Israel has attacked Iran with the blessing of the US. Iran has now reacted and hit Israel, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait and Iraq.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-28/israel-us-attacking-iran-live-updates-blasts-in-tehran/106222024
Kingy said:
Israel has attacked Iran with the blessing of the US. Iran has now reacted and hit Israel, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait and Iraq.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-28/israel-us-attacking-iran-live-updates-blasts-in-tehran/106222024
Now looking like Operation Shitfight.
Divine Angel said:
Good.
From 2013 to 2016, the US, EU, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany negotiated with Iran a plan of inspections and monitoring to ensure Iran did not continue a nuclear weap I ns program. Known as JCPOA, the program was successfully preventing weapons grade material being develiped, and facilities were converted to civilian use such as production of isotopes for medical purposes and low level enrichment suitable for civilian power production. The “carrot” was the alleviation of sanctions, though some sanctions related to human rights abuses remained in place.
The Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in May 2018, and the nuclear weapons development program recommenced the following year.
dv said:
From 2013 to 2016, the US, EU, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany negotiated with Iran a plan of inspections and monitoring to ensure Iran did not continue a nuclear weap I ns program. Known as JCPOA, the program was successfully preventing weapons grade material being develiped, and facilities were converted to civilian use such as production of isotopes for medical purposes and low level enrichment suitable for civilian power production. The “carrot” was the alleviation of sanctions, though some sanctions related to human rights abuses remained in place.The Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in May 2018, and the nuclear weapons development program recommenced the following year.
Yeah, Donny Dickface is attacking Iran for not agreeing to the existing agreement that they agreed to and he pulled out of because racism.
The guy is a dumpster fire looking for somewhere to happen.
Unfortunately, he is chucking sparklers into a powderkeg with no comprehension of the resulting impending explosion.
Kingy said:
dv said:
From 2013 to 2016, the US, EU, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany negotiated with Iran a plan of inspections and monitoring to ensure Iran did not continue a nuclear weap I ns program. Known as JCPOA, the program was successfully preventing weapons grade material being develiped, and facilities were converted to civilian use such as production of isotopes for medical purposes and low level enrichment suitable for civilian power production. The “carrot” was the alleviation of sanctions, though some sanctions related to human rights abuses remained in place.The Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in May 2018, and the nuclear weapons development program recommenced the following year.
Yeah, Donny Dickface is attacking Iran for not agreeing to the existing agreement that they agreed to and he pulled out of because racism.
The guy is a dumpster fire looking for somewhere to happen.
Unfortunately, he is chucking sparklers into a powderkeg with no comprehension of the resulting impending explosion.
I’m worried this will tarnish the reputation of the FIFA Peace Prize.
Zinedine Zidane must be rolling in his grave.
alleged
Start war.
Stop war. (Maybe.)
Be awarded Trump Peace Prize from Board of Peace.
Divine Angel said:
Start war.
Stop war. (Maybe.)
Be awarded Trump Peace Prize from Board of Peace.
This is very risky from the point of view of the Iranians hitting US bases/ships. Dead Americans isn’t going to help the mid terms.
buffy said:
Divine Angel said:
Start war.
Stop war. (Maybe.)
Be awarded Trump Peace Prize from Board of Peace.
This is very risky from the point of view of the Iranians hitting US bases/ships. Dead Americans isn’t going to help the mid terms.
Ah, but war during elections is a loophole.
Divine Angel said:
buffy said:
Divine Angel said:
Start war.
Stop war. (Maybe.)
Be awarded Trump Peace Prize from Board of Peace.
This is very risky from the point of view of the Iranians hitting US bases/ships. Dead Americans isn’t going to help the mid terms.
Ah, but war during elections is a loophole.
Only if you declare it. At present they are “supporting” Israel, I think.
What I’d like to hear:
Reuters reports that Khamenei, Netanyahu and Trump have all been killed.
ABC are saying:
This article contains content that is not available.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Bubblecar said:
ABC are saying:This article contains content that is not available.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Might be that your browser doesn’t support things embedded in the article, like photos or that scrolling page-style they like using.
Bubblecar said:
ABC are saying:This article contains content that is not available.
What’s that supposed to mean?
IME, that usually means external content that has been taken down. Mostly they have been videos or Instagrams or tweets.
so they reckon they got the Ayatollah hey, snuffed him good
takes one to know one
On Truth Social, President Trump wrote: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” “This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” he wrote.
SCIENCE said:
takes one to know one
On Truth Social, President Trump wrote: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” “This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” he wrote.
He’s a murdering bastard.
Peak Warming Man said:
SCIENCE said:takes one to know one
On Truth Social, President Trump wrote: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” “This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” he wrote.
He’s a murdering bastard.
Trump shows no restraint from murder himself, as long as he can get someone else to do it for him.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iran
Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.
At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.
In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background. The report of the bombing, its death toll and the video’s source could not immediately be independently verified by the Guardian. Persian factchecking service Factnameh was able to cross-reference the video with other photographs of the school site, and concluded that the video was authentic. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school.Hossein Kermanpour, spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, said in a post to X that the bombing of the school was “the most bitter news” of the conflict so far. “God knows how many more children’s bodies they will pull from under the rubble.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iran
dv said:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iranIran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.
At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.
In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background. The report of the bombing, its death toll and the video’s source could not immediately be independently verified by the Guardian. Persian factchecking service Factnameh was able to cross-reference the video with other photographs of the school site, and concluded that the video was authentic. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school.Hossein Kermanpour, spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, said in a post to X that the bombing of the school was “the most bitter news” of the conflict so far. “God knows how many more children’s bodies they will pull from under the rubble.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iran
Take heed, this is how Donald Trump’s board of peace functions.
roughbarked said:
dv said:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iranIran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.
At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.
In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background. The report of the bombing, its death toll and the video’s source could not immediately be independently verified by the Guardian. Persian factchecking service Factnameh was able to cross-reference the video with other photographs of the school site, and concluded that the video was authentic. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school.Hossein Kermanpour, spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, said in a post to X that the bombing of the school was “the most bitter news” of the conflict so far. “God knows how many more children’s bodies they will pull from under the rubble.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iran
Take heed, this is how Donald Trump’s board of peace functions.
And what has been practised in Gaza.
Peak Warming Man said:
Crazy old creep.
Just a shame that the American and Israeli Ayatollahs are still breathing.
buffy said:
roughbarked said:
dv said:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iranIran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.
At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.
In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background. The report of the bombing, its death toll and the video’s source could not immediately be independently verified by the Guardian. Persian factchecking service Factnameh was able to cross-reference the video with other photographs of the school site, and concluded that the video was authentic. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school.Hossein Kermanpour, spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, said in a post to X that the bombing of the school was “the most bitter news” of the conflict so far. “God knows how many more children’s bodies they will pull from under the rubble.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iran
Take heed, this is how Donald Trump’s board of peace functions.
And what has been practised in Gaza.
Yes. Mr Netenyahu is already on the war criminal list.
Corbyn’s protest party would not be at all popular in Tehran at the moment…
People chanting and cheering in Tehran after Khamenei’s death
Video verified by AP shows Iranians taking to Tehran’s streets in large numbers to celebrate the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/us-israel-launches-airstrikes-in-iran-live-blog/106401380#live-blog-post-264458
Bubblecar said:
Corbyn’s protest party would not be at all popular in Tehran at the moment…People chanting and cheering in Tehran after Khamenei’s death
Video verified by AP shows Iranians taking to Tehran’s streets in large numbers to celebrate the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/us-israel-launches-airstrikes-in-iran-live-blog/106401380#live-blog-post-264458
Bolshi tub thumpers are a thing of the past, that war has been won, right of center parties like the Conservatives, modern Labor and Reform now rule the roost.
Peak Warming Man said:
Bubblecar said:
Corbyn’s protest party would not be at all popular in Tehran at the moment…People chanting and cheering in Tehran after Khamenei’s death
Video verified by AP shows Iranians taking to Tehran’s streets in large numbers to celebrate the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/us-israel-launches-airstrikes-in-iran-live-blog/106401380#live-blog-post-264458
Bolshi tub thumpers are a thing of the past, that war has been won, right of center parties like the Conservatives, modern Labor and Reform now rule the roost.
Reform are very much right of right of centre, led by a nasty maniac who adores Putin.
So… what is the stated aim the US is trying to achieve here?
Bubblecar said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Bubblecar said:
Corbyn’s protest party would not be at all popular in Tehran at the moment…People chanting and cheering in Tehran after Khamenei’s death
Video verified by AP shows Iranians taking to Tehran’s streets in large numbers to celebrate the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/us-israel-launches-airstrikes-in-iran-live-blog/106401380#live-blog-post-264458
Bolshi tub thumpers are a thing of the past, that war has been won, right of center parties like the Conservatives, modern Labor and Reform now rule the roost.
Reform are very much right of right of centre, led by a nasty maniac who adores Putin.
I am convinced the the whole Brexit thing was a Russian-backed plot to weaken western Europe.
party_pants said:
So… what is the stated aim the US is trying to achieve here?
“Regime change”. Since Khamenei has been killed, this will presumably allow them to claim success even if the hardliners remain in control.
party_pants said:
So… what is the stated aim the US is trying to achieve here?
Do Netenyahu’s bidding.
party_pants said:
So… what is the stated aim the US is trying to achieve here?
Peace in our time.
party_pants said:
So… what is the stated aim the US is trying to achieve here?
<<<<————-LOOK OVER THERE!!!——-…………………………………………………Epstein Files
Peak Warming Man said:
Corbyn’s always been a useful idiot.
Bubblecar said:
Just a shame that the American and Israeli Ayatollahs are still breathing.
If we’re lucky we might get regime change in Iran and a successful Republican Guard plot to assassinate Trump. It’s win-win!
Peak Warming Man said:
Bubblecar said:
Corbyn’s protest party would not be at all popular in Tehran at the moment…People chanting and cheering in Tehran after Khamenei’s death
Video verified by AP shows Iranians taking to Tehran’s streets in large numbers to celebrate the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-01/us-israel-launches-airstrikes-in-iran-live-blog/106401380#live-blog-post-264458
Bolshi tub thumpers are a thing of the past, that war has been won, right of center parties like the Conservatives, modern Labor and Reform now rule the roost.
Labor is centre left.
Witty Rejoinder said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Corbyn’s always been a
usefulidiot.
fixed.
Bit surprised the Ayatollah wasn’t in a secure location. They certainly had plenty of warning.
When Kohmeini died, Khamenei was in office the following day. Although formally the Council of Experts has to elect the new leader, in reality the succession had already been negotiated.
Might be something of an invidious position.
A case of “friendly fire” happened:
Iranian forces attacked the Skylight, a tanker belonging to the Iran–Russia shadow fleet, which was sailing under the flag of Palau.
The vessel was carrying Iranian oil and is subject to U.S. and EU sanctions.
Meanwhile Russia and China are sending big thoughts and prayers
oh
The call to back the action is also more than sucking up to Trump for the sake of the US-Australia alliance. Later this week, Canadian PM Mark Carney will address the Australian parliament, and what is fascinating to watch is that Australia and Canada are united in backing the United States on its Iran action, despite other countries raising concerns that it violates international law.
well you know sometimes laws are unjust
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-02/albanese-government-backs-us-israel-attacks-on-iran/106402282
nice juxtaposition there who the fuck are these journalists
Trump says US will ‘avenge’ fallen troops but more deaths ‘likely’
oh yeah “but” how about “therefore” you geniuses
SCIENCE said:
nice juxtaposition there who the fuck are these journalists
Trump says US will ‘avenge’ fallen troops but more deaths ‘likely’
oh yeah “but” how about “therefore” you geniuses
It makes sense of you conclude that the meaning was ‘US deaths will be avenged however we must expect some more US deaths’.
Albo is all the way with DJT.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
nice juxtaposition there who the fuck are these journalists
Trump says US will ‘avenge’ fallen troops but more deaths ‘likely’
oh yeah “but” how about “therefore” you geniuses
It makes sense of you conclude that the meaning was ‘US deaths will be avenged however we must expect some more US deaths’.
true but we argue that the framing is designed to divert attention from the idea that eternal vengeance sustains killing on all sides
language chosen to leave the space wide open for escalation in contrast to cooler breath
Peak Warming Man said:
Albo is all the way with DJT.
well if he doesn’t like it he should leave
Peak Warming Man said:
Albo is all the way with DJT.
Covering his arse.
Peak Warming Man said:
Albo is all the way with DJT.
Doesn’t rhyme.
buffy said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Albo is all the way with DJT.
Doesn’t rhyme.
he ain’t a poet and he know it.
buffy said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Albo is all the way with DJT.
Doesn’t rhyme.
All the wee with DJT?
buffy said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Albo is all the way with DJT.
Doesn’t rhyme.
It’s one of them iambic pentameters, like Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Are they all dead yet?
Alert me when it’s all over and
…Ahmad will go to sleep
In his own little room again
we(1,0,0) mean thank fuck we(1,1,1)’re in australia but shit like this comes up constantly now and we get terrible original position feelings
guess it was like that in past centuries as well so maybe दुःख is true this is life
Bubblecar said:
Australia’s timid response to the US and Israel’s attack on Iran risks being seen as complicity
yes
“risks being seen as”
LOL
‘rolling over’ after Israel and US attack is counterproductive for middle powers because it undermines rules-based order
oh c’m‘on we want to keep violating it to goad the likes of rules-based-international-order-disrespecting BIG BAD DIRTY CHINA so they overextend on their Taiwanese territory and then we can justify nuclear atrocitying all 1400000000 of them drones at once
I am not in any great state of mourning over the death of the Ayatollah, or other senior members of the regime. They have been sponsoring wars and rebel groups and terrorists for years, plus they are supplying thousands of drones to Russia to use against Ukraine.
We don’t like the way it is being done unilaterally by the US and Israel. But if it cuts off Iranian supplied weapons to mobs like Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen it might actually do some good. Might even do some good for Ukraine too.
SCIENCE said:
Bubblecar said:
Australia’s timid response to the US and Israel’s attack on Iran risks being seen as complicity
yes
“risks being seen as”
LOL
‘rolling over’ after Israel and US attack is counterproductive for middle powers because it undermines rules-based order
oh c’m‘on we want to keep violating it to goad the likes of rules-based-international-order-disrespecting BIG BAD DIRTY CHINA so they overextend on their Taiwanese territory and then we can justify nuclear atrocitying all 1400000000 of them drones at once
wait now Yousr ABC are onto it as well
Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have avoided questions about whether the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran breached international law. Israel says the strikes were “pre-emptive”, while the United States says the attacks aimed to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change.
When asked if the attacks were legal, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles said that was a question for the United States and Israel. “The legality is a matter for both United States and Israel to go through, but we support the United States in preventing Iran acquiring this capability,” Mr Marles said.
ah yes that’s right international law and order is a matter for USSA and JRI and as a great middle power we only stand for the rules-based international order if dirty ASIANS are violating it
oh wait
“But Iran has a terrible regime — they’re a proxy, they’re underwritten by Chinese and Russian tech.”
that’s it exactly this is all about the rules-based international order it’s legal if it’s against CHINA’s interests
The rules based order is dead. We (Australia) should be developing our own independent strategic deterrent and not relying on the US umbrella.
There is no point any more in arguing to preserve it. It’s gone because it no longer suits the US, China, or Russia. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we can move forward.
party_pants said:
The rules based order is dead. We (Australia) should be developing our own independent strategic deterrent and not relying on the US umbrella.
There is no point any more in arguing to preserve it. It’s gone because it no longer suits the US, China, or Russia. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we can move forward.
so law of the jungle then
pretty sure while any given country is economically winning a rules-based international order, that country is considering the rules-based international order to suit them just fine
it’s the not economically winning part that is problematic
Team Sports
DraftBarronTrump.com
SCIENCE said:
Team Sports
captain_spalding said:
DraftBarronTrump.com
pretty sure the propensity for bone spurs runs in families
whether they’re genetically related is a separate matter
SCIENCE said:
party_pants said:
The rules based order is dead. We (Australia) should be developing our own independent strategic deterrent and not relying on the US umbrella.
There is no point any more in arguing to preserve it. It’s gone because it no longer suits the US, China, or Russia. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we can move forward.
so law of the jungle then
pretty sure while any given country is economically winning a rules-based international order, that country is considering the rules-based international order to suit them just fine
it’s the not economically winning part that is problematic
Yeah, pretty much. An rules based order is better than the law of the jungle, everybody benefits instead of the few. But like any human order, it needs to be lead by people who put the collective good above their own selfish instincts. The fundamental flaw of any human system, modern or ancient, is that it requires the powerful to act with self-restraint.
captain_spalding said:
DraftBarronTrump.com
I wonder if Baron will be similar president to his father?
party_pants said:
SCIENCE said:
party_pants said:
The rules based order is dead. We (Australia) should be developing our own independent strategic deterrent and not relying on the US umbrella.
There is no point any more in arguing to preserve it. It’s gone because it no longer suits the US, China, or Russia. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we can move forward.
so law of the jungle then
pretty sure while any given country is economically winning a rules-based international order, that country is considering the rules-based international order to suit them just fine
it’s the not economically winning part that is problematic
Yeah, pretty much. An rules based order is better than the law of the jungle, everybody benefits instead of the few. But like any human order, it needs to be lead by people who put the collective good above their own selfish instincts. The fundamental flaw of any human system, modern or ancient, is that it requires the powerful to act with self-restraint.
OK we haven’t thought this through much recently but is consensus power sharing naturally doomed to failure?
On second thoughts we guess there are more specific questions to ask about that, since everything is thermodynamically doomed to failure.
oooh internment again soon let’s go
Earlier today in the US, a gunman wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and declaring “Property of Allah” killed two people and injured 14 at a Texas bar. The FBI is investigating the shooting as a potential act of terrorism. Police shot and killed the gunman, who opened fire on people sitting out the front of the venue and walking on the street outside. He then parked and got out with a rifle before officers rushed to the intersection and shot him.
didn’t hear a lot of protest from surrounding countries so leaving aside the remaining 3 for now
Pahlavi said he has four core principles for rebuilding the nation.
“Number one is Iran’s territorial integrity.
good luck with that, pretty sure the last time a country in the process of developing nuclear weapons was bad to jews and got bombed, they got carved up quite nicely
SCIENCE said:
didn’t hear a lot of protest from surrounding countries so leaving aside the remaining 3 for now
Pahlavi said he has four core principles for rebuilding the nation.
“Number one is Iran’s territorial integrity.
good luck with that, pretty sure the last time a country in the process of developing nuclear weapons was bad to jews and got bombed, they got carved up quite nicely
Number Two is getting the secret police up and running, big time.
SCIENCE said:
party_pants said:
SCIENCE said:
so law of the jungle then
pretty sure while any given country is economically winning a rules-based international order, that country is considering the rules-based international order to suit them just fine
it’s the not economically winning part that is problematic
Yeah, pretty much. An rules based order is better than the law of the jungle, everybody benefits instead of the few. But like any human order, it needs to be lead by people who put the collective good above their own selfish instincts. The fundamental flaw of any human system, modern or ancient, is that it requires the powerful to act with self-restraint.
OK we haven’t thought this through much recently but is consensus power sharing naturally doomed to failure?
On second thoughts we guess there are more specific questions to ask about that, since everything is thermodynamically doomed to failure.
- What is a reasonable lifetime for consensus power sharing¿
- What are the conditions to arrange a consensus that has longer life expectancy¿
- How could such conditions be reached, on a quasistatic (progressive) or punctuated (revolutionary) pathway¿
Have listen to this guy, Steve Keen, he explains it much better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-yTE26kOE
linky
17 minutes, but worth a listen on how the rules based order works and dosen’t work.
party_pants said:
SCIENCE said:party_pants said:
Yeah, pretty much. An rules based order is better than the law of the jungle, everybody benefits instead of the few. But like any human order, it needs to be lead by people who put the collective good above their own selfish instincts. The fundamental flaw of any human system, modern or ancient, is that it requires the powerful to act with self-restraint.
OK we haven’t thought this through much recently but is consensus power sharing naturally doomed to failure?
On second thoughts we guess there are more specific questions to ask about that, since everything is thermodynamically doomed to failure.
- What is a reasonable lifetime for consensus power sharing¿
- What are the conditions to arrange a consensus that has longer life expectancy¿
- How could such conditions be reached, on a quasistatic (progressive) or punctuated (revolutionary) pathway¿
Have listen to this guy, Steve Keen, he explains it much better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-yTE26kOE
linky
17 minutes, but worth a listen on how the rules based order works and dosen’t work.
Keen’s a bit of a crack pot: He’s been predicting an imminent Aussie housing crash for 20 years now.
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:
SCIENCE said:OK we haven’t thought this through much recently but is consensus power sharing naturally doomed to failure?
On second thoughts we guess there are more specific questions to ask about that, since everything is thermodynamically doomed to failure.
- What is a reasonable lifetime for consensus power sharing¿
- What are the conditions to arrange a consensus that has longer life expectancy¿
- How could such conditions be reached, on a quasistatic (progressive) or punctuated (revolutionary) pathway¿
Have listen to this guy, Steve Keen, he explains it much better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-yTE26kOE
linky
17 minutes, but worth a listen on how the rules based order works and dosen’t work.
Keen’s a bit of a crack pot: He’s been predicting an imminent Aussie housing crash for 20 years now.
I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
party_pants said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:Have listen to this guy, Steve Keen, he explains it much better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-yTE26kOE
linky
17 minutes, but worth a listen on how the rules based order works and dosen’t work.
Keen’s a bit of a crack pot: He’s been predicting an imminent Aussie housing crash for 20 years now.
I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
I’ll have to take your word for it.
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:
Have listen to this guy, Steve Keen, he explains it much better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-yTE26kOE
linky
17 minutes, but worth a listen on how the rules based order works and dosen’t work.
Keen’s a bit of a crack pot: He’s been predicting an imminent Aussie housing crash for 20 years now.
I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
I’ll have to take your word for it.
thanks both we’ll have a sit down and serious distillation of it at some stage when we can concentrate
The start of the new world order isn’t coming.
It’s already here.
The most powerful people on the planet just stood on stage at Davos and said it out loud.
They have a choice.
You can say yes or you can say no.
And we will remember that we live in an era of great power rivalry.
That the rules-based order is fading.
We desperately need a new world order.
Conflicts are rising.
International rules are being tested.
Trade tensions are escalating.
We pretend it’s rules-based. In fact, it’s power based.
But now what Trump is doing is making it obvious it’s based on power.
Trump is a very outofc control puppet.
So I don’t think it’s going to be a peaceful transition at all.
Unfortunately, it’s just the final game of the end of a system which was almost designed to fail in the first place which was Breton Woods.
Because if you look at what we got out of Breton Woods, what we got initially was the United States dollar as the international currency.
It was linked to gold.
1 oz of gold was equivalent to the to $35.
That was the original system.
All it really was in a sense was continuing the gold standard but with the American dollar as the currency for international trade rather than the British pound which was what applied before World War II.
Britain went off the gold standard.
Of course, that was part of how they managed to get out of the worst of the Great Depression.
But nonetheless, there was, you know, basically a new version of the old world system rather than the British pound being used.
It’s the American dollar.
same sort of idea of convertability into gold and so on and that was on a hiding nothing to fail for a whole lot of reasons.
One of the easiest the one that Janth Verisvus focused on what in a book he called the global minotaur and he said that if you’re going to use a national currency for international trade then that nation has to run a trade deficit because otherwise you uh with the trade deficit people are getting American dollars rather than America taking a currency elsewhere American currencies going overseas to pay for these goods and therefore you have American dollars and then people can use American dollars to buy German goods because you need to have the American dollar to buy everything as the form of international currency.
Such a level of American dollars accumulated in Europe, they called it the Euro dollar market and those euro dollars because they were literally convertible into gold.
I think it was France Ramitaran threatened the American trade deficit had become so large and France had accumulated such a large amount of American dollars they said we’re going to bring these dollars to Fort Knox and insist you give us you know for every $35 we get 1 ounce of gold in Fort Knox and if they had done it would have actually emptied Fort Knox that sort of pushed Nixon’s hand to say we’ve got to break the convertability the dollar is no longer universally convertible into gold and they changed the price it was $35 for the official market 42 for the non-official market and then finally they broke the whole thing and so we had basically a floating American dollar as the basis of international trade completely opposed to MMT’s attitude on trade.
This is going to annoy some people.
The system that we could have had was Kanes’s idea of what he called the bank and the idea of the bank was to create a specific unit of account for international trade.
So you wouldn’t use a domestic currency for international trade.
And because Kanes was putting this forward at a time when the gold standards still mattered, he talked about convertability of gold into the bank.
And because it was a time of fixed exchange rates, he talked about having a fixed exchange rate mechanism.
Every country would be have a it started off with, you know, the dollar might be worth one bank and the pound might be worth uh half a bank.
That sort of relationship was there and then you had to have a a sort of government mechanism to change the value.
But we could equally bring the same system with a floating exchange rate now with no link to gold.
But in nonetheless, that was an alternative system.
And if that had happened, you wouldn’t have needed American dollars for international trade.
What Kane’s proposed with he called the international clearing union.
Every country would have an account at the ICU, but it would start at zero.
And the sum of all accounts would always remain at zero.
So it wasn’t actually a currency.
It was just a unit of count.
Countries running a trade surplus would accumulate a positive balance at the ICU.
those running a trade deficit would accumulate a negative balance and canes is going to have interest repayments on both to discourage large balances and therefore to encourage a balanced approach to trade.
Now what we got instead with the American dollar was they like the American version of the previous British system where you needed this domestic currency for international trade that meant that domestic currency was overvalued.
The impact of an overvalued currency is that your manufacturing goods are more expensive than goods produced elsewhere.
If they’re the same cost structure, then you’re going to have a higher price because you’re the reserve currency.
You might be 30% overvalued.
So something has to be made for the equivalent of $1,000 in both places would cost 1,300 made by Americans and 1,000 when made by Europeans.
That put American manufacturing at a disadvantage.
That means over time American manufacturing has declined and the power that made America the the reserve currency for the planet has been eliminated over time which is the same thing that happened to the British the same thing that happened to the Dutch beforehand.
The domestic currency that will be chosen as the dominant political and manufacturing power on the planet when it happens.
But once it becomes the international currency its manufacturing sector starts to lose out because the overvalued currency means it can’t compete.
its financial sector comes extremely powerful because you need American dollars for all purchases of goods and services and financial claims and you know non-financial assets shares and properties and so on.
So you make the financial sector extremely strong but you weaken your manufacturing sector and that ultimately leads to your your economy being defeated by another economy.
Dutch lost out to the English, the English lose out to the Americans and now the Americans are losing out to the Chinese.
The actual failures we’re seeing right now are inevitable.
You can find the same thing in in Grazani because what Graziani argues that all is all monetary systems are basically triangular.
You have a buyer, a seller and a bank that enables you to settle the transactions.
So at the domestic level, we all use our domestic currency.
We transfer from one bank account to another at the level of the banks they transfer from their reserve accounts at the central bank for that particular currency.
And what should happen is the central bank should transfer neutral uh unit of account at their level as well.
There should be three independent financial systems.
Instead, we’ve got a one and a half.
We’ve got a national systems for every country on the planet.
One national system called the American dollar, which is used inside America, but it’s also used at the top of the whole pyramid system for international trade.
And that’s a system that had to fail.
And so, we’re seeing it going through the failures right now.
We desperately need a new world order, but the last thing that should be is a world order based on another national currency.
we should bring in something like Kanes’s idea of the bankor.
Hanes also described gold as that barbarous relic.
He didn’t think we should use gold at all.
He had to make a political concession at the time that everybody else believed gold should be used for international trade.
So he said let’s call this thing we use as if it’s gold but it’s not going to be gold.
So he was constrained by that particular belief system.
So the proposal I’ve made is we should have an international unit of account which all countries use for international trade and the way international trade would occur as you would have to take purchase made of American companies buying a Chinese product.
Then the American dollar would get converted into the international unit of account that would then be transferred to the Chinese central bank that would then be converted by the Chinese central bank into yuan and that would enable the purchase to go through.
We call the international unit of account the terror.
I hope that reminds people we’re on the same planet.
We shouldn’t try to kill each other.
If I look at the long progression of history, what I see happening is that we’ve had empires ever since the colonial period.
Gilders, Deloon, all the currencies we’ve used have been national currencies.
And when a particular country is the dominant empire on the planet, that’s the currency we tend to use.
Countries think that’s great because we’re using my currency.
Aren’t I the big, you know, beat your chest.
I’m the big country.
I’m in charge.
You use my currency.
If India took over, we’d be using the rupee.
That sort of thing.
It to me, it’s foolish because I see being the currency that’s used for international trade is seen by most empires as a spoil of empire because that’s what the previous empire had.
I think it’s a poison chalice.
I think it’s actually not a spoil of empire, but a spoiler of empires.
A country on the planet is you conquer all the other countries.
You become an empire.
You conquer them because you’ve got a manufacturing sector that is more advanced than your rivals.
You produce some military technology or some weaponry.
That means you wipe out the the armies of your rivals.
They become your vassels.
And when it takes over, your currency gets overvalued because everybody has to have your currency for trade.
So therefore, your manufacturing sector now has a handicap.
It’s 30 or 40% more expensive than making goods in the other countries.
Obviously I’ll start at a lower technological level initially.
One of the vassels will develop comparable industrial technology to the empire and then it will supplant the empire.
Same story.
It then becomes the dominant country.
So I think the whole idea of using a national currency is deadly for the empire itself.
First of all being the the reserve currency gives your financial sector great power but it weakens your manufacturing sector.
He could see that in the case of England itself when he was in the Indian office and and so on before he became a prominent economist.
So I think he was trying to stop that curse.
The trouble is the Americans turned up and you know big ego Americans particularly a guy called Harry Dexter White who led the American delegation basically a bureaucrat.
He wasn’t a politician, but he had the same attitude.
Because we are the strongest country on the planet, therefore we should use our currency for international trade and he saw it as an advantage for America.
I think Kane saw it was going to be a poison chalice, but he couldn’t fight the Americans given the the power they had at the world end of World War II.
So, we’re stuck with the American dollar.
The last thing we should do is repeat that mistake.
The one thing I can say in favor of Trump is he’s going to accelerate potential uh changes to bring about a new world order.
Trump is in some ways is the epitome of the American culture.
He’s a con artist.
He’s egotistical, narcissistic, wants everything to revolve around him.
He’s really an expression of the worst of America.
You can say he’s an aberration.
He’s a statement of the American personality in that sense.
And because he’s so bloody extreme, you really do have somebody suffering from narcissistic personality disorder at the head of a country taking a sledgehammer to the current system.
And people’s response is we need a new system.
So I was extremely impressed with uh Mark Carney when he was in a visit to China recently.
He quite deliberately said this is the beginning of a new world order.
And I think that was an incredibly brave statement for him to make because he’s saying we’re breaking away from the Americans.
He then had that speech in Europe where he said it quite explicitly uh we need a new order that we’ve got flaws in the current system.
We pretend it’s rules-based.
In fact, it’s powerbased.
The rules are applied unevenly.
If you’re a strong country in favor, so you’re America or you’re Israel, you get the good treatment.
If you’re not in favor, we we punish you in various ways.
It’s not rule-based.
It’s foolish to it’s we’re pretending that it’s based on rules.
But now what Trump is doing is making it obvious it’s based on power.
So in that sense, I think during Trump’s reign, if he lasts another three years, uh it’s likely under that situation, people are going to say, “Well, got to get away from this crazy country.
“ Yes.
Okay.
Trump’s going to see us being president probably at some point if for no other reason than he’s old enough to die in the next four years and unhealthy enough to probably die.
So he’ll be gone.
But if America can throw up a Trump, he can throw up somebody just as bad.
We can’t trust their political system to choose a a sensible person as leader.
So we need to break away and have an order which is not dependent upon the idiosyncrasies of different personalities.
So I think it’s possible to see this in the next 5 years hopefully in the next three major impact is going to be a decline in the power of the American financial sector.
I think that’s absolutely desperately necessary.
When your currency becomes used for international trade you undermine your manufacturing sector but you empower your financial sector and the American financial sector has been in a rapacious force on the social system.
It’s undermined productivity.
It’s everything is financialized.
It’s you’ve got pensioners having to, you know, check and see what the stock market is that day to work out whether they’re going any addition and be able to buy milk next week.
It’s absolutely crazy to have the financial sector being as strong as it is.
So, a new world order would definitely reduce the power of the American financial system and that’s one of the reasons they’re going to oppose it, try to stop it coming about because they don’t want to lose that power.
The vast majority of capitalists don’t do well out of the American currency being used for international trade.
But the tiny minority that run what are called the vampire squids, the Morgan Stanley’s and shadow banks and so on, they do extremely well and they’re going to oppose any change like this.
So to some extent, you need a strong country that they can’t control to be pushing for the change.
And now of course that strong country is China.
Americans would see quite dramatic effects.
They wouldn’t be able to go overseas holidays anymore because it’d be more expensive to travel.
They wouldn’t be buying as many imported goods because they couldn’t afford them anymore.
The price would rise as the dollar fell.
But American manufacturing could get a chance to revive.
And if you have to look at how Americans are suffering right now, a major reason that Trump got elected is because so many Americans lost their jobs when their factories were shut down and production was shifted off to third world countries, but especially China.
And then China developed its own rival manufacturing sector.
People who used to have skilled jobs in America have now got shitty gig economy jobs and and things of that nature.
And and they’re angry about it and they’re right to be angry.
So in some ways they will benefit from giving up with the fast of the American dollar being used for international trade.
If if America loses control of the financial system, it loses its diplomatic power as well because a huge part of the power of America comes out of the American dollar.
Such a dangerous transition.
America, it’s lost the manufacturing prowess.
Certainly not the world’s second most powerful manufacturing economy.
Certainly, China’s number one.
America might be number two or three.
Manufacturing is nowhere near as strong as it was 40 years ago.
In that situation, they should go into decline, which is what the English did and the Dutch and so on beforehand.
But they’ve got nuclear weapons.
They if they decide to use the power of nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world, it could be an endgame.
And that’s what scares me that uh there’s such a degree of talk uh in American power structures about provoking wars.
Trump come in claiming to be the peace president.
Yeah, he’s got to taken a piece of Venezuela.
He’s taking a piece of Greenland, a piece of you know, it’s ridiculous how he’s turned that upside down.
But what he’s doing is continuing what Eisenhower called the militaryindustrial complex where you become a political leader and then you do what the military and the industrial uh suppliers to the military in America want you to do and you become a puppet.
Trump is a very out of control puppet that’s the situation he’s in.
So if you have a a world attempt to move away from the American dollar to try to improve the system, it’s quite possible the American military-industrial complex try to start wars to stop that happening.
So I don’t think it’s going to be a peaceful transition at all.
Unfortunately, if you look back to the days of the 1950s and60s, one reason we didn’t have military global scale military conflict back then is because of what was called MAD mutually assured destruction.
Now with the breakdown of Russia, Russia still has nuclear weapons, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as it used to be.
We don’t know how well those weapons are maintained.
Americans could imagine they could actually start a war and win it.
That’s extremely dangerous.
We could actually face a nuclear war because we no longer have the countervailing power of a another country that no America knows it can’t defeat.
So I’m just hoping actually that China is doing as much as it can to get to the same point where it makes the point that if you start a war, if you win it, you’re still going to lose.
If this helped you to see that the equations economists use were wrong and not you, if that resonates with you, you’re probably like the 22,000 others who recently requested one of my three books inside my new Rebel Economist book bundle.
The bundle is worth $50, but you can get it while it’s free this week.
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uh … do … military personnel in other countries have families with children who might attend schools near where they are based
The Hengaw human rights organisation said in a statement on Sunday the school was believed to have enrolled about 170 students and was located near a navy base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s militant security organisation. “The establishment and expansion of military facilities in close proximity to schools and public spaces place civilians at heightened risk,” the statement said. “Under international humanitarian law, the use of civilian areas to shield military objectives is prohibited.”
what about the use of civilian areas to provide civilian services to civilians associated with military personnel
Bubblecar said:
Australia’s timid response to the US and Israel’s attack on Iran risks being seen as complicity
Yes but he has to talk to Australians who have just had two antisemitic and one anti first peoples attacks.
Apparently the US just shot down one of it’s own F-15s.
Peak Warming Man said:
captain_spalding said:
DraftBarronTrump.comI wonder if Baron will be similar president to his father?
NOOOOO> don’t jinx us.
Kingy said:
Apparently the US just shot down one of it’s own F-15s.
Clever lads.
Kingy said:
Apparently the US just shot down one of it’s own F-15s.
Just saw the video, it looks more like an F-35.
Kingy said:
Kingy said:
Apparently the US just shot down one of it’s own F-15s.
Just saw the video, it looks more like an F-35.
More info: shot down by Kuwait by mistake, and likely is an F-15. The video is a bit blurry.
Kingy said:
Kingy said:
Kingy said:
Apparently the US just shot down one of it’s own F-15s.
Just saw the video, it looks more like an F-35.
More info: shot down by Kuwait by mistake, and likely is an F-15. The video is a bit blurry.
Are you confident of the source? Truth is likely already hiding behind the sofa somewhere.
buffy said:
Kingy said:
Kingy said:Just saw the video, it looks more like an F-35.
More info: shot down by Kuwait by mistake, and likely is an F-15. The video is a bit blurry.
Are you confident of the source? Truth is likely already hiding behind the sofa somewhere.
Pics or it didn’t happen. Got a link?
Woodie said:
buffy said:
Kingy said:More info: shot down by Kuwait by mistake, and likely is an F-15. The video is a bit blurry.
Are you confident of the source? Truth is likely already hiding behind the sofa somewhere.
Pics or it didn’t happen. Got a link?
I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
buffy said:
Woodie said:
buffy said:Are you confident of the source? Truth is likely already hiding behind the sofa somewhere.
Pics or it didn’t happen. Got a link?
I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
buffy said:
Woodie said:
buffy said:Are you confident of the source? Truth is likely already hiding behind the sofa somewhere.
Pics or it didn’t happen. Got a link?
I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
More and more so every day.
Bubblecar said:
buffy said:
Woodie said:Pics or it didn’t happen. Got a link?
I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
Looks like the pilot got out.
roughbarked said:
Bubblecar said:
buffy said:I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
Looks like the pilot got out.
Trouble is, couldn’t comprehend a word of the commentary.
Bubblecar said:
buffy said:
Woodie said:Pics or it didn’t happen. Got a link?
I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
Yep that’s an F-35.
Spiny Norman said:
Bubblecar said:
buffy said:I no longer trust pictures. Far too easy to manipulate.
Yep that’s an F-35.
Many millons of $
Seems like Canada put the sign back in the window
dv said:
Seems like Canada put the sign back in the window
Isn’t it pretty much same as what Australia ended up doing¿
Hegseth calls Iran strikes ‘most lethal’ aerial operation in history
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5761077-us-strikes-iran-hegseth-trump/
dv said:
Hegseth calls Iran strikes ‘most lethal’ aerial operation in history
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5761077-us-strikes-iran-hegseth-trump/
well they didn’t manage to kill Hirohito for all the collateral damage now did they
party_pants said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:Have listen to this guy, Steve Keen, he explains it much better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-yTE26kOE
linky
17 minutes, but worth a listen on how the rules based order works and dosen’t work.
Keen’s a bit of a crack pot: He’s been predicting an imminent Aussie housing crash for 20 years now.
I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
I read the transcript MZL posted. Keen veers between basic economics and elaborate there’s on America’s economic downfall and then to to it all off spruiks his books. I don’t think he has much credibility.
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Keen’s a bit of a crack pot: He’s been predicting an imminent Aussie housing crash for 20 years now.
I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
I read the transcript MZL posted. Keen veers between basic economics and elaborate there’s on America’s economic downfall and then to to it all off spruiks his books. I don’t think he has much credibility.
‘to top it
Witty Rejoinder said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
I read the transcript MZL posted. Keen veers between basic economics and elaborate there’s on America’s economic downfall and then to to it all off spruiks his books. I don’t think he has much credibility.
‘to top it
_sigh-
there’s = theories
It’s looking like the bombing of the girls school was a Iranian rocket gone wrong.
Evidence so far:
First hand vision, pics of the rocket plume doing a turn in the sky and coming down, and the lack of any bits of missile being shown in Iranian media.
I have discounted the usual denials from the two accused parties.
Two F-15E’s shot down over Kuwait in friendly fire. All crew safe.
Kingy said:
It’s looking like the bombing of the girls school was a Iranian rocket gone wrong.Evidence so far:
First hand vision, pics of the rocket plume doing a turn in the sky and coming down, and the lack of any bits of missile being shown in Iranian media.
I have discounted the usual denials from the two accused parties.
Ooh-aah!
Michael V said:
Kingy said:
It’s looking like the bombing of the girls school was a Iranian rocket gone wrong.Evidence so far:
First hand vision, pics of the rocket plume doing a turn in the sky and coming down, and the lack of any bits of missile being shown in Iranian media.
I have discounted the usual denials from the two accused parties.
Ooh-aah!
Seems like there’s a bit of dire friendly fire.
Witty Rejoinder said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
party_pants said:I agree with him on the currency and trade issues discussed in this video. He is not alone voice on this topic.
I read the transcript MZL posted. Keen veers between basic economics and elaborate there’s on America’s economic downfall and then to to it all off spruiks his books. I don’t think he has much credibility.
‘to top it
Practically everyone with a YouTube channel is flogging their books, or merch, or Patreon, or online courses or something similar. you take that bit with a grain of salt.
holy fuck the propaganda machine is doing overtime
The Masjid Arrahman in Kingsgrove, Husaineyat Sayeda Zaynab in Banksia and the Arncliffe-based community organisation Flagbearer Foundation were among the Sydney organisations that invited their members to special prayer sessions to honour the ayatollah, who was killed in US and Israeli air strikes on Iran. They were joined by the El Zahra Islamic Community Centre in Melbourne’s Hoppers Crossing, which held a Majlis gathering in commemoration on Sunday night.
sure, fella wasn’t our friend, we’re not holding a wake
NSW Premier Chris Minns condemned the lionising of the ayatollah. “I think we can call the mourning of this tyrant atrocious and that’s what I’m going to do,” Mr Minns said. “By any objective measure the ayatollah was evil.”
oh¿ Guess neither is the political leadership of Australians in at least some places
Nos Hosseini from the Iranian Women’s Association said she was appalled to see the ayatollah being mourned. “It was deeply insulting as an Iranian to see people mourning such a controversial figure,” she said.
wait what does “controversial” mean does it mean somehow a religious political figure managed to “mercilessly resisted attempts for regime change” when every single person in the area hated his guts so he had absolutely zero support and nobody should speak positively of him at all
Australian Iranian activist Arvin did not want to give her surname out of fear for her family, which is still in Iran. She said she was alarmed to see in Australia such public displays of sympathy for the regime. “I cannot believe that people in Australia are supporting them — it’s like mourning for Hitler,” she said. “Who can support someone who has committed the biggest crimes and is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people?
hang on a moment, we’re not saying that the dead fella is any better then any other fella but is there at least one living fella out there who has a warrant out for war crimes and is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people, who is still being “lionised”, with a move that’s even called the “Rising Lion” perhaps
wait surely cc is an obsolete term that stands for controversial copy who the fuck uses dirty black carcinogenic dust in the age of computers anyway it’s clear from earlier conversations that nobody has any courtesy these days do they and so the correct term in email is actually sic for silicon copy which is what the whole damn email ecosystem is based on sheesh
I think it was yesterday when someone posted a video of a US fighter jet just after it was hit with a missile and subsequently crashed.
I said it was an F-35 but it turns out it was an F-15.
I think that’s perhaps the only F-15 that’s been shot down like that. For air combat at least they have a 104 to 0 ratio of kills.
Spiny Norman said:
I think it was yesterday when someone posted a video of a US fighter jet just after it was hit with a missile and subsequently crashed.
I said it was an F-35 but it turns out it was an F-15.I think that’s perhaps the only F-15 that’s been shot down like that. For air combat at least they have a 104 to 0 ratio of kills.
A couple were shot down during Operation Desert Storm, but yeah the record setting 104:0 air-to-air ratio still stands and of course the F-15 is the only aircraft ever to shoot down a satellite so it has an unmatched air-to-space ratio as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F-15_losses
17/18 January 1991: F-15E-46-MC, 88‑1689, c/n 1098/E073, of the 335th FS, 4th TFW, USAF, was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery on the first day of Operation Desert Storm.
19/20 January 1991: F-15E-46-MC, 88‑1692, c/n 1101/E076, of the 336th FS, 4th TFW, USAF, was shot down by an Iraqi SA-2E missile during Operation Desert Storm. Both crew members ejected and were POWs.
SCIENCE said:
holy fuck the propaganda machine is doing overtime
The Masjid Arrahman in Kingsgrove, Husaineyat Sayeda Zaynab in Banksia and the Arncliffe-based community organisation Flagbearer Foundation were among the Sydney organisations that invited their members to special prayer sessions to honour the ayatollah, who was killed in US and Israeli air strikes on Iran. They were joined by the El Zahra Islamic Community Centre in Melbourne’s Hoppers Crossing, which held a Majlis gathering in commemoration on Sunday night.
sure, fella wasn’t our friend, we’re not holding a wake
NSW Premier Chris Minns condemned the lionising of the ayatollah. “I think we can call the mourning of this tyrant atrocious and that’s what I’m going to do,” Mr Minns said. “By any objective measure the ayatollah was evil.”
oh¿ Guess neither is the political leadership of Australians in at least some places
Nos Hosseini from the Iranian Women’s Association said she was appalled to see the ayatollah being mourned. “It was deeply insulting as an Iranian to see people mourning such a controversial figure,” she said.
wait what does “controversial” mean does it mean somehow a religious political figure managed to “mercilessly resisted attempts for regime change” when every single person in the area hated his guts so he had absolutely zero support and nobody should speak positively of him at all
Australian Iranian activist Arvin did not want to give her surname out of fear for her family, which is still in Iran. She said she was alarmed to see in Australia such public displays of sympathy for the regime. “I cannot believe that people in Australia are supporting them — it’s like mourning for Hitler,” she said. “Who can support someone who has committed the biggest crimes and is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people?
hang on a moment, we’re not saying that the dead fella is any better then any other fella but is there at least one living fella out there who has a warrant out for war crimes and is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people, who is still being “lionised”, with a move that’s even called the “Rising Lion” perhaps
He admitted last night on the TV that he has been wanting to do this for forty years. It is all about Israel being plonked in amongst the Arabs.
esselte said:
Spiny Norman said:
I think it was yesterday when someone posted a video of a US fighter jet just after it was hit with a missile and subsequently crashed.
I said it was an F-35 but it turns out it was an F-15.I think that’s perhaps the only F-15 that’s been shot down like that. For air combat at least they have a 104 to 0 ratio of kills.
A couple were shot down during Operation Desert Storm, but yeah the record setting 104:0 air-to-air ratio still stands and of course the F-15 is the only aircraft ever to shoot down a satellite so it has an unmatched air-to-space ratio as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F-15_losses
17/18 January 1991: F-15E-46-MC, 88‑1689, c/n 1098/E073, of the 335th FS, 4th TFW, USAF, was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery on the first day of Operation Desert Storm.
19/20 January 1991: F-15E-46-MC, 88‑1692, c/n 1101/E076, of the 336th FS, 4th TFW, USAF, was shot down by an Iraqi SA-2E missile during Operation Desert Storm. Both crew members ejected and were POWs.
Ta.
The Daily Telegraph re-used a headline they used 10 years ago.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/01/iran-attack-trump-poll/88933730007/
Only one in four Americans approve of the strikes on Iran that killed leader Ali Khamenei, according to a new poll released less than 48 hours after the United States and Israel launched deadly joint military strikes.
In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, while a majority said they were either unsure about them (29%) or said they disapproved (43%).
dv said:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/01/iran-attack-trump-poll/88933730007/
Only one in four Americans approve of the strikes on Iran that killed leader Ali Khamenei, according to a new poll released less than 48 hours after the United States and Israel launched deadly joint military strikes.
In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, while a majority said they were either unsure about them (29%) or said they disapproved (43%).
so Americans are better than Australian leaders right now
SCIENCE said:
dv said:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/01/iran-attack-trump-poll/88933730007/
Only one in four Americans approve of the strikes on Iran that killed leader Ali Khamenei, according to a new poll released less than 48 hours after the United States and Israel launched deadly joint military strikes.
In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, while a majority said they were either unsure about them (29%) or said they disapproved (43%).
so Americans are better than Australian leaders right now
Wouldn’t a better metric be comparing this poll of Americans to one of the Australian public?
Anyway I don’t know that Australian pollies are outliers compared to foreign leaders of other western nations. And Xi and Putin are not as you’d contend respectful of the international rules based order and onstrad just engaging in authoritarian team sports.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:dv said:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/01/iran-attack-trump-poll/88933730007/
Only one in four Americans approve of the strikes on Iran that killed leader Ali Khamenei, according to a new poll released less than 48 hours after the United States and Israel launched deadly joint military strikes.
In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, while a majority said they were either unsure about them (29%) or said they disapproved (43%).
so Americans are better than Australian leaders right now
Wouldn’t a better metric be comparing this poll of Americans to one of the Australian public?
Anyway I don’t know that Australian pollies are outliers compared to foreign leaders of other western nations. And Xi and Putin are not as you’d contend respectful of the international rules based order and onstrad just engaging in authoritarian team sports.
onstrad=instead
Witty Rejoinder said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:so Americans are better than Australian leaders right now
Wouldn’t a better metric be comparing this poll of Americans to one of the Australian public?
Anyway I don’t know that Australian pollies are outliers compared to foreign leaders of other western nations. And Xi and Putin are not as you’d contend respectful of the international rules based order and onstrad just engaging in authoritarian team sports.
onstrad=instead
why would someone winning by the rules want to disrespect the rules
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Wouldn’t a better metric be comparing this poll of Americans to one of the Australian public?
Anyway I don’t know that Australian pollies are outliers compared to foreign leaders of other western nations. And Xi and Putin are not as you’d contend respectful of the international rules based order and onstrad just engaging in authoritarian team sports.
onstrad=instead
why would someone winning by the rules want to disrespect the rules
Which winner are you referring to?
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:onstrad=instead
why would someone winning by the rules want to disrespect the rules
Which winner are you referring to?
the one who by the admission of the others is getting too much of an upper hand so the others need to disrespect the rules to balance the books with
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:why would someone winning by the rules want to disrespect the rules
Which winner are you referring to?
the one who by the admission of the others is getting too much of an upper hand so the others need to disrespect the rules to balance the books with
Oh you mean the one who happily supports Putin in Ukraine and weaponises trade against Australia when they don’t get their way. And then there’s the Philippines Navy…
A trifecta of religions in this war, if we can encourage Hindus, we’d have the big 4
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Which winner are you referring to?
the one who by the admission of the others is getting too much of an upper hand so the others need to disrespect the rules to balance the books with
Oh you mean the one who happily supports Putin in Ukraine and weaponises trade against Australia when they don’t get their way. And then there’s the Philippines Navy…
wait are we saying that countries really do disrespect rules when they’re not winning, or are we saying that the rules mean that countries must be compelled to trade when it benefits the paedophile elite
Cymek said:
A trifecta of religions in this war, if we can encourage Hindus, we’d have the big 4
what do they have to do with Abraham then
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:the one who by the admission of the others is getting too much of an upper hand so the others need to disrespect the rules to balance the books with
Oh you mean the one who happily supports Putin in Ukraine and weaponises trade against Australia when they don’t get their way. And then there’s the Philippines Navy…
wait are we saying that countries really do disrespect rules when they’re not winning, or are we saying that the rules mean that countries must be compelled to trade when it benefits the paedophile elite
They do a Darth Vader and alter the deal
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:the one who by the admission of the others is getting too much of an upper hand so the others need to disrespect the rules to balance the books with
Oh you mean the one who happily supports Putin in Ukraine and weaponises trade against Australia when they don’t get their way. And then there’s the Philippines Navy…
wait are we saying that countries really do disrespect rules when they’re not winning, or are we saying that the rules mean that countries must be compelled to trade when it benefits the paedophile elite
Ummm no. Do keep up.
wait so USSA fascists claim to treat foreign terrorist adversaries they are at war with, better than they treat their own ethnic looking citizens now eh
US would not deliberately target schools, Rubio says
Elissa Steedman profile imageBy Elissa Steedman
Backtracking just a little to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments to reporters now.
Iranian state media has reported more than 160 people were killed in a strike on a girls’ school launched by the US and Israel on Saturday.
Rubio told reporters earlier that US forces “would not deliberately target a school”.
Deliberately attacking an educational institution or hospital or any other civilian structure is a war crime under international humanitarian law.
“The Department of War would be investigating that if that was our strike, and I would refer your question to them,” Rubio said. “The United States would not deliberately target a school.”The Pentagon and the US Central Command did not respond to a request for comment.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Oh you mean the one who happily supports Putin in Ukraine and weaponises trade against Australia when they don’t get their way. And then there’s the Philippines Navy…
wait are we saying that countries really do disrespect rules when they’re not winning, or are we saying that the rules mean that countries must be compelled to trade when it benefits the paedophile elite
Ummm no. Do keep up.
well we agree that good responsible countries are supporting Ukraine in their defensive efforts, and maintaining order in Philippines naval regions
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
wait are we saying that countries really do disrespect rules when they’re not winning, or are we saying that the rules mean that countries must be compelled to trade when it benefits the paedophile elite
Ummm no. Do keep up.
well we agree that good responsible countries are supporting Ukraine in their defensive efforts, and maintaining order in Philippines naval regions
It’s not cheap to support them it seems.
I can imagine World War 3 would cost trillions
(Longish but worthy analysis by Paul Mason from The New World.)
Iran war: It’s time for Europe to become a superpower
We know what happens when the US breaks something and then walks away. The result is catastrophe. The problem is, Trump doesn’t really care
Donald Trump attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations that were heading towards agreement. In the end, it turns out that talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme did not break down: they were a deception plan.
Trump brought no evidence to the UN of an Iranian threat, and declared war without consulting the US Congress. The attack was, in both senses, unlawful.
That’s why Britain, Germany and France were right not to take part, or to facilitate it, and why – even as Iran attacks British interests in the Gulf and the RAF base in Cyprus – we are right to limit our participation to the collective defence of ourselves and our allies.
To join a war with no clear objective, and with no control over its conduct, would have been folly – and the Conservative/Reform politicians calling for it need to explain how they would have squared it with the UK’s obligation to uphold the UN Charter.
Though Trump has called on the Iranian masses to take power, he can offer them no obvious help in doing so apart from obliterating the gang of thugs who run the country.
Even if decapitated, the regime has a mass base, in the form of the local Basij militias, which can mobilise around a million men cognisant of the fact that, if the Islamic Republic falls, it is they who will end up hanging from lamp-posts.
The only way this ends, now, is either through a civil war in Iran or a change within the Islamic republican elite. Even the exhaustion of Iran’s missile stocks and the decimation of the Republican Guard won’t pacify the region until there is a government in Tehran prepared to observe peaceful norms of behaviour with its neighbours.
The US/Israeli decision to go to war was, in short, an act of folly – and the British government should find the courage to say so. Keir Starmer has done well to keep the E3 (Britain, Germany and France) in lockstep during the first days of the war: using their own forces for defensive purposes only and steering clear of support for the US and Israeli attacks.
The decision to let the US use British bases for strikes on missile launch sites and stockpiles is clearly legal, under the UN’s Article 51.
But war is a vortex. With Iran reported to have attempted 20 terror attacks on British soil in recent years, it is probable that, if it can find the means, the Islamic Republic will attack Britain directly.
In that case, the UK must act proportionately and within the law. But we must also respond to the fact that international law itself is disintegrating.
Gruesome as it was, the Iraq war of 2003 began with Bush trying to win support at the United Nations, providing (false) evidence of WMD, pulling together a genuine coalition of willing states and going in with a realistic plan.
This time Trump has done none of the above. If the Pentagon understood the risk that Iran would respond with indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets, putting global economic stability at risk, then the attack was reckless. If it did not accurately calibrate that risk, the folly was even greater.
But we are now faced with a situation where calls for negotiations and off-ramps are unlikely to be heard. Israel, once again, is under simultaneous rocket attacks from Iran and Lebanon – and even Gulf states that were trying to mollify Iran are seeing their ships and office blocks go up in flames.
We have seen, not twenty years ago, what happens when the US breaks something and then walks away. No matter how just the struggles of the Iranian youth and women are against their religious overlords – I have supported them for decades – the best thing the UK can do is help them to survive the coming collapse of the regime, and offer our expertise in stabilisation.
The liberation of the Iranian people – including the Kurdish and Balochi minorities – is a task for them alone. It is vital that, whatever the provocation, the UK continues to observe and to set norms of behaviour consistent with the rules based order, even as it is degraded.
The war demonstrates in the grimmest terms what the “multipolar world” has brought us. China, Russia and their proxies have revelled in the paralysis of the United Nations, mobilising a coalition of corrupt, autocratic regimes in the global south to declare the West and its values finished.
In their minds, the supporters of multipolarity see it as a new and better order, replacing the one where universal rights are guaranteed by a global charter. China, Russia and maybe India are accorded Great Power status alongside the US. Each has their sphere of interest where they decide what democracy and human rights mean, and where they write the history books. Europe, in this new order, either survives united, or fails divided.
But from Sudan to Yemen to Gaza and now Iran, the multipolar world is not an order but an increasing chaos. To those trying to operate normal diplomacy and alliance building, it feels like working in an anti-gravity chamber: nothing is nailed down, everything floats away from your grasp, there are no anchor points.
And though the Western alliance is fragmenting under the impact of Trump’s petulant isolationism, solidarity in the global south is also fraying.
The CRINK alliance – tying together China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – was always more of an acronym than a reality. The BRICS – which now includes Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the UAE and its current chair India – is a more formal alliance designed as a counterweight to Western power within the UN.
But neither the BRICS nor the CRINK nations have mounted a coherent response to the US/Israeli attack. China, which sent warships to shadow the US fleet as it prepared for action, will not lift a finger to save its number one client state. And neither will Putin.
Days before the US strikes began, China supplied Iran with drones and anti-aircraft missiles, and signalled it would soon supply missiles advanced enough to be able to sink a US carrier. Khamenei duly posted on X an image of the USS Gerald Ford laying at the bottom of the ocean.
But as the regime falters, Beijing loses not only its key Middle Eastern ally, and its key supplier of oil, but – worse – it loses face with a string of weaker client states across the global south.
Russia has been kicked out of the Syrian bases from which it projected power into the Mediterranean, and is about to lose a second and much more strategically important ally. Iran is not only the supplier of Shahed drones to Moscow, but it is also a vital conduit for sanctions busting and a major lever for Russian pressure on the West.
So instead of the multipolar order they promised their citizens, where China and Russia were treated with respect by a humbled America and Europe divided, Xi and Trump are discovering that multipolarity is chaos.
We are already facing a string of failed states from the Horn of Africa to Yemen. If the Iranian state now fails – with Kurds and Balochis staking their claims to autonomy and Iran splintering into local fiefdoms, both Moscow and Beijing will be forced to confront reality: the rules-based system they are trying to break, and on which global security and prosperity depends, cannot be easily replaced once shattered.
It is too soon to know whether the young, educated and secular-minded people of Iran can defeat the mass base of the Islamic Republic in a civil war; or whether a moderate wing of mullahs emerges that wants to call it quits.
The problem is that Trump does not really care. He simply wants an Iran disarmed of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology, so that his Gulf monarchic allies can get rich and the expat millionaires of Europe can sun themselves peacefully in Dubai.
The attack follows the vision laid out in Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS), published in December. America steps away from global responsibilities – both to its allies or its adversaries. It seeks control and economic dominance in the Americas; it wants Chinese military power in the Pacific contained; it wants European liberalism overthrown by the far right; it wants Ukraine forced into an unjust peace; and the Arctic both militarised and divided between the new great powers, with Europe and its pesky environmentalists shut out of it.
In short, the attack on Iran signals that America has become a gestural superpower. Move fast and break things used to be a business mantra, now it is US doctrine – with the rules-based democracies of Europe left to pick up the pieces.
That is the world we now live in, and all domestic political projects based on denying it will fail.
The most obvious consequence of the US-Iran war is that British defence spending must rise substantially and fast. Venezuela showed, and the Greenland crisis confirmed, that hard power is the only currency that matters.
I have called for Britain to rearm since before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the imperatives for doing so have now doubled. The shocking sight of what a relatively cheap ballistic missile can do is being beamed onto the smartphones of people in real time.
But the drones hitting US bases in Bahrain, and civilian suburbs in Tel Aviv, are the ones that got through the most sophisticated and expensive missile defence system in the world. The UK’s missile defence system consists of six Type 45 destroyers, whose Aster 30 missiles can hit incoming rockets at a range of 120km, plus the recently invented Dragonfire laser system.
Ballistic missile defence is highly expensive: experts calculate it costs four dollars-worth of defensive missile equipment for every one dollar of incoming missile fired. But without it, we are defenceless in the world of missile proliferation.
So one of the first things Keir Starmer should do is spell out a concrete and costed path to meeting Britain’s NATO pledge: to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence and 1.5% on related infrastructure.
The second objective should be maximum unity with our European allies. Every gestural stunt Trump stages, from Venezuela to the Greenland threat and now Iran, demonstrates the need for Europe to begin acting as a “great power” in its own right. Strategic autonomy – once a French obsession – must become the objective, and Britain needs to sink a lot of diplomatic resources into helping achieve it.
Finally, those of us with progressive politics must face down those who would, under the guise of “anti-imperialism” undermine our determination to defend ourselves. Starmer is engaged in realpolitik – refusing to criticise Trump, giving conditional access to British bases – because in a world of hard power realpolitik is obligatory.
We will see, in the coming days, the flag of the Islamic Republic – red with the blood of workers, gays, Kurds and feminists – waved alongside that of Palestine. We are seeing demonstrators carry placards with the face of Khamenei, warning us to “Choose the right side of history”. It is one thing to oppose war on religious grounds. It’s right to have doubts about facilitating US air strikes.
But the extremes of the “anti-Zionist” movement – which has now worked its way into the Green Party – are not pacifist. They support Iran, they support Hamas and they support Hezbollah. The “intifada” they want to globalise is not the struggle for social justice – it is the war of the multipolarists against law and universal rights.
It’s hard for an ordinary person to understand why the opening of a branch of Gail’s should cause it to have its windows smashed and its walls daubed with the slogan “End corporate Zionism” – but the extremes of left politics are now inhabited by people gripped with a psychosis that fuses opposition to Israel and America with rejection of our own democratic norms and values. In fact, the proximity of their ideas to those of fascists makes it hard even to label them left-wing.
The war, and the inevitable economic impact, will create new stresses within British society, even if Iran does not manage to lay a finger on us militarily. We are in a cognitive battle now, and it is vital for progressives to defend the interests and values that make this country a force for good in the world, which means rejecting, stigmatising and where necessary suppressing those who would aid Iran – which like it or not has declared the UK its enemy.
https://www.threads.com/@jamillecoy/post/DVZfjTaEXgV?xmt=AQF0Hsepc9K6TUca_gxijrW1Jm9xWLKPbK9NbkrhO1pWFm6Xun3h7V539iaD_N9D8Ab97Keu&slof=1
This is kind of nuts.
https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-retaliate-israeli-attack/story?id=130694505“There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. “And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we respond.”
Shortly after the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson backed Rubio’s new rationale, saying the consequences would have been staggering if the U.S. didn’t attack at the same time as Israel.
Rubio said the U.S. knew how Iran would respond.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone — the United States or Israel or anyone — they were going to respond, and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders,” he said. “It was automatic.”
dv said:
This is kind of nuts.
“There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. “And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we respond.”
Shortly after the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson backed Rubio’s new rationale, saying the consequences would have been staggering if the U.S. didn’t attack at the same time as Israel.
Rubio said the U.S. knew how Iran would respond.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone — the United States or Israel or anyone — they were going to respond, and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders,” he said. “It was automatic.”
is it, we thought team sports is learnt in the primary school playground, isn’t the trick to goad the person you’re trying to bully until they lash out, even better if you can get some other little guy to do the goading, and then step in and beat them down and look like the hero
seems pretty natural
dv said:
https://www.threads.com/@jamillecoy/post/DVZfjTaEXgV?xmt=AQF0Hsepc9K6TUca_gxijrW1Jm9xWLKPbK9NbkrhO1pWFm6Xun3h7V539iaD_N9D8Ab97Keu&slof=1This is kind of nuts.
https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-retaliate-israeli-attack/story?id=130694505“There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. “And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we respond.”
Shortly after the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson backed Rubio’s new rationale, saying the consequences would have been staggering if the U.S. didn’t attack at the same time as Israel.
Rubio said the U.S. knew how Iran would respond.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone — the United States or Israel or anyone — they were going to respond, and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders,” he said. “It was automatic.”
Gosh!
Michael V said:
dv said:
https://www.threads.com/@jamillecoy/post/DVZfjTaEXgV?xmt=AQF0Hsepc9K6TUca_gxijrW1Jm9xWLKPbK9NbkrhO1pWFm6Xun3h7V539iaD_N9D8Ab97Keu&slof=1This is kind of nuts.
https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-retaliate-israeli-attack/story?id=130694505“There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. “And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we respond.”
Shortly after the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson backed Rubio’s new rationale, saying the consequences would have been staggering if the U.S. didn’t attack at the same time as Israel.
Rubio said the U.S. knew how Iran would respond.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone — the United States or Israel or anyone — they were going to respond, and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders,” he said. “It was automatic.”
Gosh!
Warfare for Dummies 101
Cymek said:
Michael V said:
dv said:
https://www.threads.com/@jamillecoy/post/DVZfjTaEXgV?xmt=AQF0Hsepc9K6TUca_gxijrW1Jm9xWLKPbK9NbkrhO1pWFm6Xun3h7V539iaD_N9D8Ab97Keu&slof=1
This is kind of nuts.
https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-retaliate-israeli-attack/story?id=130694505“There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. “And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we respond.”
Shortly after the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson backed Rubio’s new rationale, saying the consequences would have been staggering if the U.S. didn’t attack at the same time as Israel.
Rubio said the U.S. knew how Iran would respond.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone — the United States or Israel or anyone — they were going to respond, and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders,” he said. “It was automatic.”
Gosh!
Warfare for Dummies 101
why did they even bother renaming defence as war
I do have sympathy for the position that if Israel was going to be trying to decapitate the regime some time soon because of historic levels of dissatisfaction within the Islamic Republic, and the US was considering bombing to pressure a deal on nuclear enrichment then they should at least coordinate with one another.
useful PSA shot
reply
wait
This is some grotesque theatre.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5ng0l35q7o
First Lady Melania Trump presided over a United Nations Security Council meeting on children and education in conflict in New York on Monday, as the US continues its military action in Iran.
Her remarks centred around the role of education for children in “advancing tolerance and world peace”.
—
décadence
it’s like apocalyptic denial
disclaimer yes we know there are legitimate for example diplomatic reasons to travel during war
sorry we missed this but alleged couple day ago
At least 10 people have been killed and more than 70 others wounded near a United States consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi after protests broke out following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli attacks. Several others were injured as security forces opened fire to scatter hundreds of pro-Iranian protesters trying to storm the consulate early on Sunday morning.
oh come on
The ambassador said Israeli intelligence indicated the school was no longer operating, and was instead being used by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Don’t believe what you hear coming out of Iran,” he said. However, he conceded “this needs to be checked”.
so which is it, dirty terrorist IRAN rushed girls back to school as a human shield for an empty facility now being used by the terrorists
or was it that horrible repressive IRAN stopped girls from getting education and they overwhelmed the piss weak authorities to make their way back to school but deserved to be bombed for taking an islamic education
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fish
Clinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30am
Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.
Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well-suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
SCIENCE said:
oh come on
The ambassador said Israeli intelligence indicated the school was no longer operating, and was instead being used by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Don’t believe what you hear coming out of Iran,” he said. However, he conceded “this needs to be checked”.
so which is it, dirty terrorist IRAN rushed girls back to school as a human shield for an empty facility now being used by the terrorists
or was it that horrible repressive IRAN stopped girls from getting education and they overwhelmed the piss weak authorities to make their way back to school but deserved to be bombed for taking an islamic education
Israel’s destroyed schools, aid facilities, etc in Gaza so obviously don’t value innocent human life
Not saying Iran does either but they can’t claim moral superiority.
Dehumanising the enemy as not having human feelings, desires, etc is part of waging war.
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fishClinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.
Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well-suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
Oh, I have a copy of Turbulence on my dining table, lent to me by an Aussie Politics lecturer. I better pull my finger out and read it now, after reading this article.
Thanks Witty, posting the good stuff again.
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fishClinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.
Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well-suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
>>Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy.<<
Donald Trump and shrewd in the same sentence. Doesn’t seem right.
buffy said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fishClinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.
Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well-suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
>>Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy.<<
Donald Trump and shrewd in the same sentence. Doesn’t seem right.
Possibly has a Grima Wormtongue whispering in is ear
Cymek said:
buffy said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fishClinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.
Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well-suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
>>Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy.<<
Donald Trump and shrewd in the same sentence. Doesn’t seem right.
Possibly has a Grima Wormtongue whispering in is ear
OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
Cymek said:
SCIENCE said:
oh come on
The ambassador said Israeli intelligence indicated the school was no longer operating, and was instead being used by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Don’t believe what you hear coming out of Iran,” he said. However, he conceded “this needs to be checked”.
so which is it, dirty terrorist IRAN rushed girls back to school as a human shield for an empty facility now being used by the terrorists
or was it that horrible repressive IRAN stopped girls from getting education and they overwhelmed the piss weak authorities to make their way back to school but deserved to be bombed for taking an islamic education
Israel’s destroyed schools, aid facilities, etc in Gaza so obviously don’t value innocent human life
Not saying Iran does either but they can’t claim moral superiority.
Dehumanising the enemy as not having human feelings, desires, etc is part of waging war.
look at least in the USSA they keep them as sex slaves and snuff film actors and school shooting target kits
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
buffy said:>>Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy.<<
Donald Trump and shrewd in the same sentence. Doesn’t seem right.
Possibly has a Grima Wormtongue whispering in is ear
OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
Perhaps all of this behaviour will create a China that becomes even more powerful and a bigger threat
They have the population to dwarf the USA militarily
“or was it that horrible repressive IRAN stopped girls from getting education and they overwhelmed the piss weak authorities to make their way back to school but deserved to be bombed for taking an islamic education”
They were probably learning Arabic numerals or some other hate symbol like 6 7.
Cymek said:
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:Possibly has a Grima Wormtongue whispering in is ear
OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
Perhaps all of this behaviour will create a China that becomes even more powerful and a bigger threat
They have the population to dwarf the USA militarily
They’ve been building up their military capacity.
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
SCIENCE said:
oh come on
The ambassador said Israeli intelligence indicated the school was no longer operating, and was instead being used by members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Don’t believe what you hear coming out of Iran,” he said. However, he conceded “this needs to be checked”.
so which is it, dirty terrorist IRAN rushed girls back to school as a human shield for an empty facility now being used by the terrorists
or was it that horrible repressive IRAN stopped girls from getting education and they overwhelmed the piss weak authorities to make their way back to school but deserved to be bombed for taking an islamic education
Israel’s destroyed schools, aid facilities, etc in Gaza so obviously don’t value innocent human life
Not saying Iran does either but they can’t claim moral superiority.
Dehumanising the enemy as not having human feelings, desires, etc is part of waging war.
look at least in the USSA they keep them as sex slaves and snuff film actors and school shooting target kits
Sometimes I do wonder if too much freedom causes problems as humans aren’t mature enough to use it responsible.
roughbarked said:
Cymek said:
SCIENCE said:OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
Perhaps all of this behaviour will create a China that becomes even more powerful and a bigger threat
They have the population to dwarf the USA militarily
They’ve been building up their military capacity.
Yes
Fair enough that Taiwan isn’t theirs to covert, that part of the Chinese revolution is history.
Who knows if over time they mellow their repressive part and become democratic
If forced into a corner though they have the ability to start World War 3
buffy said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fishClinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.
Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well-suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
>>Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy.<<
Donald Trump and shrewd in the same sentence. Doesn’t seem right.
I’m not sure that he meant that DJT was shrewd. Perhaps his puppet-masters.
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
Cymek said:
Perhaps all of this behaviour will create a China that becomes even more powerful and a bigger threat
They have the population to dwarf the USA militarily
They’ve been building up their military capacity.
Yes
Fair enough that Taiwan isn’t theirs to covert, that part of the Chinese revolution is history.
Who knows if over time they mellow their repressive part and become democratic
If forced into a corner though they have the ability to start World War 3
we still remember when CHINA giving millions of Muslims work and education and accommodation was a bad thing but suddenly when it’s Great America and Free Israel bombing the shit out of their spiritual leaders and schools and energy infrastructure it’s good shit
we mean fair play it does solve the coming over here taking all our jobs and schools and housing problem right
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
buffy said:>>Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy.<<
Donald Trump and shrewd in the same sentence. Doesn’t seem right.
Possibly has a Grima Wormtongue whispering in is ear
OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
WTF?
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
They’ve been building up their military capacity.
Yes
Fair enough that Taiwan isn’t theirs to covert, that part of the Chinese revolution is history.
Who knows if over time they mellow their repressive part and become democratic
If forced into a corner though they have the ability to start World War 3
we still remember when CHINA giving millions of Muslims work and education and accommodation was a bad thing but suddenly when it’s Great America and Free Israel bombing the shit out of their spiritual leaders and schools and energy infrastructure it’s good shit
we mean fair play it does solve the coming over here taking all our jobs and schools and housing problem right
Seriously you’re losing the plot.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
Possibly has a Grima Wormtongue whispering in is ear
OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
WTF?
you’re right, it doesn’t make sense, we don’t know why people keep sticking to the idea
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
Yes
Fair enough that Taiwan isn’t theirs to covert, that part of the Chinese revolution is history.
Who knows if over time they mellow their repressive part and become democratic
If forced into a corner though they have the ability to start World War 3
we still remember when CHINA giving millions of Muslims work and education and accommodation was a bad thing but suddenly when it’s Great America and Free Israel bombing the shit out of their spiritual leaders and schools and energy infrastructure it’s good shit
we mean fair play it does solve the coming over here taking all our jobs and schools and housing problem right
Seriously you’re losing the plot.
what, why don’t Israel just hand over genocide of the palestinians to dirty CHINA and then jews can keep their hands clean and CHINA can deserve their reputation as the rectum of the world
it’s win win win win for everyone
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense
WTF?
you’re right, it doesn’t make sense, we don’t know why people keep sticking to the idea
Who pray tell are ‘these people’?
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:Witty Rejoinder said:
WTF?
you’re right, it doesn’t make sense, we don’t know why people keep sticking to the idea
Who pray tell are ‘these people’?
they wrote that stuff
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:you’re right, it doesn’t make sense, we don’t know why people keep sticking to the idea
Who pray tell are ‘these people’?
they wrote that stuff
You’ll need to employ more hand-waving I’m afraid.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Who pray tell are ‘these people’?
they wrote that stuff
You’ll need to employ more hand-waving I’m afraid.
OK fine because we love everyone here we’re making the effort to find the stuff you already had in your reading list.
Clinton Fernandes
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:they wrote that stuff
You’ll need to employ more hand-waving I’m afraid.
OK fine because we love everyone here we’re making the effort to find the stuff you already had in your reading list.
Clinton Fernandes
He wrote nothing of the sort.
Honestly be a champ and go back through this thread that is ostensibly about Iran and see how many times you unprompted made it about China. Seriously you have issues. Boris and Rev are both British immigrants but they don’t mention the UK in every second post. You should branch out to an obsession with locomotives or something.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
You’ll need to employ more hand-waving I’m afraid.
OK fine because we love everyone here we’re making the effort to find the stuff you already had in your reading list.
Clinton Fernandes
He wrote nothing of the sort.
Honestly be a champ and go back through this thread that is ostensibly about Iran and see how many times you unprompted made it about China. Seriously you have issues. Boris and Rev are both British immigrants but they don’t mention the UK in every second post. You should branch out to an obsession with locomotives or something.
your hero that you quoted literally made it about dirty CHINA so please carry on and tell us it’s our fault
anyway we needed to take a dump and had some time on the throne so did a quick Ctrl-F (or the handheld electronic device equivalent) just to humour you comrades
and we can say that through this thread that is ostensibly about Iran we have seen how many times we unprompted made it about dirty big bad CHINA and the answer is
anyway let’s put our differences* aside for just a moment and consider this
“We could see missiles flying outside over the airport and sirens were going off, so a lot of panic,” Mr Gruszka told 7.30. “My kids were crying, my wife was freaking out.” “Soon after we came to our hotel that night … missiles were flying everywhere,” he said. “I’ve never seen this before, so I wanted to see it … I guess we’re all a bit nervous about that, but it seems like the air defence is pretty solid here.”
WTF
so look maybe we’re just wimps and cowards and Not Real Men and whatever but taking kids and wives and whoever into a war zone aside
we’ve seen it on the internet, but we’ve never seen it before directly with our own eyes, but but we never want to see it, but but but we don’t give a fuck whether air defence is seeming solid or not, we never want to see it
sorry
*: pretty sure they’re samenesses actually but yous can go on believing what yous like
SCIENCE said:
anyway we needed to take a dump and had some time on the throne so did a quick Ctrl-F (or the handheld electronic device equivalent) just to humour you comrades
and we can say that through this thread that is ostensibly about Iran we have seen how many times we unprompted made it about dirty big bad CHINA and the answer is
0
Seems you also fail at basic arithmetic too.
Iran’s regime is vile, but what Trump and Netanyahu have done is a war crime
Geoffrey Robertson
Human rights barrister and author
March 3, 2026 — 7:30pm
In a lawless world, it may seem idle to judge the conduct of leaders like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu by international rules to which they are indifferent. But those who use their power to invade other countries commit what the judgment at Nuremberg described as the supreme war crime — that of aggression — because they bear responsibility for all the death and dismemberment that war inevitably entails, for civilians as well as soldiers.
Leaders are entitled to invade only in self-defence — the excuse proffered by the United States and Israel in Monday’s Security Council debate — or with the approval of that Council (which it withheld) or else, as in the case of Kosovo, without such approval where the right of humanitarian intervention arises.
Trump is not a humanitarian, and neither aggressor has sought to defend itself on this ground. But might it have been open to some more respectable “coalition of the willing” to do so?
It is necessary first to dispose of the pretence of “pre-emptive self-defence”, that perversion of international law invented by the Bush administration to justify its attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 and used by Vladimir Putin to justify his invasion of Ukraine. It was used by both Israel and the US in defence of their attack on Iran.
Iran’s drones gave Russia a deadly boost in Ukraine. Now they are blitzing the Gulf
But it is not part of international law, whereby, on long-standing authority, self-defence can only be used against a threat that is imminent, or at least reasonably likely. With many of its military leaders and nuclear scientists dead, and its facilities at Fordow bombed, Iran posed no immediate threat to Israel, much less America.
The full-blooded attack on Saturday, together with the targeted assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, was a war crime that could have no justification in self-defence. It came just weeks after the Islamic Republic had, under secrecy imposed by an internet blackout, murdered at least 15,000 (probably twice as many) of its own peacefully protesting citizens and mutilated many others by shooting them in the eye. This appallingly cruel state response was ordered by Ali Larijani, the head of the National Security Council. It was approved by the late supreme leader and incited by the chief justice.
It came after government newspapers had demanded a return to “the spirit of 1988”, when Iran commissioned the worst crime against humanity since the Nazis by murdering thousands of political prisoners. This atrocity was covered by lies to the UN and by the prohibition of mourning at the mass graves where victims throughout the country were buried.
I happened to conduct the first inquiry into those events at the behest of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran, interviewing survivors and prison witnesses who reported how thousands of inmates were hanged without trial — six at a time — from gallows erected in Evin Prison and other jails. I assessed the crime as the worst commissioned against prisoners since the death marches at the end of the war against Japan.
My findings were endorsed by inquiries by Amnesty International and, last year, by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Iran. Many of the perpetrators were promoted and are still alive. The late supreme leader was president at the time, and one notorious tribunal judge, Ebrahim Raisi, became president before he was killed in a helicopter accident on May 19, 2024.
Most of the murders and tortures would be available for prosecution by a new government of Iran. And that, of course, is the problem Trump overlooked in his naive demand that the Iranian people “take back their country”. They do not have the power or the firepower to do this — all guns are in the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, who are unlikely to relinquish them.
There is no organised opposition. Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, is an absurd candidate to lead them, as his father was an infamous torturer through SAVAK, his secret police force. Maryam Rajavi, who heads the National Council of Resistance, is a favourite of the Iranian diaspora, but her local support is untested. So what happens next, after four weeks in which Trump promises to blast and bomb this vile theocracy?
The UN is responsible for allowing Iran to get away with the mass murder of its own people, and this would be a good time for it to act under Chapter VII of its own charter and set up an international court to investigate and indict government officials who carried out the prison massacres of 1988, as well as those who ordered the killing of peaceful protesters in the past two months. There can be no peace without justice, whatever happens to any future government.
Otherwise, no good can come of this war, as death and destruction descend from the skies — the first victims being 175 people, predominantly children, whose school was unaccountably bombed in its opening hours.
Trump, at least, can never now receive the Nobel Peace Prize which his vainglorious presidency so desires. He cannot expect to lead America’s allies — including Australia. If America itself cannot stop him and this war, without the consent of Congress and in breach of the US Constitution, then it is time to work towards a new rules-based order that excludes a UN Security Council veto, currently abused by Russia, the US and China (which may shortly invade Taiwan).
These warmongering powers should have no say over a set of rules that should instead reflect the values of decent democracies.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/iran-s-regime-is-vile-but-what-trump-and-netanyahu-have-done-is-a-war-crime-20260303-p5o70o.html
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
anyway we needed to take a dump and had some time on the throne so did a quick Ctrl-F (or the handheld electronic device equivalent) just to humour you comrades
and we can say that through this thread that is ostensibly about Iran we have seen how many times we unprompted made it about dirty big bad CHINA and the answer is
0
Seems you also fail at basic arithmetic too.
we did our bit now yous show us the evidence
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fishClinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next…
snip
…strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
US mentioned 35 times
Iran mentioned 16 times
China mentioned 8 times
Oil mentioned 20 times
Trump mentioned 8 times
Xi mentioned 1 time
The accusation: “you unprompted made it about China”
The evidence: “OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense”
I rest my case.
wait
military assets and troops stationed in South Korea on the Korean Peninsula could also be deployed to the Middle East. Experts believe that air defense assets of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), such as Patriot and THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems, as well as surveillance and reconnaissance assets like the MQ-9 ‘Reaper’ unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) permanently stationed at Gunsan Air Base in South Korea last year, could be among the assets to be relocated
Witty Rejoinder said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fish
Clinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next…
snip
…strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
US mentioned 35 times
Iran mentioned 16 times
China mentioned 8 times
Oil mentioned 20 times
Trump mentioned 8 times
Xi mentioned 1 timeThe accusation: “you unprompted made it about China”
The evidence: “OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense”
I rest my case.
sorry are you trying to emulate ChatGPT or something
is there meaning in words, or is it just about frequencies
the article is literally about CHINA, like all the other articles about modern warfare being about putting CHINA in its place
In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States. Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela. In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
the rest of the article is giving supporting evidence and thinking about how it’s all about CHINA and how to put CHINA in its place
if you don’t want us to read the articles you post then please say so but this isn’t CHINA and we aren’t 深度求索 so will probably still ignore your directives
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fish
Clinton Fernandes
Academic and former intelligence officer
Updated March 3, 2026 — 12:32pm,first published 11:30amBehind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next…
snip
…strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/trump-s-attacks-are-not-about-iran-he-s-after-a-much-bigger-fish-20260303-p5o6ws.html
US mentioned 35 times
Iran mentioned 16 times
China mentioned 8 times
Oil mentioned 20 times
Trump mentioned 8 times
Xi mentioned 1 timeThe accusation: “you unprompted made it about China”
The evidence: “OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense”
I rest my case.
sorry are you trying to emulate ChatGPT or something
is there meaning in words, or is it just about frequencies
the article is literally about CHINA, like all the other articles about modern warfare being about putting CHINA in its place
In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States. Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela. In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
the rest of the article is giving supporting evidence and thinking about how it’s all about CHINA and how to put CHINA in its place
if you don’t want us to read the articles you post then please say so but this isn’t CHINA and we aren’t 深度求索 so will probably still ignore your directives
The article is about the larger question of very simplistic mercantilist Trumpism ambitions to control the oil market and the continuance of the international system that despite Trump’s best efforts to destroy is still controlled by the US. It’s just as much about Russia as it is China if you want to examine the actual implications of what the writer says are Trump’s aims.
And you seem to be blindly assuming that China is winning with your sainted ‘international rules based order’. I admit it’s never mentioned in the ‘People’s Daily’ but trillion dollar trade surpluses matter little when your domestic consumption is anaemic, your best and most profitable companies are cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom, you’re got a property crisis that’s been festering for almost a decade, you’ve got 20% youth unemployment and to top it all off you’ve got rapidly rising government debt at levels of a first world nation when you’ve got a third world level of taxation.
And then we have Xi, China’s worst leader in a generation, decapitating rivals, arrogantly accumulating power for himself in a way that would make Mao blush, putting aside the best interests of his nation and its people because he thinks might is right.
If this is China winning I’d hate you see it losing.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:Cymek said:
Yes
Fair enough that Taiwan isn’t theirs to covert, that part of the Chinese revolution is history.
Who knows if over time they mellow their repressive part and become democratic
If forced into a corner though they have the ability to start World War 3
we still remember when CHINA giving millions of Muslims work and education and accommodation was a bad thing but suddenly when it’s Great America and Free Israel bombing the shit out of their spiritual leaders and schools and energy infrastructure it’s good shit
we mean fair play it does solve the coming over here taking all our jobs and schools and housing problem right
Seriously you’re losing the plot.
Maybe, or just maybe he talks in difficult to decipher language and the occasion riddle.
Michael V said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:we still remember when CHINA giving millions of Muslims work and education and accommodation was a bad thing but suddenly when it’s Great America and Free Israel bombing the shit out of their spiritual leaders and schools and energy infrastructure it’s good shit
we mean fair play it does solve the coming over here taking all our jobs and schools and housing problem right
Seriously you’re losing the plot.
Maybe, or just maybe he talks in difficult to decipher language and the occasion riddle.
I think he hopes it’s endearing.
Witty Rejoinder said:
Michael V said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Seriously you’re losing the plot.
Maybe, or just maybe he talks in difficult to decipher language and the occasion riddle.
I think he hopes it’s endearing.
It’s not.
I’m a person who likes clear, concise communication. I know I fail most times, but I try. I really do.
I work hard on trying to understand SCIENCE’s posts, because has has much to add; he is so seriously bright. But I really wish he’d make an effort to communicate in simple language.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
US mentioned 35 times
Iran mentioned 16 times
China mentioned 8 times
Oil mentioned 20 times
Trump mentioned 8 times
Xi mentioned 1 timeThe accusation: “you unprompted made it about China”
The evidence: “OK so it’s back to “the rules based international order is wrong and international law is bad if it benefits CHINA” makes sense”
I rest my case.
sorry are you trying to emulate ChatGPT or something
is there meaning in words, or is it just about frequencies
the article is literally about CHINA, like all the other articles about modern warfare being about putting CHINA in its place
In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States. Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela. In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
the rest of the article is giving supporting evidence and thinking about how it’s all about CHINA and how to put CHINA in its place
if you don’t want us to read the articles you post then please say so but this isn’t CHINA and we aren’t 深度求索 so will probably still ignore your directives
The article is about the larger question of very simplistic mercantilist Trumpism ambitions to control the oil market and the continuance of the international system that despite Trump’s best efforts to destroy is still controlled by the US. It’s just as much about Russia as it is China if you want to examine the actual implications of what the writer says are Trump’s aims.
And you seem to be blindly assuming that China is winning with your sainted ‘international rules based order’. I admit it’s never mentioned in the ‘People’s Daily’ but trillion dollar trade surpluses matter little when your domestic consumption is anaemic, your best and most profitable companies are cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom, you’re got a property crisis that’s been festering for almost a decade, you’ve got 20% youth unemployment and to top it all off you’ve got rapidly rising government debt at levels of a first world nation when you’ve got a third world level of taxation.
And then we have Xi, China’s worst leader in a generation, decapitating rivals, arrogantly accumulating power for himself in a way that would make Mao blush, putting aside the best interests of his nation and its people because he thinks might is right.
If this is China winning I’d hate you see it losing.
sure so let’s say the USSA somehow defibrillates itself and their next supreme leader is democratic or not fascist or whatever, we’ll be happy to see yous celebrating how they’ve moved on to the business of how they could improve their little shithole country and the rest of the world instead of responding to CHINA provocations, we’ll even celebrate with yous
we’re not assuming winners and losers we’re simply assuming the understanding that if X is winning under the rules and Y is losing under the rules then X will happily claim that the rules are fair so people should follow them and Y will unhappily claim that the rules are unfair so they don’t need to follow them
we also don’t give a fuck about trade surpluses (as you say that’s a Trump Fascism thought bubble) we care about the ability to do things that fix the fucking up of the planet we’re living on, which right now seems to be concentrated in a country that actually looks like it’s fixing its fucked up corner of the planet we’re living on
we don’t give a fuck about domestic consumption in the same way we’re quite happy to save our own incomes and keep old slightly worn tools operating at 80% capacity instead of replacing them with planned obsolescent shit that fucks up the planet we’re living on and work at 100% capacity for 1 year then 2% capacity the next
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
guess it looks the same whether they’re winning or losing so we’ll agree with yous, we prefer to see everyone winning
Michael V said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
we still remember when CHINA giving millions of Muslims work and education and accommodation was a bad thing but suddenly when it’s Great America and Free Israel bombing the shit out of their spiritual leaders and schools and energy infrastructure it’s good shit
we mean fair play it does solve the coming over here taking all our jobs and schools and housing problem right
Seriously you’re losing the plot.
Maybe, or just maybe he talks in difficult to decipher language and the occasion riddle.
nah we just post from the hip, if we see a nice pun we’ll laugh
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
sorry are you trying to emulate ChatGPT or something
is there meaning in words, or is it just about frequencies
the article is literally about CHINA, like all the other articles about modern warfare being about putting CHINA in its place
In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States. Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela. In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
the rest of the article is giving supporting evidence and thinking about how it’s all about CHINA and how to put CHINA in its place
if you don’t want us to read the articles you post then please say so but this isn’t CHINA and we aren’t 深度求索 so will probably still ignore your directives
The article is about the larger question of very simplistic mercantilist Trumpism ambitions to control the oil market and the continuance of the international system that despite Trump’s best efforts to destroy is still controlled by the US. It’s just as much about Russia as it is China if you want to examine the actual implications of what the writer says are Trump’s aims.
And you seem to be blindly assuming that China is winning with your sainted ‘international rules based order’. I admit it’s never mentioned in the ‘People’s Daily’ but trillion dollar trade surpluses matter little when your domestic consumption is anaemic, your best and most profitable companies are cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom, you’re got a property crisis that’s been festering for almost a decade, you’ve got 20% youth unemployment and to top it all off you’ve got rapidly rising government debt at levels of a first world nation when you’ve got a third world level of taxation.
And then we have Xi, China’s worst leader in a generation, decapitating rivals, arrogantly accumulating power for himself in a way that would make Mao blush, putting aside the best interests of his nation and its people because he thinks might is right.
If this is China winning I’d hate you see it losing.
sure so let’s say the USSA somehow defibrillates itself and their next supreme leader is democratic or not fascist or whatever, we’ll be happy to see yous celebrating how they’ve moved on to the business of how they could improve their little shithole country and the rest of the world instead of responding to CHINA provocations, we’ll even celebrate with yous
we’re not assuming winners and losers we’re simply assuming the understanding that if X is winning under the rules and Y is losing under the rules then X will happily claim that the rules are fair so people should follow them and Y will unhappily claim that the rules are unfair so they don’t need to follow them
we also don’t give a fuck about trade surpluses (as you say that’s a Trump Fascism thought bubble) we care about the ability to do things that fix the fucking up of the planet we’re living on, which right now seems to be concentrated in a country that actually looks like it’s fixing its fucked up corner of the planet we’re living on
we don’t give a fuck about domestic consumption in the same way we’re quite happy to save our own incomes and keep old slightly worn tools operating at 80% capacity instead of replacing them with planned obsolescent shit that fucks up the planet we’re living on and work at 100% capacity for 1 year then 2% capacity the next
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
guess it looks the same whether they’re winning or losing so we’ll agree with yous, we prefer to see everyone winning
You really should do a bit of reading on economics because on the one hand you use it to support your arguments then happily mock it when it doesn’t.
Michael V said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Michael V said:
Maybe, or just maybe he talks in difficult to decipher language and the occasion riddle.
I think he hopes it’s endearing.
It’s not.
I’m a person who likes clear, concise communication. I know I fail most times, but I try. I really do.
I work hard on trying to understand SCIENCE’s posts, because has has much to add; he is so seriously bright. But I really wish he’d make an effort to communicate in simple language.
sorry we just aren’t big fans of prose
we apologise for the difficult read but disagree that we add much, it’s all stuff people here can work out anyway, we’re just short circuiting to the defibrillation shock part
happy to let the screenshots and image pastes do most of the talking to keep it simple, of course
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
The article is about the larger question of very simplistic mercantilist Trumpism ambitions to control the oil market and the continuance of the international system that despite Trump’s best efforts to destroy is still controlled by the US. It’s just as much about Russia as it is China if you want to examine the actual implications of what the writer says are Trump’s aims.
And you seem to be blindly assuming that China is winning with your sainted ‘international rules based order’. I admit it’s never mentioned in the ‘People’s Daily’ but trillion dollar trade surpluses matter little when your domestic consumption is anaemic, your best and most profitable companies are cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom, you’re got a property crisis that’s been festering for almost a decade, you’ve got 20% youth unemployment and to top it all off you’ve got rapidly rising government debt at levels of a first world nation when you’ve got a third world level of taxation.
And then we have Xi, China’s worst leader in a generation, decapitating rivals, arrogantly accumulating power for himself in a way that would make Mao blush, putting aside the best interests of his nation and its people because he thinks might is right.
If this is China winning I’d hate you see it losing.
sure so let’s say the USSA somehow defibrillates itself and their next supreme leader is democratic or not fascist or whatever, we’ll be happy to see yous celebrating how they’ve moved on to the business of how they could improve their little shithole country and the rest of the world instead of responding to CHINA provocations, we’ll even celebrate with yous
we’re not assuming winners and losers we’re simply assuming the understanding that if X is winning under the rules and Y is losing under the rules then X will happily claim that the rules are fair so people should follow them and Y will unhappily claim that the rules are unfair so they don’t need to follow them
we also don’t give a fuck about trade surpluses (as you say that’s a Trump Fascism thought bubble) we care about the ability to do things that fix the fucking up of the planet we’re living on, which right now seems to be concentrated in a country that actually looks like it’s fixing its fucked up corner of the planet we’re living on
we don’t give a fuck about domestic consumption in the same way we’re quite happy to save our own incomes and keep old slightly worn tools operating at 80% capacity instead of replacing them with planned obsolescent shit that fucks up the planet we’re living on and work at 100% capacity for 1 year then 2% capacity the next
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
guess it looks the same whether they’re winning or losing so we’ll agree with yous, we prefer to see everyone winning
You really should do a bit of reading on economics because on the one hand you use it to support your arguments then happily mock it when it doesn’t.
sure, please point us to which part doesn’t, we spent the 2000s reading about baseload power and it was pretty much the same
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
sure so let’s say the USSA somehow defibrillates itself and their next supreme leader is democratic or not fascist or whatever, we’ll be happy to see yous celebrating how they’ve moved on to the business of how they could improve their little shithole country and the rest of the world instead of responding to CHINA provocations, we’ll even celebrate with yous
we’re not assuming winners and losers we’re simply assuming the understanding that if X is winning under the rules and Y is losing under the rules then X will happily claim that the rules are fair so people should follow them and Y will unhappily claim that the rules are unfair so they don’t need to follow them
we also don’t give a fuck about trade surpluses (as you say that’s a Trump Fascism thought bubble) we care about the ability to do things that fix the fucking up of the planet we’re living on, which right now seems to be concentrated in a country that actually looks like it’s fixing its fucked up corner of the planet we’re living on
we don’t give a fuck about domestic consumption in the same way we’re quite happy to save our own incomes and keep old slightly worn tools operating at 80% capacity instead of replacing them with planned obsolescent shit that fucks up the planet we’re living on and work at 100% capacity for 1 year then 2% capacity the next
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
guess it looks the same whether they’re winning or losing so we’ll agree with yous, we prefer to see everyone winning
You really should do a bit of reading on economics because on the one hand you use it to support your arguments then happily mock it when it doesn’t.
sure, please point us to which part doesn’t, we spent the 2000s reading about baseload power and it was pretty much the same
Oooops.
SCIENCE said:
sure, please point us to which part doesn’t, we spent the 2000s reading about baseload power and it was pretty much the same
Sure:
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
is all grade A bullshit. Try harder.
SCIENCE said:
Michael V said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
I think he hopes it’s endearing.
It’s not.
I’m a person who likes clear, concise communication. I know I fail most times, but I try. I really do.
I work hard on trying to understand SCIENCE’s posts, because has has much to add; he is so seriously bright. But I really wish he’d make an effort to communicate in simple language.
sorry we just aren’t big fans of prose
we apologise for the difficult read but disagree that we add much, it’s all stuff people here can work out anyway, we’re just short circuiting to the defibrillation shock part
happy to let the screenshots and image pastes do most of the talking to keep it simple, of course
I think your “team sports” notion is a serious contribution to understanding politics and people. I mean really, really serious. I have never come across the notion elsewhere. I suspect that it’s correct. It’s be nice if you simply said “here is another example of the team sports notion”. It’d be nice if others here could put up counter-examples.
Perhaps with our assistance and critical input, you could publish the notion in an appropriate academic journal, so it has wider critical audience and can be tested by others. People not in our little clique.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
And you seem to be blindly assuming that China is winning with your sainted ‘international rules based order’. I admit it’s never mentioned in the ‘People’s Daily’ but trillion dollar trade surpluses matter little when your domestic consumption is anaemic, your best and most profitable companies are cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom, you’re got a property crisis that’s been festering for almost a decade, you’ve got 20% youth unemployment and to top it all off you’ve got rapidly rising government debt at levels of a first world nation when you’ve got a third world level of taxation.
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
You really should do a bit of reading on economics because on the one hand you use it to support your arguments then happily mock it when it doesn’t.
sure, please point us to which part doesn’t, we spent the 2000s reading about baseload power and it was pretty much the same
Sure:
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
is all grade A bullshit. Try harder.
yeah all right we’ll take it at face value, it’s as BS as what it’s a response to
we apologise for comparing yous to ChatGPT because you’re welcome to argue that we’re simply recycling the talking points used to justify these losing processes when others use them to lose (¿unless when others do them they’re actually winning?)
profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is capitalism though
lots of housing available and lots of people needing housing are two closely connected matters though
education is a way to turn time into skills though
we really don’t have yousr close access to internal government figures though
we actually don’t care what a WinXi is though
one thing we could try harder to collect the data but we have other shit to do at the moment, maybe next summer
Michael V said:
SCIENCE said:
Michael V said:
It’s not.
I’m a person who likes clear, concise communication. I know I fail most times, but I try. I really do.
I work hard on trying to understand SCIENCE’s posts, because has has much to add; he is so seriously bright. But I really wish he’d make an effort to communicate in simple language.
sorry we just aren’t big fans of prose
we apologise for the difficult read but disagree that we add much, it’s all stuff people here can work out anyway, we’re just short circuiting to the defibrillation shock part
happy to let the screenshots and image pastes do most of the talking to keep it simple, of course
I think your “team sports” notion is a serious contribution to understanding politics and people. I mean really, really serious. I have never come across the notion elsewhere. I suspect that it’s correct. It’s be nice if you simply said “here is another example of the team sports notion”. It’d be nice if others here could put up counter-examples.
Perhaps with our assistance and critical input, you could publish the notion in an appropriate academic journal, so it has wider critical audience and can be tested by others. People not in our little clique.
honestly these aren’t new ideas, we’re just reminding people of what they already know, and we can’t even take credit for it
(sure we may have independently come to that conclusion, but it does pop up here and there, we get frequent reminders in our browsing)
here’s an example of one fella who goes on a bit too long about it
as you can see hints of in the captures they also talk about how modern adult society is so often just adolescent culture they never grew out of, it’s all about status, and social media fuels populism through these mechanisms
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
sure, please point us to which part doesn’t, we spent the 2000s reading about baseload power and it was pretty much the same
Sure:
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
is all grade A bullshit. Try harder.
yeah all right we’ll take it at face value, it’s as BS as what it’s a response to
we apologise for comparing yous to ChatGPT because you’re welcome to argue that we’re simply recycling the talking points used to justify these losing processes when others use them to lose (¿unless when others do them they’re actually winning?)
profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is capitalism though
lots of housing available and lots of people needing housing are two closely connected matters though
education is a way to turn time into skills though
we really don’t have yousr close access to internal government figures though
we actually don’t care what a WinXi is thoughone thing we could try harder to collect the data but we have other shit to do at the moment, maybe next summer
Your feigned ignorance about these points, ‘cos seriously you couldn’t possibly be that stupid, makes any ongoing discussion with you, about everything, a waste of my time.
Witty Rejoinder said:
SCIENCE said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Sure:
don’t presume to tell us that profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is anything other than capitalism
so a property crisis with lots of housing available is bad but a housing crisis with lots of people needing housing is good
sounds like providing more education would be a good thing for the youth then
sorry unlike yous we don’t have access to CHINA’s economic figures so we leave you to negotiate that one with your handlers
we also don’t give a damn about WinXi or whoever it is, their machinations are irrelevant to actually building stuff and they’r‘n’t going to live forever
is all grade A bullshit. Try harder.
yeah all right we’ll take it at face value, it’s as BS as what it’s a response to
we apologise for comparing yous to ChatGPT because you’re welcome to argue that we’re simply recycling the talking points used to justify these losing processes when others use them to lose (¿unless when others do them they’re actually winning?)
profitable companies cannibalising each other in a race to the bottom is capitalism though
lots of housing available and lots of people needing housing are two closely connected matters though
education is a way to turn time into skills though
we really don’t have yousr close access to internal government figures though
we actually don’t care what a WinXi is thoughone thing we could try harder to collect the data but we have other shit to do at the moment, maybe next summer
Your feigned ignorance about these points, ‘cos seriously you couldn’t possibly be that stupid, makes any ongoing discussion with you, about everything, a waste of my time.
shrug you decided that when everyone was ignorant about SARS-CoV-2 and yous thought we were stupid about that too
sorry to waste yousr time
please give the correct interpretation when you’re feeling more generous
wait why do they need to give a reason
to start a fight
Sorry who
Firuzeh Seraj said she was afraid to take her 10-year-old daughter for dialysis treatment after a hospital in the capital was struck. “World, do you see? They are killing us. Hear our voice,” she said through tears from Tehran.
is “they” ¿