hanikrummihundursvin
No bio...
User ID: 673
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
When people bring up 'Iran chants death to America, therefor they are a threat' they are making a much more visceral and stupid argument than 'we have rational but unresolved geopolitical issues.'
The fundamental premise being that Iranians are insane in some way and therefor giving them a nuke will lead to them nuking America.
It's otherizing and hysteric and such statements in any other context leveraged against any other group would warrant supporting argumentation. So far that has been lacking.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
Ali Khamenei made those objections already, stating that it means opposition to U.S. government policies, not the American people. Hard to imagine a greater authority on the matter.
Besides that, rhetoric coming from a protest or some mass gathering is slightly different than rhetoric coming from world leaders. 'Glassing the place' became a common term for what many Americans said should be done to the middle east, I don't suppose you think that's the same as an official statement from a national leader? Though Trump has now narrowed that gap.
hanikrummihundursvin
4mo ago
I'm comparing things generally considered to be bad by Americans with the morally neutral geopolitical framework supplied by LazyLongposter. Which I think he is using to selectively justify Americans doing things we all known are morally bad.
As he stated, the US could have won the war in Vietnam had they just intentionally bombed the civilians harder. But because doing such things is too awful in the eyes of the public, the US stopped. Using that morally neutral standard, what is the problem with the holocaust? Killing your enemy is a winning strategy. Is it better to starve to death in camp than it is to be burned alive in a firestorm that was intentionally created by dropping incendiary bombs on wooden residential areas?
hanikrummihundursvin
2mo ago
And my point would be that it's not particularly hypocritical when those individuals are just playing the same game everyone else is. Including Israel, that is not really concerned with whatever amount of dead or raped Palestinians they leave in their wake. I mean, I don't think the worst part of that is the hypocrisy but whatever.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
If the Israeli government is 'deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Gazans', then why haven't they brought about their destruction in whole or in part?
I mentioned why in my comment:
Looking at Israeli actions in a modern context, the question is not whether they 'physically' could, since we know they could, but how a modern nation would go about genociding a population. Given a modern nation would understand that overtly killing a lot of people at once would garner a drastic response they could potentially not afford.
The argument being the only reason to do something like this is to kill the people there, force them out of the land, permanently disperse them and then take the land and eventually have no one left to make a claim to it as the dispersed population loses its identity and disappears.
You can already see the reasoning in comments here, to a lesser extent:
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
It reads like I said it was about as measured and controlled as Israeli actions. Maybe you missed that part of my reply? Here, let me highlight it for you:
It was a revenge attack for deaths caused by Israel in Lebanon and Palestine. It was about as measured and controlled as Israeli attacks often are.
Here you go. I'd rank that attack as being pretty bad as a representative of how Iran handles things with regards to America. Given that this was a retaliation against Israel. A better example for how they deal with America would be their response to Operation Midnight Hammer. Where they gave advanced warning. Demonstrating capability, rather than signaling intent or want for war.
But as a response to Israel, as I've told you numerous times already, that conflict is very messy. Israel has already dictated the rules of engagement and Iran plays by those rules when defending itself and its interests. Conflating Iran's dealings with America and Israel is not valid, and you should stop trying.
Hopefully that clarifies my position on the topic for you. I'd implore you to read more than one sentence at a time. It gives a better overall picture and minimizes confusion on your half, and the need to reiterate everything on mine.
That creation of a lot of rubble does not necessarily mean that the rubble-creator has a "complete disregard for human life."
Then what is your issue with Iran retaliations against Israel? Please try to form a coherent standard that can apply to both Israel and Iran. I can accept a standard that says both parties have been reckless and bad, or that they are both playing by the same ruleset.
1 I responded to that comment below.
2 If your free speech comes with the caveat that any sufficiently powerful person or group can effectively own the public square in part or whole and dictate what can and can't be said then I can only consider my original point, that Americans are far too quick to congratulate themselves on the topic of freedoms and rights, proven and demonstrated.
3 I'm not terribly interested in getting in the weeds on this nor do I see the relevance, but:
I don't see how Trump 2.0 can be considered to have given his voters what they wanted when there is an active middle east war and more foreign workers in the country now than before his second term began. But the MAGA base will cheer on literally anything as long as Trump does it so there's that.
If your free speech rights hinge on you becoming a billionaire to functionally buy the public square then, again, I feel I can't overstate my original point.
4 Isn't that a great refutation of your own point? He didn't compare himself to Europe and make that the barometer. He had ideological and philosophical values! He looked beyond just what's in the world and dared to dream of what was possible. Or something...
But how American are those values? The vast majority of the American elite is in favor of speech restrictions and controls. Illustrated by every other American platform having very clear speech and content restrictions that go beyond any law of the land. That's why Musk had to buy Twitter. Before that people had been getting banned for misgendering people or making political jokes that offended the ownership elite or the special interest groups that constantly drive for more censorship like the ADL. Musk's X is in a very clear minority among the elite and his platform still engages in censorship and backroom algorithmic manipulation.
How about we have our own ideologies and values and judge what's happening in the world of free speech by those? Rather than basing our barometer on what some billionaire came up with or what they are doing in Germany or wherever else.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
"Iran made mistakes that did not best serve its national interest" is another way of looking at it.
No it's not. I've already asked you to clarify what the reasonable action for Iran would be, but you never answer. It's always a negative insinuation without context or explanation that 'Iran bad' and therefor causal.
Really. So when the United States bombed the Houthis until they agreed to stop attacking US shipping, that wasn't in our interests? When the Iranians deployed mines that nearly sunk a US frigate that was deployed to escort tankers because the Iranians were attacking oil tankers and the US bombed the Iranian navy in retaliation, contributing to the end of the war with Iraq, that wasn't in our interest?
You are again cutting off events from context. Maybe it would be helpful if we just run down the entire chain of events so my point can eventually get across when we get to the part where you disagree with US action. So I would ask if supporting action that compels the Houthis to bomb shipping is in the interest of America. Or if it would have been better to pressure Israel to stop bombing so many civilians in Gaza before it ever came to Houthis taking action. To me the answer is very clear. America loses nothing by stopping Israel and its excessive bombing of Gaza, it loses a lot by having to engage with Houthis after they disrupt shipping.
The long and short of it is that the Iranians failed to declare the full extent of their nuclear program as required by the JCPOA.
That would be a violation of the NPT. The JCPOA was valuable as a tool to coerce Iran to allow inspectors to sites where potential breaches like the one you mention occur. Iran would only be in violation of the JCPOA if they denied access to investigators and/or if the findings would reveal that Iran was using material to enrich above the set cap or that this material would in total exceed the 300kg maximum stockpile and they refused to hand it over. Findings like the one you mentioned are precisely why the JCPOA was useful.
This makes rifting the JCPOA extremely stupid as it now leaves inspectors in the dark and Iran is floating the idea of leaving the NPT entirely. From a standpoint of wanting less nuclear weapons, especially when it comes to Iran, the Trump admin made bad decisions.
Are you saying that Israel and the US cooperate, so the US has no standing to criticize Iran's actions?
What do you think "leverage that as a reason" refers to in my comment? The entire premise of the NPT is to facilitate conditions where a nuclear arms race does not occur. The US is explicitly allied with a nation neighboring Iran that did not sign the treaty and has nuclear weapons. To say Iran was allied with Israel in a similar way, or Iraq, is not getting it.
I agree that this is the case with some US actions in the region, but I am not persuaded that is the case for every action the United States has taken in the region.
Of course, I'm sure there are cases like that. But in other cases there is a clean line of causation where Iran had to take action and it is precisely because of that why I say that the existence of Iran proxies would not be a good reason to increase hostilities but rather to try to bring them down. I mean, is there a genuine belief that the forever war in the middle east has been beneficial to US interest? What are the soldiers getting blown up by Iranian proxies dying for?
As for cases like the captured US colonel, if negotiations fail, you would have to track down the perpetrators and kill them. Torture is uniquely ugly.
But as I understand it, the reason for the coup was at least in part that Iran had nationalized oil assets (basically: confiscating British property).
Iran voted to nationalize oil assets after Britain refused to allow investigation into AIOC. Iran suspected they were not being paid their fair share, which was 16% of profits at the time. On top of that, Iran wanted a new deal similar to neighboring states, which would split profits 50/50. Britain refused.
I am personally of the opinion that people outside the west do even recognize the enormous amount of technology they are given freely. Most natural resources would be no resource at all if it weren't for Europeans, their descendants and their towering technological achievements. That being said, after having allegedly been paying less that the agreed upon 16%, and after the AIOC had made profits on their original technological investment many times over, 50/50 sounds fair to me. To say that Iran was unilaterally confiscating British property is, I would argue, unfair.
hanikrummihundursvin
7mo ago
I read it was around 100 dollars. What are you getting at?
hanikrummihundursvin
2mo ago
The word I would use is "culture" (although I don't think it's magical, and I don't object to other words).
Is Icelandic culture not the expression of the Icelandic people? Is it all in the moss? Did they decide to not commit crime against each other by chance when they started to prosper post WW2?
Your source shows massive swings over time (e.g. surging from 21% of prisoners in the US in the 1920s to 50% in the 1990s) that can't be explained by merely noting skin color or ancestry.
Didn't we just go over this? Giving low quality people more avenues to express themselves leads to more low quality expression. AA's have more avenues to express themselves in the 1990's compared to then. Not to mention that the way crime is reported now is different.
To make a long story short, putting a population in different environments will lead to different results. I'm not sure why you think that's a point against anything I'm saying. It doesn't change the fact that if that population has a lot of low quality people it will express more problematic behaviors than a population with less low quality people and more high quality. The point I was making is that the trend of high crime rate and violence is a universal fact nigh everywhere blacks are subject to western style policing. And sometimes even when they're not. There are outliers, but they generally come with big caveats, like Rwanda. I'm sure we could lower the crime rate if we police AA's similarly. But I would not want to be subject to such militarized scrutiny myself.
This is also the point of a cultural analysis. The cultural analysis focuses, however, on the choices that people make, whereas an HBD analysis focuses on their ancestry. My specific objection here is to focusing on HBD to the exclusion of other factors. As your own sources show, other factors are tremendously important.
Environmentalist explanations can't originate a cause for culture to begin with. Which is why you have a host of half baked attempts by the likes of Jarred Diamond that try to create magical history narratives strung together by a-ha! moments that feel coherent and plausible. HBD adds the cause. The good, the bad and the ugly. It's all genes expressed in an environment. The more control our genes have over the environment, the more they amplify their own expression and open avenues for otherwise suppressed tendencies. The more the environment constricts the genes, that much less can we observe expression. When two different gene expressions exist in the same environment the result might be similar, or it might not be.
Sure, we are ultimately a product of environmental selection pressures through natural selection, but those things happen over a broader timeframe.
We can live with AA's, but not in an open and free western style culture. So much is obvious as things stand. The point of contention here relates to how these groups behave within our specific western environment. If you want to argue in favor of a more radical solution that reshapes our environment in a different direction, go ahead! But as you stated, such things are not politically palatable to the two majorities, conservatives and lib/left/progressives. Hence my dissatisfaction with both.
Boomer conservatives generally don't mind desegregation but they do not necessarily support everything that Civil Rights ended up entailing.
Conservatives love desegregation and Civil Rights. Posting MLK quotes to own the libs whilst Civil Rights legislature redefines their sacred constitution to work against everything they otherwise hold dear. It's a giant blindspot that is generally only called out by dissident right figures. Maybe those voices have started to reach into the mainstream and I missed it. But I doubt it.
Interestingly in the United States penal servitude is legal.
Haha, yeah. Just don't call it slavery.
Perhaps, but what's your superior solution? "Keep welfare, return segregation" is not a palatable political solution.
I don't have anything one could campaign on. At best it would be a soft eugenics program shadow operation. Start by eliminating murderers, violent criminals and repeat offenders from the gene pool. Then map their family history and observe if the trends of violence continue/go back within families. Restrict those families reproductive rights.
I think the biggest potential propagating cause of AA's violence are strains of violence passed down by the mother.
Now, is that viable? No. And it's closer to science fiction than anything else. But there was a time in American history not too long ago where similar ideas were passed along by more serious men. If we could get over the post war consensus and get back on track with social technology that actually advances humanity in a dignified manner then we can mend this absurd state of affairs that has gone on for far too long, which has been causing suffering and harm to innocents to the benefit of feeble minded losers that are indifferent or unaware of the destruction they cause or sadistic animals that revel in their own violent expressions and the suffering they inflict on others.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
Israel is functionally targeting civilians in Lebanon and Palestine. Along with directly targeting civilians when they deem them important enough to kill.
I'm pretty sure I missed nothing. Rather, I asked you a very simple yes or no question, and you evaded it with whataboutism.
How two combatants interact with one another is not whataboutism. If group A attacks civilians and group B also attacks civilians then claiming that group B is bad because it attacks civilians whilst neglecting to mention or flat out denying that group A also does that is wrong.
By the actions of Israel bombing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, Hezbollah bombing Israeli civilians is par for the course. I don't like it, but those are the rules of engagement between the two. Especially considering how many civilians Israel has killed compared to Hezbollah.
To that end, whilst I don't like the attack, it's definitionally controlled and measured in context with Israel dropping bombs on residential areas.
(3) You evaded the question, instead trying to change the topic to a discussion of Israel's supposed bad deeds.
I should have called this out right away, but 'Deny Guys' like you are not worth conversing with. Couching everything in 'Do you deny?! is just a rhetorical vehicle to drive any honest engagement you get towards a dumb point like this.
As an example:
'Do you deny being a liar?'
Well, yes, I'm not a liar, you would say.
'So you've never told a lie?'
Well, I definitely have, but I wouldn't consider myself a liar...
'Hah! so not only are you a liar, you were lying just now when you said you weren't a liar! Proving that you were and are a liar!'
I can't say I lament being blocked by one.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
If Iran had showed more restraint whilst the US was either in the process of financing an invasion of them or directly invading their neighboring country of Iraq? That Sunni neighbor that had just failed in their invasion of them? Or whilst America and Israel were destroying Syria and Libya?
Not having WMD's didn't help Iraq or Syria. Giving away their nuclear weapons didn't help Gadaffi, it did quite the opposite. The double standard here nullifies this position completely. Not to mention Israel's nuclear stockpile. What instances of Iranian 'aggression' are you referring to? Because we have already gone over the broad stroke instances and you have not put up much defense of them. Recognizing them as reasonable or at least rational.
Outside of the hostage crisis, I can't take your position seriously. No sober look at the Iran situation, especially considering past events, can justify it being a rational decision to depend on the mercy of America and Israel.
I feel like we are again approaching my original point of circular argumentation, where the aggression and unreasonableness of Iran is referred to without any consideration for why they took the actions they took.
Or, they could have pursued a nuclear weapon quietly instead of creating a nasty regional proxy network while pursuing conciliatory policies towards their neighbors. This would lower the perceived threat of the nuclear weapons program.
This I agree with. An either or would have been preferable. But considering the conditions, I'm not sure if it would have been plausibly feasible.
Giving the Houthis the ability to dictate US policy by threatening to cut off international trade is not really a great idea.
But letting Israel dictate US policy is? Pressuring your ally that is engaging in relentless revenge bombing that has been condemned the world over to stop, especially when the blowback starts threatening your interests in the region, is not giving the reigns of your foreign policy away. It's doing quite the opposite.
But, as I understand it, it was also a violation of the JCPOA, at least in the sense that Iran was supposed to disclose past nuclear dealings.
The JCPOA had no binding resolutions for Iran to immediately disclose all instances of previously undeclared nuclear activity. The treaty was designed to give outside organizations leverage to investigate. Those were the only binding factors aside from specific caps on material and enrichment. This is why, even in 2015 before the JCPOA was in effect, the findings of the IAEA that confirmed Iran had been seeking to create nuclear weapons prior to 2003 were not disqualifying. As those kinds of findings were exactly the kind of thing the JCPOA would help with resolving, since the treaty would give investigators leverage to get access to those sites and demand answers from Iran.
So the idea that Iran has had no choice but to do all of this doesn't really seem correct.
Considering the history of recent death and destruction with its neighbors, I can't agree, as highlighted before. Assad, Hussein, Gaddafi. At least one of them saw the writing on the wall.
I mean - shooting ballistic missiles after the US killed Soleimani was fair enough. Forming proxy networks, maybe. Mining international waters? Seems like (in hindsight) it likely hurt more than it helped. Most of the other stuff seems gratuitous.
I feel like we are getting somewhere here. So what are the concrete reasons for why the US needs to bomb Iran? Maybe instead of saying 'because they fund Hezbollah' a more honest response would be 'we pushed them into a corner and are now dealing with the consequences of doing that whilst unconditionally supporting Israel'
Sure, and it depends a lot on who you ask. The idea that the US should uphold international trade, by military force if necessary, is pretty popular in America even with people who are skeptical of, e.g., Iraq.
That doesn't seem factually correct to me. Most polling I see says that most Americans don't like either the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or the GWOT in general despite initial popularity.
It seems you are conflating wars in the middle east with upholding international trade. Invading Iraq did not help trade, nor did the invasion into Afghanistan or toppling Assad or Gaddafi. And US protecting Israel's action to bomb civilians in Gaza has only hurt international trade via retaliation from Houthis. And international trade is in a pretty terrible state because of bombing Iran and the fallout.
This position seems completely wrong. Like... Where does this come from?
So it seems like we're both agreed that US retaliation against Iranian assets when those Iranian assets kill Americans is, in fact, reasonable?
but moving from a contract dispute to seizure is pretty escalatory.
There was no dispute. The British flat out refused to even allow the Iranians to audit the company that they believed was stiffing them. I agree that it was an escalation, but what was the alternative? Let the communist party ride the issue until they won an election? Would the UK and US take kindly to that development? Something had to be done by Mossadegh, no?
hanikrummihundursvin
4mo ago
This rhetoric of asserting I am Europe and that you are America is beyond juvenile.
I asked you a question. What is the option for Europe regarding the refugees of the wars America is engaging in on behalf of Israel? Kill them all? Let them starve on the border? Create a humanitarian crisis in Jordan and Turkey? What should they do.
Who in Europe asked America to get involved in Iran? As if there aren't enough problems with energy over there. America is in Iran because of Israel. Rubio openly said so.
Look I say this with love for Europe but it’s actually not all America’s fault here. However much blame you want to give us you are a continent of sovereign peoples, some of this is actually your fault
Some of what? What is the think that you are talking about here?
hanikrummihundursvin
2mo ago
Ontological status: If you rape your enemies, they win.
You're not describing a double standard insofar as you can observe this exact same behavior from JIDF posters. Where mass rape on Oct.7 definitely happened and is super important, but these rapes did not, or don't really matter. It's just the standard.
So maybe we are looking at some motivated reasoning that can afflict us all. Rather than a specific trait of the woke left. And perhaps you're not dunking on a strawman, but what are you dunking on, and to what end? The motivated reasoning of one side irks you, but not the other?
So no, the woke left don't have to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed acts of unspeakable cruelty on Oct.7 anymore than the JIDF has to acknowledge that Israel is a a genocidal nazi state that commits acts of unspeakable cruelty in their prisons. You hold no leverage to make that claim. You are just asserting a one sided rhetorical frame on woke leftists. They would be right to recognize what you are doing, call you a genocidal zionist and continue on inside their bubble where Israel is bad and Palestine is good.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
The first three conditions are already fulfilled. so the only relevant question left is whether Israel intends to destroy the Palestinians / views this current act as a stepping stone to get there or not.
Looking at Israeli actions in a modern context, the question is not whether they 'physically' could, since we know they could, but how a modern nation would go about genociding a population. Given a modern nation would understand that overtly killing a lot of people at once would garner a drastic response they could potentially not afford.
So if you had credible evidence that there was a great plan for something similar to 'lebensraum' in the area, and a population or political class with firm belief in a distinct and exclusive ethno supremacist identity, along with a healthy doze of otherizing rhetoric from public officials, then you certainly have a recipe.
That being said, I would not care if we use the word genocide or 'ethnic cleansing' or 'politically motivated mass murder on an industrial scale' to describe this. But I would want some reconciliation over the fact that one side is trying to amplify what is going on whilst another is trying to do the opposite.
I had firm belief that Ukraine would sue for peace after they weathered the shock of the initial attack by Russia. But it turns out you can just ignore the obvious disaster on the horizon and condemn hundreds of thousands of men to their useless deaths.
Honestly feels like reality lost its training wheels after that and anything is now possible regardless of how obviously stupid it is.
That being said, I'd wager against further escalation in this specific direction if only because Israel is allegedly very vulnerable to retaliation. Now, how true is that? I don't know. Maybe the Israeli government has tunnel vision on the idea that this is their final chance to knock Iran down a peg, so the risk is worth it.
My prediction is Trump will bomb something else and successfully pivot to that being a victory.
hanikrummihundursvin
2mo ago
There is something very admirable about the seemingly boundless faith some grassroots MAGA supporters have for Trump. It's a pure loyalty exercise for them. To a point where reality itself is just a test to be overcome. But that's also a flaw. Ruthless optimism that parts the sea of information and fact to lead us all to the promise land of hope through loyalty is only good insofar as the promise land is actually there and the parted sea doesn't collapse back in on everyone on the way there. J6 does come to mind.
To springboard off your example on lefties and white supremacy. The sociology theories lefties come up with to explain the racial gaps are obviously insane and untrue. But at the same time it's not possible to falsify them without actually explaining why the big gaps exist.
Now how does one explain that as a race blind MAGA supporter in Trump's America? Do some similarly half baked sociology based on the Moynihan Report? Do we just advocate for the implementation of a genuine white supremacy to mend the black nuclear family back together through force? Or do we just not talk about it?
Not talking about things seems to be the preferred option for dealing with most things that are unpleasant to think about for the MAGA optimists. We instead trust our leaders and don't think too much about things. Just listen to cope merchants on Fox and friends tell us about how everything is under control. No need to deal with hard reality. And that's where things stop feeling admirable.
When people start recognizing that this loyalty exists and start to pander to it for their own gain, then you're left with a snake swallowing its own tail. With hucksters abusing this captive audience that has nowhere else to go. It's very sad to watch.
hanikrummihundursvin
4mo ago
Funded/armed/directed Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias (a very large part of why Iraq is dangerous), and the Houthis, as in basically every major destabilizing group except ISIS/Syrian variants.
Killed US servicemembers with those Shia militias even when we were not militarily involved in Iran
To be clear you only oppose this on the grounds that this is harmful to US interest in the region, which you support based on personal prosperity, not that these attacks were unjustified or unrelated to US provocation that might have caused them.
To that extent I'm having a hard time aligning myself with your position from a geopolitical point of view. Iran, and tell me if our history does not match up here, wanted the same thing you want for yourself. Peace and prosperity. To that end they wanted control over their natural resources. Resources that the US and UK were making use of. This leads to a very clear incursion into Iran by these nations. Which ties into reason 3, 4 and 5. What else is a nation to do when foreign entities so clearly disrupt their process of self determination?
I get it, 'aw shucks, sucks to suck, now give us the oil' but given the cost, past failures and losses, and how far the US has moved forward, and how quickly and drastically technology has bettered our standard of living, can any of this be rationally justified anymore? It feels like a giant sunk cost fallacy. Where a list of old grievances gets trudged out to justify an evergoing tit for tat that is of no tangible benefit to American or Iran.
Presupposes a tide of refugees which I am not inclined to think will happen
I don't think it will happen either. Which is why I said it would be a worst case scenario. But even then, we are comparing potential cost and benefit. The cost being overloading Europe with refugees. And there is no contingency or plan. Americas allies in Europe will be weighted down even more. Further carrying the indirect cost of American incursions in the middle east. I ask, how can this be rationally justified? I get that personal prosperity is important, but at some point the calculus stops adding up. I have a genuinely hard time believing that you believe that America is having its interest served by risking their already weak allies and their precarious position for whatever it is you think is being gained by this campaign into Iran.
The Iranians chant death to America and the ayatollah has publicly gone to great length to explain that the slogan is not a direct wish for harm against American citizens, but a screed against their government and its belligerence and hostility towards Iran.
Which fits rather snugly as a contrast with the more Orwellian terminology of the west, like 'regime change', 'liberation' or other such verbiage. Which then translates to aerial bombing campaign with large amounts of civilians killed in practice.
Outside of drastic otherization and dehumanization, saying that Iran is exporting terrorism or spouting threatening rhetoric is functionally meaningless. In context their actions are a rational consequence to US and Israeli strategy in the region. Be that state sponsored invasions of Iran, the funding of terrorists in the region or other destabilizing actions such with Syria, Iraq and Libya.
And it's hard to pretend that Iran is hogging all the religious lunatics when Americans have decades of failed Zionist adjacent policies laying in their backyard. Along with theologians like Mike Huckabee, Pete Hegseth or Paula White.
hanikrummihundursvin
3mo ago
The practical function of the JCPOA was to get investigators on the ground in Iran by officially bribing Iran via lifting sanctions. Which would have allowed inspectors to investigate around Iran for 8 of these past years. All whilst being able to monitor Iran's nuclear program on the ground as it developed along with eased limits on enrichment and stockpiles.
I think there's a clear difference between knowing exactly what Iran is doing with its nuclear material at all times and having on ground ability to discover if they have gotten farther along somewhere in secret, versus being completely in the dark. To that extent I don't see why one would need strict limits on all nuclear material in Iran so long as it is all earmarked and accounted for.
The alternative is murdering intelligent persons in Iran until they no longer have the human capital to sustain nuclear research, or do 'regime change'. I think that, with hindsight and how the current war is going, we can safely recognize that there was a lot of utility lost by rifting the agreement. And considering that the sanctions were not enough to declaw Iran, it's hard to tell what was gained.
As I already said, I too would prefer Massachusetts. But that's not what we are comparing. You act like because Iran is bad that the US must be good and therefor has the moral mandate to do whatever it wants over there as if Iran will turn into rainbows and sunshine after the US bomb or occupy them. It wont. And the millions fleeing their homes, hundreds of thousand Iraqis dead, the families blown to bits in Syria, the children starved or ground to innocent pulps in rubble all over the middle east over decades of barbaric US and Zionist geopolitical strategy are a testament to that.
You weave moral narratives through paragraphs that, much like you accused me of doing, don't look like much when put into context. There are plenty of moral failings, needless suffering and death happening within the US. Did you know that in the US 80 thousand men are raped in prison every year? Well, that's almost half the total prison population of Iran being raped annually. Does this mean I like Evin Prison in Iran? No. And I'd still take my chances in an American prison, but it's not a good vs bad. You can still get sentenced to a rape box with a hateful rapist torturer in the US and be tortured and raped to death. And the authorities will try to lie to your families face about what happened whilst they watch you on a hospital bed, obviously beaten and braindead.
I would rather be an enemy of the US than an ally of Iran. Iran has responded to attacks by bombing civilian infrastructure of previously friendly countries. Meanwhile, the US is very precisely (as far as these things go) targeting enemy combatants and the infrastructure of war.
Given the US's track record of bombing civilians, along with Israel doing the same. This is not a serious point by you. The US and Israel have killed almost 1500 Iranian civilians in this conflict alone. In a single strike the US killed more school girls than Iran has killed foreign civilians via airstrike in the Gulf states this war. Hell, the CIA has tortured more people than Iran has killed civilians in the Gulf States. To say you would rather be an enemy of the US than an ally of Iran is completely delusional and so far outside any realm of reason.
Iran bombed their 'friends' because their 'friends' had US army bases and personnel on their soil, and the US attacked Iran. Iran attacked the bases and the hotels where the US army personnel were hiding. This is not a complicated, morally outrageous or otherwise perplexing development. It was completely predictable and Iran even said that this would be their response prior to the conflict.
I mean yes, it is clearly a purpose of Iran to stockpile conventional weapons until the point where attacking them would be too costly to consider. You do not dispute that their long term goal is to make a nuclear weapon.
Again you do not deal with the original claim you made. But instead try to reframe it as something else. And when you do it just sounds like Iran stockpiles weapons like every country with an active military does. So we've worked our way back from your hyperbole to reality. Having your armed forces serve as a deterrent to invasion is not taking those who want to invade you hostage.
On top of that I never said Iran wanting nukes is a conspiracy. And I explicitly said exactly this in my previous comment. If I was Iran I would want nukes, given there are two nuclear powers in the process of bombing me.
The contention here is not 'is Iran trying to get nukes'. I'd assume they are. The question is why shouldn't they try to get nukes? Nuclear proliferation is bad. But when you push the regimes back against a wall, what is their recourse? Both the US and Israel have demonstrated hostile intent to the tune I described in my opening paragraph. They also have nukes and have been flirting with using them against Iran through talk of totally annihilating their civilization or take them out entirely in a matter of hours. So what do you want them to do? Have the Israelis or the US shown any mercy to their rivals in the past conflicts? Aren't they all hiding or dead at this point? Even the ones who were open to negotiations like Saddam Hussein? How can Iran maintain its sovereignty under these conditions?
hanikrummihundursvin
2mo ago
Dunking on woke leftist strawmen might be a fun past time, but I'm not sure the NYT qualifies in this particular instance. From the opening paragraph of the article:
It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.
Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on “all civilized leaders” to “speak up.”
And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.
It seems the author was one step ahead of your critique.
Both sides claim rape is a horrible crime when committed against them. To reiterate the point: Should all parties not be against rape then? And to pontificate further, if we believe one side is not against the rape of their enemies, does that make it OK for us to rape them?
I don't see a double standard. I see two backwards third world populations making appeals to morals and standards that have nothing to do with them. They both play the shivering hurt animal and as soon as they think no one is looking the teeth and claws come out.
hanikrummihundursvin
4mo ago
Oswald Mosley had a rousing speech about standing at the precipice of history. Which for the most optimistic of us might be where we imagine JD Vance is standing. I took the liberty of slightly editing it to fit America. Though it sounds a lot better after being edited by what appears to be some Polish nationalist living in the UK.
You're living in a historical hour. Do remember that always, live in that sense, I beg of you, of history and of destiny.
When that period comes to be written and men look back at it, if we did right, if we stood firm, if we stood greatly, it will be a matter of honour and veneration for generations to come. I could not ask to live at any other moment of history than this, because never has mankind, never has the human species been confronted with such possibilities, with such choices of disaster, or of greater heights and greater glories.
My friends, do live in that sense that you are American, that you come from people who have faced tremendous odds again and again. That much is against you, but you've got within you that will, that spirit above all, that faith and that belief which will lead the generations to come to look back at you in the pages of history with the proud words to America, to Europe, to the world, they were true!
Sadly, if one thinks back to Mosley's day, none then could even imagine just how much worse things could and would get. In that sense JD Vance has not demonstrated any characteristic that would lead one to think he is anything other than a less charismatic Trump. And things might get a lot worse than we think.
I would withhold any positivity until he proclaims he will personally start executing the worst violent criminals in the US right on the White House front lawn with a gold plated 1911. Or maybe I've been seeing to many rage baits here and on X about criminals with mile long records getting released again and again for some mystical reason. In any case, he has to do something. Being as he is, I can't see it as being enough.
hanikrummihundursvin
3d ago
So the best case scenario for the US hawks is a mass casualty and refugee event caused by crippling strikes on infrastructure.
The war goals achieved by this event are the dissolution of the current Iran regime which will potentially prevent Iran from making Nukes. Beyond that there are no guarantees without actual boots on the ground nor are there any relevant beneficial effects for anyone that is not deeply invested in the interest of the state of Israel and its hegemony in the middle East. All anyone gets is cost.
By who? The Iranian leadership? Are we supposing that they go in public, make a definitive statement of what 'Death to America' means, and every Iranian citizen knows to not take that statement seriously, and instead chant what they really mean. Which is to wish death on every American man woman and child, because Iranians are just subhuman and beastial like that and revel in suffering and death?
But the again, why would I bother quote, answer or link anything? None of the anti-Iran hysteria does so. Post after post. Kind of crazy.
In fact nigh all of those posts are just a routine list of arbitrary accusations and arbitrary benchmarks. Why would Iran funding Hezbollah be a reason to not like Iran? Funding proxies that can be called terrorists is practically an American geopolitical hobby. Is it OK to cause suffering, chaos and death to achieve your political goals so long as you are not called Hezbollah?
No. But I think that US officials have shown a great lack of care towards civilian deaths. Including Hegseth defunding the division focused on reducing civilian harm. And how they handled the school bombing doesn't inspire confidence. So yeah, I think if we allow all parties in the conflict some wiggle room regarding collateral damage, I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be mad against.
Listen, I'm not on trial here 'denying' things and you're not an authority on facts and knowledge. I'm sure Iran funds them along with a host of other groups. Why is funding proxies invalid when Iran does it, but not America or Israel?
If we apply the label fairly then I think they look like incompetent amateurs compared to Israel. As demonstrated in the footage of Gaza.
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