word of populists who shout false promises freely, confident that when the power actually resides in their own hands they will find their grips surprisongly unrestrained and unbeholden to those who ostensibly granted them such power in the first place.
2D3D
1d ago
As much as I like to castigate the western cheerleaders who help hamas, those are ultimately only good for optics. Qatar, Iran and the normal networks of fixers all across the middle east are perfectly capable of supplying hamas with shitbottles, knives and guns. There won't be nice fancy hospitals to be photo ops after the command center underneath is bombed and there won't be images of NGO ambulances being blasted open after Hamas uses them to evacuate fighters and weapons, but there will still be kinetic action eternally from the hamas terrorists. There are enough mosques globally spreading unlimitedly hate against jews and hawalla networks to drive donations into arms purchases.
2D3D
1d ago
Israel SHOULD wash its hands entirely. Give a two or three state solution to Gaza and West Bank. At this time Gaza subsists entirely off Israeli power and water supplies, with Egypt contributing water. West Bank has water but their people keep undermining the water table with illegal wells, and domestic power generation is anemic.
Both territories literally exist off the Israeli provided resources. When Israel cuts off power to Gaza, I always ask why the fuck is Gaza taking power from the jews they hate so much in the first place and why Israel is obligated to continue giving free food water and electricity to a population that enthusiastically showed their desire to rape and murder civilians.
Palestinians have in fact been betrayed, but by their Arab allies and not the Jews. The arabs made promises to drive away the jew (to seize palestine for themselves in a carveup), but a combination of incapability and self-preservation saw continued action against Israel as ineffective. The betrayal is that the arabs left the palestinians in the care of the hated jew, insteaf of taking them in for themselves as per the 1948 borders, and creating the UNRWA which gives palestinians permanent refugee status so palestinians in lebanon, syria and egypt will never receive citizenship.
WHY the palestinians were betrayed is quite obviously because the palestinians are chaotic terrorist dicks who fomented terrorism and conflicts which ravaged the sinai and lebanon and jordan, but that doesn't change the fact that the arabs still washed their hands of 'their own' people. Arab israelis live far better lives than the arab populations of the other countries, and if the gazans/palestinians were not irredentist incompetent dickheads the semisecular cooperative jewish muslim utopia of progressive dreams might actually emerge. As it stands that dream is just a wistful ancient instastory rotting in the cupboard of abandoned dreams, one of many delusions that wither under the slightest exposure to reality.
2D3D
1d ago
Retaliation falls on the idiots pulling the triggers and civillians downstream The other Houthis don't care, the people suffering are peasants. These people do not care about each other, that's why they have a civil war!
Hamas is full of well fed young men, Houthis gorge while Yemenis starve, Kim Jong Un GAINED weight while Norks slave to preserve every head of cabbage. All these claims of humanitarian crises being inflicted by big meanie western sanctions or kinetic action are levelled by actors who hate the west and are using any excuse possible to castigate the west.
Since impoverished foreign peasants burning Chinese-made US flags have zero impact on western government actions, it falls on western internal dissidents to effect change in policy. Calling a kinetic strike against dual-purpose military targets is only a humanitarian punishment, not a response to a fucking INTERNATIONAL ATTACK.
Not like the houthis themselves complain about their ports being targeted. The excuses being generated are made by westerners, not houthis. It is the internal dissident who can really create change when the kinetic capabilities of the houthis are so anemic. The USA couldn't burn Southeast Asia enough to destroy the North Vietnamese, there is zero chance a few dozen shitbottles will drive out the jews.
2D3D
2d ago
Peace comes through cessation of conflict, and belligerents need to get smacked over the head enough to realize it isn't worth it to continue fighting someone who is able to ruin you effortlessly. Armenia stopped resisting when Azerbaijan overran Nagarno-Karabakh effortlessly, Gaddafi died ignobly following NATO airstrikes, Serbia got its shit pushed in. Peace IS achievable through war; you just have to hit hard enough. A different conversation on whether someone is actually capable of hitting hard enough against a sufficiently motivated target does exist, but it does remain that surgery is less effective than amputation for decisive deescalation.
An enduring mentality in a large number of liberal-minded circles is that everyone globally actually wants peace, and that all they need to embrace peace is to feel safe, for once there are no guns pointed at them they will put the guns down themselves. Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis and other ostensibly well-meaning socialists likely do sincerely believe that peace is hindered by warmongering westerners who have the agency to choose to war, and by choosing not to war all other parties can therefore be free to choose peace.
This is, quite obviously, untrue. Plenty of people choose to signal conflict against the West not because the West is bellicose, but precisely because the West is restrained and limited by its internal forces. Screaming 'DEATH TO AMERICA' on your flag wins plaudits from the american political establishment tripping over themselves to justify why the houthis might think that way, screaming 'DEATH TO RUSSIA' would see Lavrov threaten nukes and FSB contractors magically installing windows right in front of you to fall out of. The West is powerful but restrained, a perfect enemy to rail against to rally internal actors to ones own agenda. The Houthis signal opposition to USA and Israel not to actually hit back at them - that is a fanciful andd fevered objective - but to rally more of the internal population to their ranks against the true enemy, the Yemeni government in Aden.
That is perhaps the greatest blind spot of liberals regarding all the various bellicose agents all over the world that strike against USA or Britain or Australia or whoever opportunistically - the moral cover they cite of grievance-originated warmongering is just the excuse which sticks in the actual local conflicts they are intent on prosecuting, with or without the involvement of externals. Plenty of people are willing to commit crimes against their neighbors without the shadow of the West, so the restraint of the West is not facilitating any peace.
2D3D
12d ago
GUN CONTROL, screams the democrat, decrying the mass shootings in schools. But a warlord distributing AR15s to randoms is simply community wholesome chungus.
2D3D
12d ago
120 people with the majority given deferred sentences in exchange for freely burning and looting cities, while Jan 6th and Whitmers glowies get railroaded. The discrepancy shows clearly who is the protected class.
2D3D
12d ago
Trump turned his head likely just as the shooter popped his shot. It'd have clipped the back of his skull and if it was an XM15 the traumatic impact would blow apart his brain. Insanely lucky.
2D3D
12d ago
Leftists hold Jan 6 like it was dooms forthcoming. Jan 6th attacked the govt, and didn't burn DC.
Did anyone actually get prosecuted for BLM riots? Are bippers and shoplifters actually arrested? Did Raz Simone actually get arrested for distributing guns that got black boys killed? Dems seem intent on fumbling the bag whenever its their protected classes who inconveniently express their criminal intent, while hushing up every instance where an accepted target is attacked by their pets.
Dems are surprisingly adroit at bending the machinery of govt to protect themselves. They are just afraid that the right will take this machine built by the left and turn it back on them.
2D3D
12d ago
A matyr needs to have his base rally in a time of disunity. The japanese provide the ur-counterexample, where Japanese Socialist Party Chairman Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated and the party lost its forward momentum, falling into infighting before disintegrating completely. Matyrs work to hyperenergize a passive but unified base, they don't work for converting or unifying.
Given that Trumps base is MAGA and anyone who thinks Dems are going too far, I see this as an energizing moment. Fun fun fun.
2D3D
13d ago
.300M sounds interesting, never fired that. My experience is oriented to a pretty specific niche, with a period of extremely fun mag dumping 12.7 and 7.62 surplus. Only plonked marksman rifles at a ranch with some buddies in the 2010s and thats when I discovered an appreciation for .308 and 30-06 guns and a deep loathing of .22LR plinkers.
2D3D
13d ago
I've seen 'its all AI', which is automatically false because there aren't photos of trump with a billion plastic bottles turned into rocketships by african kids yet.
2D3D
13d ago
talking out my ass here:
trump posts bail, flees or escapes usa with the help of literally anyone, declares he is true president in exile just like guaido. alternative suite of electors submits trump as legit winner.
specific mechanics break down from this point on regarding how to actually govern, but theres enough hilarity to sustain bullshit for a decade from this point
2D3D
13d ago
apologies, my usage of 'dei kamala' was to reflect the messaging percolating within the more frothy parts of sotto voce rightist discourse. kamala is a rather bog standard black-when-convenient public figure, more climber than activist. nevertheless the ememy for righties remains 'antifa blm hamas communists' and democrat pushback against forces are viewed as anemic.
Thats some South Sea Trading Company shit: I am selling you stuff I do not have rights to.
For the khaleeji the ummah envies their money and their access to western whores, but despises their unislamic hedonism and fundamental immorality. In general southeast Asians want to be arab in looks and money and respect, and do not want to be arab in conduct and disposition - although cars and whores will not be rejected if offered.
I am close to the malay muslim communities because of roles I engage in, and I am confident that muslims are not particularly concerned about theology and doctrine save for what their ustaz tells them to believe. All anger at the west for humiliating the muslim world is just deflection, with the angry young men being upset that the lives of plenty and excess they see in their social media being denied to them due to a perceived conspiracy of jews and whites out to subjugate the browns. Why there is general incapability in the broader Muslim world is different, but suffice to say the gulf arabs are respected only for their excess visible consumption not their morals or conduct, people or governments.
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