Israel blundered here. They bombed a consulate, which is going way over the line and looks awful. Israel has once again shown that it fights in a more brutal and barbaric way than other countries. They stepped over the line and Iran managed to make them spend over 500 million on interceptors, shut down their airspace, bombed several of the bases and caused panic throughout their country.
Iran showed that Israeli bombing and chaos in other countries can impact Israel itself. The Israelis stepped out of line and got smacked on the fingers.
functor
5mo ago
They made a legitimate military attack against the force surrounding them. A bunch of drugged communists had decided to hang around the front line and got roughly the same result as if they were dancing around in Bakhmut.
functor
6mo ago
Yes Israel has an obligation not to commit war crimes on a mountainous scale.
functor
1mo ago
And how do you think running Venezuela into the ground by sanctioning them will impact migrant flows? Migrants flee Venezuela because it is bad, so making it worse should lead to more migrants. Clearly, the US hasn't been able to topple Venezuela's government, and the US has made it worse in Venezuela. In other words, foreign meddling once again lead to a migrant crisis.
The US has a long history of backing coups in Latin America, funding militias and creating banana republics. This has made the region less stable and created more incentives for people to leave.
functor
4mo ago
Especially in the US there are probably a lot of people who would rather blame lizard people than face the reality that their own ideology is at fault. You can't have complete separation between church and state while the state enforces Christian morality. Much of the American right clings to the constitution and libertarian ideas while wanting society to enforce their morality.
If the state is supposed to be not involved in religion, who says gays can't marry?
functor
6mo ago
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
2.3 million people in a tiny strip of desert are going to need to import water. It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza. If it was up to Egypt they would allow more trade.
functor
7mo ago
I have never really understood why the right is so anti China. I understand bringing the jobs back but I can't why the right is so eager to defend LGBT on Taiwan.
functor
8mo ago
Right wing is group oriented, left wing is individually oriented. The moral foundations of the right are geared in group loyalty, authority and purity. Traditions, cultures and religions are ways of promoting group oriented behaviours. They are designed to make people take the option that benefit the group rather than themselves. left wing people are more narcissistic so it isn't surprising that they like to virtue signal about sacrificing themselves. When it comes down to making the actual choice the psychological correlates of leftism would be associated with saving oneself.
functor
8mo ago
The US has destroyed latin American countries, sucked resources out of them and bullied them for a century. Pretty much every awful social trend comes from the US.
functor
10mo ago
It is the reason why I support Russia. Being nothing more than an American colony run by hyperwoke American financial institutions and state department critters is the end of Europe.
functor
2mo ago
Funny how the western media loved a supposed nationalist. If Navalny's critique of Putin was that he wasn't nationalistic enough he would have gotten zero-support for Navalny. At best it would be like Ukrainian nationalism where they get to wave WWII paraphernalia while the government rams through neoliberal and culturally leftwing policies.
functor
6mo ago
How is demolishing mosques, spitting on Christians, urinating on dead Palestinians and bombing entire apartment buildings less gruesome? Israel is far more violent and kills far more Palestinians while there war has a much bigger impact on Palestinian expansion.
functor
6mo ago
So they have a right to fight back against recent settlements.
Also, Gaza is under an illegal blockade, which they have every right to fight back against. Israel is a legitimate military target. They kill Palestinians, they have many Palestinians in torture camps. Israel continuous to destroy their farmland, steal their cattle, harass Palestinians and Palestinians are regularly killed by Israel.
So the jewish claim that Israel is their land is completely bogus after 2000 years?
functor
2mo ago
The issue is that would be like trying to maintain the support of Likud voters and Hamas.
functor
4mo ago
Israel is flooding Europe with migrants. Israel has been economically blockading Syria, regularly bombing Syria and has armed all sorts of jihadist groups in Syria. Meanwhile, IsraAID is standing on the beaches of Greece and helping the migrants get into Europe.
functor
6mo ago
The Palestinians have every right to fight back when their land is being stolen. Do you not think Ukraine has killed people in its counter offensive?
- But in terms of performance, it has also been a non-winner,
It took half the planet to stop two fascist countries. Had the US had the land Germany had and the Germans had had the British empire, US, Canada, Australia, France etc the war would have lasted a week.
inflicting great amounts of human misery on the species before collapsing under the strain of expansionist wars
It was the least expansionist of the ideologies. While liberal states continue on a rampage of expansionism across the middle east, latin America and eastern Europe fascist states were more non interventionist. Their focus was on building the homeland rather than trying to expand into Nepal.
Liberalism is a way for the elite to claim that they have no responsibility or noblesse oblige. They are just people and world citizens who happen to be richer. Liberalism was the merchant class wanting the privilege of the nobility without having the responsibility or the discipline of it. The current elite want to live like kings, yet they don't want to live like knights. The way forward is to replace natural rights (defined by who? enforced by who?) with natural order. Some people naturally fill certain rolls. Humans are a tribal species.
Liberalism's has an equivalent to communism's labour value of theory, aka the false axiom. For liberalism, it is the idea that humans randomly spawn on Earth. We didn't live in the garden of Eve and then decide to create society, we lived in tribes long before our species existed. There is no social contract, there are no free independent individuals and existing in a social structure isn't oppressive. A human in a social hierarchy isn't more oppressed than a zebra in a herd on the Savannah. The oppressed zebra is the lonely one.
functor
3mo ago
Why would it be practical to genocide millions of people and piss off the entire middle east? Israel provides little benefit at an enormous cost. The sensible solution is to dump Israel and befriend the arab states.
functor
6mo ago
The rest of the world is 75% of GDP and 85% of the global GDP ppp. If the US wants to become genocidal and increase its reputation as extremely aggressive it will accelerate the shift away from the US globally. Most middle eastern countries trade more with China as they haven't invaded middle eastern countries.
functor
6mo ago
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime. Also Israel's illegal blockade along with their recent attacks provide Hamas with more than enough justification for fighting back.
https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/water-and-armed-conflicts
functor
6mo ago
Israel is a major proponent of chaos in the region and Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian migrants aren't that uncommon. The national rally in France isn't even pro Israel. The neocon love of war in the middle east and religious worship of jews isn't really a thing in Europe. Most of the right doesn't care about the conflict at all. The only groups that are really animated by it is a small group of leftists and the immigrant population.
functor
24d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union%E2%80%93Ukraine_Association_Agreement#Trade
This would have turned Russia's biggest trading partner and a deeply integrated part of the Russian economy into a state with the same rules for trade with Russia as EU countries. Effectively the idea was to bribe Ukraine into chosing the west by promising mountains of tax money from northern Europe in exchange for taking an anti Russian stance.
Several million Poles have moved west to work and western European companies are major employers in Europe. It is effectively a wage dumping operation.
functor
25d ago
These guys missed that the Afghan military was 225 000 man smaller than they said when they had thousands of people on the ground.
As for Ukraine I think they massively misscalculated it. Their goal was to provoke Russia to invade and then turn Ukraine into Russia's Iraq war. The idea was sanctions against Russia while Russia is forced to integrate Ukraine's basket case pension system into the Russian system while they have to deal with riots, terrorism and stinger missiles shooting down choppers. Ukraine was supposed to be a repeat of the Soviet-Afghan war. Instead, they have to be the logistics and training for a Ukrainian force 4 times the size of the US Marine Corps including their reserves fighting a high intensity war. Russia didn't collapse and if anything their arms industry is producing at a record pace.
functor
1mo ago
Iran hates Iraq
Iran has good relations with Iraq's shia population and has offered Iraq both help with rebuilding and military aid. Iranians definitely don't get along with Baathist and the Sunnis, but there are strong ties to groups living near Iran. Parts of Iraq are ethnically similar to Iran and the current Iraqi government enjoys good relations with Iran. Regardless, when Iran's neighbour is attacked by an aggressive power that could very well invade Iran it makes sense for Iran to offer support.
there was a revolution. Which is where we are now, with an implacably hostile religious theocracy in charge as a result of our earlier "alliance" with them.
I wonder why the Iranians revolted against a corrupt foreign puppet who siphoned off natural resources to British petroleum. British petroleum was the most profitable British company in the beginning of the 1900s. Iran had been invaded in 1941 and then had a dictator installed in 1953. There was good reason for supporting revolution. Despite sanctions and despite living in a continuous state of semi war Iran has managed to create a stable state that produces few refugees.
You seem to have a thesis ("American imperialism is the root of all evil") to which you are attempting to fit every conflict in the world.
Americans have an exceptional ability to get involved in every corner of the planet. If there is a village in Afghanistan that isn't ruled by them, they will bomb it for 20+ years. The US is in a league of its own when it comes to starting wars and meddling in other countries. Not all problems are caused by the US but the US is a driving force behind instability.
Shale was a major mistake by the US. Shale oil is short lived compared to conventional oil with high decline rates and is expensive to extract. The shale boom will not be a long term solution. Shale caused a 10-20 year boom which will be followed by a decline. Meanwhile, the US is missing valuable years transitioning away from fossil fuels. The world is building public transit and high speed rail at record rates, the US is investing in short term shale oil as its long term energy solution. Cheap natural gas has allowed for construction of energy inefficient buildings and a lack of investment in efficient heating/cooling systems. The US is seriously lagging behind in walkable and bikeable cities due to cheap gas. Even when it comes to electric vehicles the US is somewhat behind
As for the energy grid, the US is lagging behind in nuclear with an older fleet of reactors than Europe and only 1 of 60 reactors planned for construction in the world are in the US. The US is lagging behind in renewables, and overall investments in the energy transition
The shale boom absolutely benefited the US. However, other parts of the world have ripped of a sizeable chunk of the bandaid regarding getting off fossil fuels.
More options
Context Copy link