ABigGuy4U
3hr ago
A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, Iranian state television reported, without immediately elaborating.
Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, state TV said, but had been hampered by poor weather condition in the area. There had been heavy rain reported with some wind.
ABigGuy4U
3hr ago
A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, Iranian state television reported, without immediately elaborating.
Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, state TV said, but had been hampered by poor weather condition in the area. There had been heavy rain reported with some wind.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
That’s why I’ve always thought that the X-Men was a bad metaphor for prejudice. Say what you will about any particular ethnic/social/sexual group, a single one of them can’t usually annihilate an entire city block unaided.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
Moscow’s metro area is about 13 million. Saint Petersburg’s metro area is around half that, about 6 million. Then there are about 14 other cities with a population of a million or more. Then about 20 cities with half a million or more. Then about 130 cities with a hundred thousand people or more. The population gets thinner the further East you go. Only about 8 million people live in the eastern geographic third of the country.
ABigGuy4U
21d ago
Is there any way to quote only a portion of a comment when you reply to it? I would like to be able to address certain passages in a comment without having to repeat the entire wall of text in the prior poster’s comment.
ABigGuy4U
21d ago
The far left has successfully forgotten that their entire moral framework was created by Christianity. They have successfully forgotten that their entire intellectual framework was created by enlightenment era European men from colonialist countries. They have successfully forgotten that their constitutional republic was created by white male slaveowners. They hate all those demographics now without any cognitive dissonance or ambiguity. I don’t think they will have any problems scrubbing away the memory that a lot of the luminaries of the modern civil rights and feminist movements were Jewish.
ABigGuy4U
22d ago
The problem for the Tories is that they have been sitting in the driver’s seat for the past 15 years. Which makes it pretty hard to blame the housing/immigration/economic situation on the other guys. AfD doesn’t have that problem.
ABigGuy4U
26d ago
I’m reminded of 1984, where the Party pumps out cheap tawdry pornography, but labors to keep the proles under the incorrect impression that it’s illegal.
Students from various campuses have occupied the Columbia University campus in New York City in protest of Israel. There reports and videos circulating of protestors harassing Jewish students on or near campus grounds. The NYPD has deployed officers to surround the campus and has established filtration checkpoints to prevent outside agitators from entering campus. Various Columbia alumni have expressed concern with Columbia’s handling of the situation. All classes are now online at least for today. Similar protests are happening at Yale and various other campuses across the country.
Edit: Congressman Josh Hawley has called on President Joe Biden to deploy the National Guard to Columbia and other universities to protect Jewish students on campus.
Edit: NYU has ordered their encampment to disperse and the NYPD is moving in to clear the demonstrators.
Edit: I’m seeing footage of NYU professors being marched out of the campus in zip ties. Cal Poly Humbolt students have barricaded themselves inside a campus building with furniture.
Edit: University of Texas, Austin student protestors are being dispersed by police. And possibly vanned. Protests now seem to be nationwide.
Edit: Mass arrests beginning at USC protests.
Edit: Tasers and rubber bullets being deployed against protestors at Emory University in Georgia.
Edit: There appear to be police snipers monitoring protests at Ohio State University.
ABigGuy4U
29d ago
The paramilitaries are considerably more eager to attack Israel than the Iranians are. If the Hezbollah commanders on the ground had their way, they probably would have launched everything and opened up a northern front shortly after October 7. Iran held them back because if Hezbollah starts a major engagement and gets destroyed, Iran loses a lot of leverage in their Cold War with Israel.
ABigGuy4U
30d ago
Iran has between forty thousand and a hundred thousand proxy troops parked on the Israeli border, not counting the Syrian army. It could turn into a ground war real quick.
ABigGuy4U
30d ago
Israel has struck multiple targets in Ishfan, Iran. The location of these strikes would suggest that they hit one of Iran’s major nuclear research facilities.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
The vast majority of America’s petroleum refining facilities are right on the coast in Louisiana and Texas. That’s why gas prices shot up to 7 dollars a gallon nationwide after hurricane Katrina. Most standard non-nuclear attack submarines can launch ground strike cruise missiles out the torpedo tubes. I won’t get into the other stuff because I don’t want to end up on a watch list either.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
The problem is that logic goes both ways. A state actor could simultaneously collapse the US power grid and destroy the entire US petroleum industry with one submarine and 50 special forces troops.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Here’s the problem with F-16s. They need a very long paved runway. The Soviet MiGs they had been using before are designed with filters over the engine intakes, so they can take off from improvised dirt or gravel runways. F-16s can’t do that, the runway has to be paved. That means you can’t move the F-16 squadrons around well or disperse forces, because the number of runways that can host them are very limited. So The two options are: 1. bunch them all up in a couple of runways and wait for them to get blown up with cruise missiles or 2. Base them out of Poland and risk making Poland a party to the conflict in a way that doesn’t easily allow them to claim article 5 if those runways are attacked. Which is why the US has been so hesitant to give them F16s in the first place.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
The aid doesn’t matter anymore. Ukraine is calling up 400,000 new draftees and they still won’t be able to afford to rotate out front line combat troops that have been fighting for two years. Unless NATO actually sacks up and sends multiple divisions of troops, there’s going to be a major collapse of the front in at least one area.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
The media/NAFO Twitter/Reddit party line was “total Ukrainian victory, including Crimea” until about fall 2023 and “comprehensive Ukrainian victory, Donbas and Luhansk reclaimed” until about two months ago.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
I’m talking specifically about MW2 (2009). Modern Warfare 1 was reasonably realistic.
I think Modern Warfare 2’s story is somewhat underrated. It’s objectively ridiculous in the broad scope: It reads like a nightmare Tom Clancy would have when he was in bed with a high fever. But it totally nails the queasy off-balance feeling that spiraling geopolitical crises in the 21st century would have, which makes it feel prescient. It also manages to (perhaps unintentionally) smuggle in some interesting commentary about 9/11 and the subsequent US response.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
The “Ukraine will turn into a frozen conflict lasting years” thing is the new media cope. Ukraine is losing multiple towns every week in the east, and their army is getting progressively more run down. The situation is going to be seriously dicey for them by June or July.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
2 to 4 years sound wise to me, but keep an eye on it. Hair plugs have come a long way, they can look very thick and natural now. I would avoid minoxidil, hormone treatments of any kind are a lot heavier than most people think.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Neoliberals were strip mining the economy and the labor market, but the short term effects were pretty impressive. The foreign policy establishment was digging us into a hole that would eventually lead to the collapse of the empire, but in the short run in made us feel very strong. A lot like someone on a cocaine bender, ironically.
Iran has just launched a massive strike against Israel. Dozens of Shahad drones are in flight, and some number of ballistic missiles have just launched. Yemen is also launching ballistic missiles. No word if Hezbollah has joined the attack yet.
Edit 1: number of Shahad drones estimated at 400-500. Iran's Defense Minister says "any country that opens its airspace or soil to Israel to attack Iran will receive our decisive response", according to Iran's state-affiliated IRNA News Agency
In 2021 through 2022, why did Netflix, Rolling Stone and every major media company make a giant coordinated push to portray the 1999 Woodstock festival as the worst thing that’s happened since the Tiananmen Square massacre? It seems like such an obscure event to signal boost, and I don’t see any obvious culture war angle.
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