https://theconversation.com/in-a-ruptured-world-order-heres-how-australia-can-forge-new-middle-power-partnerships-276367
In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
dv said:
https://theconversation.com/in-a-ruptured-world-order-heres-how-australia-can-forge-new-middle-power-partnerships-276367In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
Looks at time posted.
That obviously takes some reading.
Maybe have a look tomorrow.
The Rev Dodgson said:
dv said:
https://theconversation.com/in-a-ruptured-world-order-heres-how-australia-can-forge-new-middle-power-partnerships-276367In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
Looks at time posted.
That obviously takes some reading.
Maybe have a look tomorrow.
My mistake. I thought I was in view by time.
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
SCIENCE said:
alleged
Although there were sufficient lifeboats for the entire ship’s complement, including the Italian prisoners, heavy listing prevented half from being launched until the vessel had settled. The prisoners were abandoned in the locked cargo holds as the ship sank, but most managed to escape by breaking down hatches or climbing up ventilation shafts. Several were shot when a group of prisoners rushed a lifeboat, and a large number were bayoneted to death to prevent their boarding of one of the few lifeboats available. The Polish guards were armed with rifles with fixed bayonets; however, they were not loaded and the guards carried no ammunition. Witnesses indicate that few of the prisoners were shot. Instead, most of the casualties were bayoneted.
After surfacing and picking up survivors, who were accommodated on the foredeck, U-156 headed on the surface under Red Cross banners to rendezvous with Vichy French ships and transfer the survivors. En route, the U-boat was spotted by a B-24 Liberator bomber of the United States Army Air Forces. The aircrew, having reported the U-boat’s location, declared intentions, and the presence of survivors, were then ordered to attack the sub. The B-24 killed dozens of Laconia’s survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast into the sea the remaining survivors that she had rescued and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
Rescue operations were continued by other vessels. Another U-boat, U-506, was also attacked by U.S. aircraft and forced to dive. A total of 976 to 1,083 people were eventually rescued; however, 1,658 to 1,757 were killed, mostly Italian POWs. The event changed the general attitude of Germany’s naval personnel towards rescuing stranded Allied seamen. The commanders of the Kriegsmarine were quickly issued the Laconia Order by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, which specifically forbade any such attempt and ushered in unrestricted submarine warfare for the remainder of the war.
The B-24 pilots mistakenly reported they had sunk U-156, and were awarded medals for bravery. Neither the U.S. pilots nor their commander were punished or investigated, and the matter was quietly forgotten by the U.S. military. During the later Nuremberg trials, a prosecutor attempted to cite the Laconia Order as proof of war crimes by Dönitz and his submariners. The ploy backfired, causing much embarrassment to the United States after the incident’s full report had emerged to the public and the reason for the “Laconia order” was known.
Didn’t the USA try to get out of being convicted of war crimes just recently.
¿ref
don’t know though, it’s not war crimes if they liked or deserved it
wait why would they use that word “prize” does it have anything to do with this
RMS Laconia, carrying 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers, and prisoners of war, was torpedoed and sunk by U-156, a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the U-boat’s commander, Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations.
party_pants said:
Peak Warming Man said:
Kingy said:
SCIENCE said:
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
SCIENCE said:
alleged
Although there were sufficient lifeboats for the entire ship’s complement, including the Italian prisoners, heavy listing prevented half from being launched until the vessel had settled. The prisoners were abandoned in the locked cargo holds as the ship sank, but most managed to escape by breaking down hatches or climbing up ventilation shafts. Several were shot when a group of prisoners rushed a lifeboat, and a large number were bayoneted to death to prevent their boarding of one of the few lifeboats available. The Polish guards were armed with rifles with fixed bayonets; however, they were not loaded and the guards carried no ammunition. Witnesses indicate that few of the prisoners were shot. Instead, most of the casualties were bayoneted.
After surfacing and picking up survivors, who were accommodated on the foredeck, U-156 headed on the surface under Red Cross banners to rendezvous with Vichy French ships and transfer the survivors. En route, the U-boat was spotted by a B-24 Liberator bomber of the United States Army Air Forces. The aircrew, having reported the U-boat’s location, declared intentions, and the presence of survivors, were then ordered to attack the sub. The B-24 killed dozens of Laconia’s survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast into the sea the remaining survivors that she had rescued and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
Rescue operations were continued by other vessels. Another U-boat, U-506, was also attacked by U.S. aircraft and forced to dive. A total of 976 to 1,083 people were eventually rescued; however, 1,658 to 1,757 were killed, mostly Italian POWs. The event changed the general attitude of Germany’s naval personnel towards rescuing stranded Allied seamen. The commanders of the Kriegsmarine were quickly issued the Laconia Order by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, which specifically forbade any such attempt and ushered in unrestricted submarine warfare for the remainder of the war.
The B-24 pilots mistakenly reported they had sunk U-156, and were awarded medals for bravery. Neither the U.S. pilots nor their commander were punished or investigated, and the matter was quietly forgotten by the U.S. military. During the later Nuremberg trials, a prosecutor attempted to cite the Laconia Order as proof of war crimes by Dönitz and his submariners. The ploy backfired, causing much embarrassment to the United States after the incident’s full report had emerged to the public and the reason for the “Laconia order” was known.
Didn’t the USA try to get out of being convicted of war crimes just recently.
¿ref
don’t know though, it’s not war crimes if they liked or deserved it
wait why would they use that word “prize” does it have anything to do with this
RMS Laconia, carrying 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers, and prisoners of war, was torpedoed and sunk by U-156, a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the U-boat’s commander, Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations.
Evenin’ all.
It’s been a hektik few days at work.
I see that someone sank an Iranian warship with a torpedo without notification. It would have been easy to notify the sailors that they should abandon ship before impact, but no, the murderous cunts in charge of the US navy are backslapping each other over the deaths of hundreds of people.
Evil fuckers that deserve to die in agony.
The last ship sunk by a sub was the Belgrano, but it was a direct threat to the fleet, this little destroyer was thousands of miles away.
It was an act of sound and fury by a bully signifying nothing.There are ultimately no rules in warfare, except that which the participants impose upon themselves through self-restraint.
oh well at least when the turntables were kind of 120° rotated they avoided massacring the rescuers and nominated them for an award instead
wait
oh that NTATE thing alleges they just went ahead and tried to massacre them too and then got the award for that
damn
dv said:
I guess you have to know your Peanuts to get this.
JudgeMental said:
dv said:
I guess you have to know your Peanuts to get this.
or just the USSA
wait
US President Donald Trump has demanded a role in choosing Iran’s next leader, saying that the son of assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamanei would be “unacceptable” to him.
JudgeMental said:
dv said:
I guess you have to know your Peanuts to get this.
Nuts to you!
pretty sure they’ll listen
“Hezbollah must immediately cease its fire toward Israel. Israel must refrain from any ground intervention or large-scale operation on Lebanese territory,” Macron said.
SCIENCE said:
pretty sure they’ll listen
“Hezbollah must immediately cease its fire toward Israel. Israel must refrain from any ground intervention or large-scale operation on Lebanese territory,” Macron said.
I’m sure they’ll say “you’re not the president of us”.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:pretty sure they’ll listen
“Hezbollah must immediately cease its fire toward Israel. Israel must refrain from any ground intervention or large-scale operation on Lebanese territory,” Macron said.
I’m sure they’ll say “you’re not the president of us”.
Hatred will continue while the ground is fertile for it. Israel hates the arabs and the arabs want their land back.
alleged
cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
SCIENCE said:
cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
Logic and history tells us no, like the hydra, many heads and cut one off and another takes it’s place
The real worry is they fight until the bitter end including being nuked
SCIENCE said:
cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
dv said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
Hegseth is clearly a numbskull.
dv said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
Especially as he’s meant to be revered as a god
Cymek said:
dv said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
Especially as he’s meant to be revered as a god
So now that Trump has been appointed by Jesus, he and his family can now be rulers of the new world
Cymek said:
dv said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
Especially as he’s meant to be revered as a god
And/or he’s left specific instructions if he and his family are killed to launch nuclear weapons
dv said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
It’s more likely the Israelis who put a lot of effort into tracking and targeting Khamenei, as they do tend to like lopping off leaders.
Probably more for the disruptive value than serious expectation that their enemies will run out of replacements.
Cymek said:
Cymek said:
dv said:The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
Especially as he’s meant to be revered as a god
And/or he’s left specific instructions if he and his family are killed to launch nuclear weapons
Like the world cannot go along without them.
Bubblecar said:
dv said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
It’s more likely the Israelis who put a lot of effort into tracking and targeting Khamenei, as they do tend to like lopping off leaders.
Probably more for the disruptive value than serious expectation that their enemies will run out of replacements.
Netenyahu is desperate for his forty years of planning to destroy all Islamic terrorists. Doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he’s spent forty years causing more to be made.
roughbarked said:
Bubblecar said:
dv said:The thing is that Iran is not an autocracy. It is semidemocracy with an expansive theocratic layer. Anyone thinking that Iran wasn’t prepared for the death of an official who was already pushing 90 would have to be a complete numbskull so it may have been Hegseth.
The same can be said of China (replacing theocratic with nominally-communist).
There aren’t many genuine autocracies any more outside of subSaharan Africa. North Korea is probably the only one. If you took out the Kim family there would be no succession plan and the regime might well topple in the chaos.
It’s more likely the Israelis who put a lot of effort into tracking and targeting Khamenei, as they do tend to like lopping off leaders.
Probably more for the disruptive value than serious expectation that their enemies will run out of replacements.
Netenyahu is desperate for his forty years of planning to destroy all Islamic terrorists. Doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he’s spent forty years causing more to be made.
Violence and destruction breeds more violence, destruction and revenge thrown in as well
I’m not quite sure what outcome leaders thought would happen interfering in the Middle East, invasions, deposing leaders, setting them up against each other.
Stealing resources and cultural artifiacts, colonisation and so on.
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
Bubblecar said:
It’s more likely the Israelis who put a lot of effort into tracking and targeting Khamenei, as they do tend to like lopping off leaders.
Probably more for the disruptive value than serious expectation that their enemies will run out of replacements.
Netenyahu is desperate for his forty years of planning to destroy all Islamic terrorists. Doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he’s spent forty years causing more to be made.
Violence and destruction breeds more violence, destruction and revenge thrown in as well
I’m not quite sure what outcome leaders thought would happen interfering in the Middle East, invasions, deposing leaders, setting them up against each other.
Stealing resources and cultural artifiacts, colonisation and so on.
Well you know, how else can one justify one’s rightful place as the best in the world, the most good, the highest of humanity, unless one creates the worst, the most evil, the lowest, alongside¿ Would We Know Good Without Evil¿
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
Netenyahu is desperate for his forty years of planning to destroy all Islamic terrorists. Doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he’s spent forty years causing more to be made.
Violence and destruction breeds more violence, destruction and revenge thrown in as well
I’m not quite sure what outcome leaders thought would happen interfering in the Middle East, invasions, deposing leaders, setting them up against each other.
Stealing resources and cultural artifiacts, colonisation and so on.
Well you know, how else can one justify one’s rightful place as the best in the world, the most good, the highest of humanity, unless one creates the worst, the most evil, the lowest, alongside¿ Would We Know Good Without Evil¿
As there can be no Gad without a Satan.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:Cymek said:
Violence and destruction breeds more violence, destruction and revenge thrown in as well
I’m not quite sure what outcome leaders thought would happen interfering in the Middle East, invasions, deposing leaders, setting them up against each other.
Stealing resources and cultural artifiacts, colonisation and so on.
Well you know, how else can one justify one’s rightful place as the best in the world, the most good, the highest of humanity, unless one creates the worst, the most evil, the lowest, alongside¿ Would We Know Good Without Evil¿
As there can be no Gad without a Satan.
egad it should have been a god.
SCIENCE said:
cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
Tau.Neutrino said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
grovenments = governments
And some AI analysis.
Tau.Neutrino said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Witty Rejoinder said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Are they good at mathematics?
Witty Rejoinder said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Now there’s a new word.
Tau.Neutrino said:
SCIENCE said:cheers to all the geniuses who told us that authoritarian dictatorships are weak because all you have to do is cut off the head like the taliban do while protestors are out in force calling to bring down the government and the whole thing collapses like iran but democracy in great free ussa is strong and resilient so all of this will be better when kkk keels over
All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
The Soviet Union collapsed when they tried to reform the system, admitting the need for progress and permitting open criticism.
Confirming Tocqueville’s view in the 19th century:
“The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform”.
roughbarked said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Tau.Neutrino said:All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Now there’s a new word.
or it seemed so at first but now it all makes psychosense.
Tau.Neutrino said:
Witty Rejoinder said:
Tau.Neutrino said:All countries, dictatorships and authoritarian governments are different.
Could you use mathematics to work out survival/extinction statistics of entrenched authoritarian grovenments that have been strengthened by design?
Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Are they good at mathematics?
they have a good foundation in the field
dv said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Are they good at mathematics?
they have a good foundation in the field
Math Factor
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:
Witty Rejoinder said:Get the psychohistorians on to it quick smart!
Now there’s a new word.
or it seemed so at first but now it all makes psychosense.
I’ve heard the word “Psychobabble” before, though, hey what but.
Woodie said:
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:Now there’s a new word.
or it seemed so at first but now it all makes psychosense.
I’ve heard the word “Psychobabble” before, though, hey what but.
I believe I’ve actually heard and read some of it.
Woodie said:
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:Now there’s a new word.
or it seemed so at first but now it all makes psychosense.
I’ve heard the word “Psychobabble” before, though, hey what but.
It’s from the Foundation books and tv series.
Long term prediction of how humanity can survive the collapse of the galaxy spanning Empire.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-white-south-africans-are-persecuted-some-are-returning-better-life-2026-03-11/
Nature is healing as the Jaapie returns to his homeland
Cracks appear in Runit Dome amid sea level rise in Marshall Islands.
Robert Celestial stood in radioactive water wearing nothing but shorts and rubber boots.
The former United States Army truck driver was trying to drain water from a crater that would become a dump site for what he thought was debris left over from World War II.
He did not know the crater he was standing in was created by a nuclear blast.
“We were on a small island in the Pacific with 500 guys on it, and it was like Alcatraz. You couldn’t escape,” he said.
Mr Celestial had been posted to Enewetak Atoll near the northern edge of the Marshall Islands during the late 1970s nuclear clean-up.
Mission details were vague, but his orders were simple — transport “contaminated” soil to a small island and dump it into a crater.
The island was called Runit.
“We were told it was post-war debris,” he recalls.
“Years later, we found out there were 43 nuclear detonations there.”
Sixty-seven nuclear tests were carried out across Enewetak and Bikini atolls between 1946 and 1958.
More than 300 Marshallese were removed from their homeland to make way for the US nuclear program, which commenced 80 years ago this year.
Among the detonations was an 18-kiloton bomb known as Cactus.
The blast vaporised part of Runit Island and sent a mushroom cloud 6 kilometres into the sky.
Two decades later, the 10-metre-deep crater it left behind would become a dumping ground for more than 120,000 tonnes of contaminated soil and debris scraped from across the atoll.
Mr Celestial made countless trips to the crater carrying nuclear debris in the back of his dump truck.
When the work was done, the crater was sealed with an 18-inch concrete cap, forming what is now called the Runit Dome or — “The Tomb”.
But 50 years on, the dome is showing signs of deterioration.
Cracks line its outer shell, while groundwater flows beneath the structure, allowing contaminated waste to wash into the surrounding lagoon.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-15/cracks-appear-in-runit-dome-amid-sea-level-rise/106423684
oh grow up everyone knows it’s some other country’s fault
Useful idiots visit Cuba, right on time
Communism has impoverished the island. American leftists only care now because they can blame Trump.
…
“Former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was joined by radical groups like Code Pink and the Chinese Communist Party-linked People’s Forum. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) couldn’t make the trip, but she was “incredibly proud” that her activist daughter tagged along. One of the most famous attendees was a celebrity streamer best known for praising global authoritarians while playing video games.”
…
WashPost editorial: meanwhile Jeremy’s all in on the stoopid.
Now this really is news
dv said:
Now this really is news
King Charles steps to the lectern. A hush falls over the crowded chamber as Congress members and Senators, and many staffers and visitors and media people strain to hear the words of his historic address.
Charles lays some pages on the lectern, he adjusts the microphone slightly, moves the glass of water just bit. He looks up, and casts his gaze over the assembled throng.
He grasps the sides of the lectern with his hands, and says,
“Just what the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you people?”.
captain_spalding said:
dv said:
Now this really is news
King Charles steps to the lectern. A hush falls over the crowded chamber as Congress members and Senators, and many staffers and visitors and media people strain to hear the words of his historic address.
Charles lays some pages on the lectern, he adjusts the microphone slightly, moves the glass of water just bit. He looks up, and casts his gaze over the assembled throng.
He grasps the sides of the lectern with his hands, and says,
“Just what the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you people?”.
Liberalism is the only solution. Here’s how to save it.
Intellectuals on the left and right say liberalism is dead. Not so. Centrists of the world, unite!
March 24, 2026
By Adrian Wooldridge
Adrian Wooldridge’s “The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism” will be published on April 21. This op-ed was adapted from an article in UnHerd.
The signs of liberalism’s senescence are everywhere. In Britain, Keir Starmer won a historic mandate in the 2024 election, only to rapidly turn himself into the most unpopular prime minister on record. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz looks like a Starmer-in-the-making, while France’s President Emmanuel Macron is in the twilight of his presidency.
And yet the problem is deeper than bad leaders. It’s the problem of a decrepit regime — a collection of functionaries and placeholders who’ve reaped the benefits of the past 40 years of economic and moral deregulation and are now incapable of running the world they have made. Like all elites, they developed the habit of back-scratching and logrolling. And, like all elites, they soon lost touch with the people beneath them.
That explains the striking number of destructive liberal policies that have wreaked havoc across the West. San Francisco, a bastion of social liberalism, is so addled with homeless encampments and drug addicts snorting fentanyl in public that even many progressives have had enough. Sweden, once a byword for social harmony, is now known for chronic gun violence, thanks to the proliferation of immigrant gangs. The northern British cities that powered the Industrial Revolution are plagued, in their ethnic enclaves, by cousin marriage, honor punishments and grooming gangs. The response of all too many liberal intellectuals to these tragedies is to demand more of the policies that led to them in the first place.
This has provoked a growing number of intellectuals, on both right and left, to proclaim the death of liberalism. The most familiar argument explaining its demise is the Marxist one that liberalism is a ruling-class trick, and that the harsh realities of exploitation and imperialism underlie elites’ treacly words about “freedom” and “democracy.” A more interesting, and more influential, argument is being made by the New Right — many of whom call themselves “postliberals.” They argue that liberalism proved a disaster not because good ideas were badly applied, but because liberalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.
In his 2018 book, “Why Liberalism Failed,” political theorist Patrick J. Deneen wrote: “Liberalism has failed because liberalism has succeeded. As it becomes fully itself, it generates endemic pathologies more rapidly and pervasively than it is able to produce Band-aids and veils to cover them.” Liberal regimes succeeded when they were disciplined by traditional ideas about virtue and civility. But liberals’ core belief — that we are all rights-bearing individuals, answerable primarily to ourselves — inexorably destroyed the civilizational constraints that gave it strength.
The bulk of these postliberals are headquartered in the United States. A group based in the Claremont Institute in Southern California relentlessly attempts to expose the faults of the “liberal regime.” There are so many products of the Claremont Institute in the White House, the administration and Congress that they are fondly known in some circles as “Claremonsters.” Vice President JD Vance declares himself to be a postliberal. The idea has plenty of supporters in Britain, such as James Orr, a Reform Party adviser and Cambridge philosopher of religion, who propose a faith-and-flag-based conservatism as a solution to the disillusionment of modern life.
Their critique predominates at a time when the current liberal establishment is the most decadent it has ever been, and the forces of illiberalism are stronger than at any time since the 1930s. The country with the world’s second-biggest economy, China, is ruled by a Marxist dictator; the world’s biggest democracy, India, by an illiberal strongman; its most battle-tested war machine, Russia, by a man who wants to bury the liberal order; and its most important liberal power, the United States, is, at best, an uncertain friend of the liberal order that it created after World War II. Donald Trump is an instinctive rather than a cerebral politician, but almost all his instincts are illiberal, sometimes astonishingly so. He has not even bothered to pay lip service to international law in his wars of choice in Venezuela and now Iran and the wider Middle East.
Yet the postliberal influence owes much more to luck than substance. Postliberals fail to address the material problems that plague the postindustrial wastelands they decry. They have no answer to the question: What happens to populism when it is undisciplined by liberal constraints? The experience of the 1930s suggests nothing good. It is time to mount a defense of liberalism before it is too late.
Over the past 40 years, liberalism has been associated with the shrinking role of the state in both markets and morality. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair produced a widely admired bourgeois-bohemian (Bobo) synthesis by combining the Thatcherite deregulation of the economy with the 1960s deregulation of morality. The postliberal argument’s strength is its recognition that this synthesis is now producing more problems than benefits.
But the Bobo synthesis is only one possible manifestation of liberalism. You can have big-government liberalism as well as small-government liberalism, moralizing liberalism as well as permissive liberalism. All are linked by three core beliefs: that society starts with the individual rather than the collective; that truth is reached only through open debate; that power is so dangerous, it must be divided and constrained. Anything that prevents individuals from flourishing, ideas from clashing and power from being constrained, is illiberal.
During its long history, liberalism has suffered from several near-death experiences, but it has always revived by addressing new problems in new ways while staying true to its fundamental principles. The worst of these episodes occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, when liberalism risked being stamped to death by jackbooted fascism or communism.
“The liberal state is destined to perish. All the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal,” proclaimed the Italian socialist-turned-fascist Benito Mussolini. But the Allies proved him wrong by defeating the Axis powers in World War II, constructing the Iron Curtain and remaking the world according to a new collection of liberal principles. In the 1970s, the postwar regime gave way to stagflation and bureaucratic sclerosis, only to revive under the influence of the neoliberal revolution.
It’s understandable that people are angry with the liberal establishment and disillusioned with centrist promises. But the alternatives from both the right and the left are certain to be worse. During his first term, Trump catered to his billionaire friends, entrenching crony capitalism and passing big tax cuts, while providing his populist base with rhetorical puffballs. He didn’t even make significant progress with his “beautiful wall” at the border with Mexico. During his second term, with the old Republican establishment sidelined and both postliberal and illiberal thinkers in the ascendant, he is creating chaos in the Middle East, sending stock markets into a tailspin.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Reform’s economic policies are an unsustainable mixture of Thatcherism and left-wing statism. Yet the party remains steadily and comfortably atop opinion polls, though it faces the considerable challenge of sustaining its popularity until the next general election, which doesn’t have to be held until August 2029.
The radical left, whether in the U.S. or Britain, is even more impractical, compiling laundry lists of lavish spending funded by taxes on billionaires that they imagine would pay for it all. The radical left is also blind to the problems created by mass immigration, half-hearted integration and the development of parallel societies.
The only way forward is to reinvent liberalism just as thoroughly as previous generations of liberal reformers did to address new problems, while discarding established shibboleths if they happen to get in the way. Such a reinvention must start with three strategies: rethink, reposition and rearticulate.
Rethink
Today’s liberals need to break with their four-decade fixation on economic and moral deregulation. The release of millions of U.S. government investigative files regarding sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have not only exposed how many neoliberal heroes — a tech billionaire here, an illustrious economist there — have feet of clay, but also the moral hollowness of a philosophy of self-indulgence and self-gratification that lies at the heart of the Bobo culture.
Today’s liberals must also reapply the core principles of liberalism as they encounter old sins in new forms. The tech giants are amassing market dominance of a sort the world hasn’t seen since the late-19th-century robber barons, and they are using that dominance to misinform and manipulate the public. Left-wing identitarians are offending the basic principles of individualism by continuing to treat people as members of groups rather than as unique individuals, or by canceling those who hold views that violate leftist orthodoxy.
Reposition
The biggest weakness of today’s liberals is that they have become the establishment — and they have all the attendant weakness of an establishment. Radical liberals must challenge this establishment with vigor. Why have the heads of universities betrayed the sacred principle of free speech? Why does groupthink pervade nongovernmental organizations?
Every successful reformulation of the liberal creed, from the New Liberals, through the managerial capitalism of the 1940s, to the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s, has involved the sweeping away of a decadent elite and the creation of a new cadre of reformers. They must muscle aside this establishment — that is, the Davos establishment — before the populists do it for them. Liberal reformers also must be willing to forge alliances with groups that their elders have made a career out of demonizing. Certain conservatives turned out to be right about pornography and libertinism. Some socialists were right about the dangers of the overconcentration of economic power. Liberalism has a wonderful history of reviving itself through unexpected alliances.
Rearticulate
One reason liberals were so successful in the past is that they were so good at communicating. John Stuart Mill was a master of clarity. Abraham Lincoln wrote like an angel. William Gladstone held his audiences enthralled for hours. Today’s liberals have entirely lost the art. Officials sound like Soviet-era bureaucrats. Academics write for constipated referees who hold their fates in their hands.
There are two reasons for this failure: Being the establishment, liberals largely talk to each other rather than to the public; being a decadent establishment, they don’t really believe what they are saying. They parrot formulaic phrases much as Soviet bureaucrats did — to protect themselves from criticism and curry favor with the even more powerful. The simple fact of breaking with the establishment should be enough to take care of the dead-prose problem: Once people start believing what they say and start speaking to the public, they discover the language they need.
Once they’ve recovered their spirit, reformer liberals should take to the public square. Diplomats need to be willing to advance the case for freedom and religious toleration in the United Nations and other forums. Politicians need to speak out more loudly against illiberal practices such as shouting down speakers in universities or persecuting those whose criticism of Islam is treated as blasphemy.
Liberalism properly conceived is the only reasonable solution to the great problems of modernity: how to live together in a pluralist society and how to preserve social cohesion while unleashing individual talents. It is time to begin the patient but exhilarating work of renewing liberalism for a new age. Centrists of the world, unite!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/24/conservatism-progressivism-liberalism/
We Loathe 🐃 WaterGate Tailor, Calamity Jane, ☢️Ted and NewsCorpse😊 ·
Robert Brackenbury
Next time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.
For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.
After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability? Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it. Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?
That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.
Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
____
The United States propaganda machine goes hard. The enemy is not a republican or a democrat.
For all of history people knew their governments were evil. Don’t forget that it’s true today. The enemy is not the one vilified by billionaire owned media dynasties.
JudgeMental said:
We Loathe 🐃 WaterGate Tailor, Calamity Jane, ☢️Ted and NewsCorpse😊 ·
Robert BrackenburyNext time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability? Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it. Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
____
The United States propaganda machine goes hard. The enemy is not a republican or a democrat.
For all of history people knew their governments were evil. Don’t forget that it’s true today. The enemy is not the one vilified by billionaire owned media dynasties.
I remember most of that history.
roughbarked said:
JudgeMental said:
We Loathe 🐃 WaterGate Tailor, Calamity Jane, ☢️Ted and NewsCorpse😊 ·
Robert BrackenburyNext time someone says that Iran is dangerous and they need to be stopped…here’s some history to share.
1901: A British businessman secures exclusive rights to Iran’s oil. Iran gets almost nothing from its own resource.
1908: Oil is struck. Anglo-Iranian Oil Company is formed. It later becomes BP. The British Royal Navy converts from coal to oil, making Iranian petroleum a strategic military asset for the British Empire.For the next 50 years, Iran’s oil is extracted by a foreign corporation. Iran receives a fraction of the profits. Saudi Arabia negotiates a 50-50 profit split with ARAMCO. Iran asks for the same terms. Britain refuses.
1951: Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalizes Iran’s oil through a unanimous vote in parliament. Completely legal. Completely constitutional. His argument was simple: this is our oil.
Britain responds with an international blockade. No negotiation. No compromise. They want their oil back.
1953: The CIA (Operation Ajax) and MI6 (Operation Boot) overthrow Mossadegh. They bribe politicians, clerics, journalists, and military officers. They fund fake protests. They run disinformation campaigns through newspapers they secretly own. MI6 operatives kidnap and murder Iran’s chief of police and dump his body in public as a warning.
They reinstall the Shah — a monarch who serves Western oil interests. The CIA officially acknowledged its role in 2013.After the coup, BP retains a 40% stake. American oil companies including Exxon and Mobil get significant shares. Iran’s democratic government is gone. Its oil is back under foreign control.
1953-1979: The Shah rules for 26 years as a Western-backed authoritarian. His secret police, SAVAK, is trained by the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK tortures and kills political dissidents systematically. Iran becomes one of the largest purchasers of American weapons. The Shah lives in extraordinary luxury while much of the population remains poor.
During this entire period, Israel and Iran are close allies. SAVAK and Mossad share intelligence. Israel sells weapons to Iran. Nobody in the West calls Iran a “terrorist state” because the dictator is their dictator.
1979: The Iranian people overthrow the Shah in a popular revolution. This is where your list begins — as if the revolution appeared out of nowhere, motivated by nothing but religious fanaticism.
Now let’s talk about the US embassy that was attacked.
The US news likes to paint the 1979 hostage crisis as an unprovoked attack on America. The revolutionaries seized the embassy because the last time there was a democratic movement in Iran, the CIA ran the coup to crush it from that same embassy. They weren’t being paranoid. They were being historically accurate.
Britannica’s own assessment: “It is generally agreed today that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979.”
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the encyclopedia.
Now let’s ask a couple more questions.
Why are there U.S. military bases in Iraq? Because the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on claims of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false. Over a million Iraqi civilians died. No American official was ever prosecuted.
Why is there conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon? Because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years.
Why are Houthi rebels attacking ships? Because a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition bombed Yemen for years, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Over 150,000 dead. Famine. Cholera outbreaks.
Why does Iran pursue nuclear capability? Possibly because Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80-400 warheads, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, faces zero international inspections, and has never been sanctioned for it. Iran signed the NPT. Iran agreed to inspections. Iran signed the nuclear deal in 2015. The U.S. pulled out of that deal in 2018.
Every single item on your list is framed as Iranian aggression against “the West.” But none of them exist without the West’s 70-year campaign of overthrowing Iran’s democracy, installing a dictator, extracting its oil, arming its neighbors, invading the countries on its borders, and maintaining military bases throughout the region.
Now trace who benefits.
The 1953 coup was about oil. BP and American oil companies got the oil.
The Shah’s 26-year reign was about strategic positioning. The U.S. and Israel got a compliant ally on the Soviet border and in the Middle East.
The post-1979 framing of Iran as a “terrorist state” serves a specific function: it justifies permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, billions in annual arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s regional dominance.
Every “Iranian attack” on your list occurred in a country where the U.S. had no legal right to be in the first place — Iraq, Syria, Jordan. American troops are stationed across the Middle East not because those countries asked for protection from Iran, but because the U.S. positioned itself there to control the region’s resources and protect its strategic architecture.
When someone punches you for 70 years — overthrows your government, installs a dictator, trains his secret police to torture your people, extracts your oil, invades the countries on your borders, surrounds you with military bases, and sanctions your economy into the ground — and then you punch back, the question isn’t “why are you violent?”
The question is: who threw the first punch? And who’s been profiting from the fight ever since?That’s not a defense of the Iranian regime. The theocracy that replaced the Shah has its own record of brutality against its own people, especially women. But that regime exists because the CIA destroyed Iran’s democracy in 1953. The West created the conditions for the very thing it now claims to oppose.
The history continues.
HAMAS (October 7, 2023)
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, to the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the PLO. “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques
Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to prevent the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
And it didn’t stop in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled into Gaza with a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash to disperse money.
In 2015, Bezalel Smotrich, currently the finance minister in Netanyahu’s government, summed up the strategy: “The Palestinian Authority is a burden. Hamas is an asset.”
Netanyahu told journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. Having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu penned a letter to Qatar in 2018 asking the Qatari leadership to continue funding Hamas.
HEZBOLLAH (1983 Beirut bombings, kidnappings):Hezbollah was formed in 1982 — the same year Israel invaded Lebanon. It didn’t exist before the invasion. Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO headquarters there. The invasion killed approximately 20,000 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah was born as a direct resistance movement to that invasion.
The 1983 Marine barracks bombing on the commenter’s list killed 241 Americans. But why were U.S. Marines in Lebanon? Because the U.S. had intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, positioning itself as a participant in the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper. The Marines were shelling Druze and Shia positions from naval vessels before the bombing.
IRAN’S PROXY NETWORK (Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria):
Every proxy on that list operates in a country where the U.S. or its allies intervened first.
Iraq — the U.S. invaded in 2003 on false WMD claims. Iranian-backed militias formed to resist the occupation.
Syria — the CIA ran Operation Timber Sycamore, spending billions arming Syrian rebels, many of whom were jihadists. Iran backed Assad. Both sides were proxies in someone else’s war.Yemen — the Houthis fight against a Saudi-led coalition that the U.S. armed and supported. The Saudi bombing campaign created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
____
The United States propaganda machine goes hard. The enemy is not a republican or a democrat.
For all of history people knew their governments were evil. Don’t forget that it’s true today. The enemy is not the one vilified by billionaire owned media dynasties.
I remember most of that history.
isn’t that what that fire song everyone keeps posting here is about
LOL
Except, after the two oil crises of the 1970s, energy industry analysts and diplomats worldwide have spent decades war-gaming the potential impact of a Middle East meltdown. The only unexpected element to the current conflagration is that America has led the charge.
when would the good guys ever start a war c’m‘on don’t be ridiculous
sounds exactly
Iran’s announcement formalises a distinction that has largely been implicit. It identifies countries not by what they declare, but by what they continue to do. Trade, in this context, becomes a marker. So does the decision not to enforce pressure beyond a certain point. For China, this is consistent with its broader approach to external crises. It avoids direct confrontation, maintains access where possible, and adjusts its exposure in response to risk.
like what bad guys do, the worst
dv said:
In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
for this Easter all we’re
asking for is some journalists who are less credulous
SCIENCE said:
dv said:
In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
for this Easter all we’re
Toddler Eats All The Chocolate Then Asks For Some Chocolate To Eat
asking for is some journalists who are less credulous
Agent Kraznov conditioning kicks in every time someone mentions NATO.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:
dv said:
In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
for this Easter all we’re
Toddler Eats All The Chocolate Then Asks If They May Eat Chocolate
asking for is some journalists who are less credulous
Agent Kraznov conditioning kicks in every time someone mentions NATO.
sorry maybe this edit conveys the sentiment better, they’re already 70/100 steps out of NATO and here we are still talking about considering taking steps out
but you’re right, the headline is just a quote, so maybe they’re just ironically quoting the fascist
SCIENCE said:
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:
for this Easter all we’re
Toddler Eats All The Chocolate Then Asks If They May Eat Chocolate
asking for is some journalists who are less credulous
Agent Kraznov conditioning kicks in every time someone mentions NATO.
sorry maybe this edit conveys the sentiment better, they’re already 70/100 steps out of NATO and here we are still talking about considering taking steps out
but you’re right, the headline is just a quote, so maybe they’re just ironically quoting the fascist
shit falls off the fascist’s tongue every tiime he opens his gob.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:roughbarked said:
Agent Kraznov conditioning kicks in every time someone mentions NATO.
sorry maybe this edit conveys the sentiment better, they’re already 70/100 steps out of NATO and here we are still talking about considering taking steps out
but you’re right, the headline is just a quote, so maybe they’re just ironically quoting the fascist
shit falls off the fascist’s tongue every tiime he opens his gob.
It is all done for the camera. He then has to create another lie to cover the first and so on.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:dv said:
In a ‘ruptured’ world order, here’s how Australia can forge new middle‑power partnerships
for this Easter all we’re
Toddler Eats All The Chocolate Then Asks For Some Chocolate To Eat
asking for is some journalists who are less credulous
Agent Kraznov conditioning kicks in every time someone mentions NATO.
He probably has an electric shock collar that Putin zaps him with…
Excerpts only, full text at URL
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-02/trump-iran-war-actions-bringing-uk-closer-to-europe/106524174
Keir Starmer and European leaders defy Donald Trump as cost of war hits home
Their blue ties were fastened, their grey hair freshly swept across their heads, their glasses firmly in place.
Reading prepared statements in front of flags, Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer and Australia’s Anthony Albanese addressed their respective nations within an hour of each other.
—
It emerged this week that Italy — where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a close Trump ally — denied US military aircraft permission to land at an air base in Sicily.
France blocked Israeli military planes from flying through its airspace, while Spain has been one of the most vocal European opponents of the war since day one.
“It is increasingly clear that as the world continues down this volatile path, our long-term national interest requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe,” Starmer told reporters.
He said the war had highlighted the need for the UK to “go further” in realigning with Europe.
“I do think that, when it comes to defence and security, energy emissions and the economy, we need a stronger relationship with Europe.”
Trump makes no secret of Starmer frustrations
Trump has made no secret of his frustration with Starmer refusing to bend to his will.
Starmer, in return, has avoided naming the US president directly, instead talking about the importance of US-UK ties more broadly.
“Whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I’m going to act in the British national interest in the decisions that I make,” he told reporters on Wednesday, local time.
He pointed to the king’s state visit to Washington later this month as a sign of the two nations’ shared history, a relationship that has long weathered the comings and goings of prime ministers and presidents.
US withdrawal from NATO would be devastating for the security alliance. It’s also not as simple as Trump withdrawing the US alone; he needs congressional approval for it to happen.
Leaders will lobby for Trump to stick with NATO, but begging him looks unlikely.
Instead, Starmer and his European colleagues are forging ahead with their own efforts to ease the pain coming from the war.
He announced the UK will convene a meeting of 35 countries later this week to explore “all viable diplomatic and political measures” to restore access in the Strait of Hormuz.
Australia looks likely to be among them, while the US reportedly hasn’t been invited.
It’s emblematic of a globe no longer able to rely on a US president to play the role of leader of the free world.
dv said:
Excerpts only, full text at URL
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-02/trump-iran-war-actions-bringing-uk-closer-to-europe/106524174Keir Starmer and European leaders defy Donald Trump as cost of war hits home
Their blue ties were fastened, their grey hair freshly swept across their heads, their glasses firmly in place.
Reading prepared statements in front of flags, Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer and Australia’s Anthony Albanese addressed their respective nations within an hour of each other.
—
It emerged this week that Italy — where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a close Trump ally — denied US military aircraft permission to land at an air base in Sicily.France blocked Israeli military planes from flying through its airspace, while Spain has been one of the most vocal European opponents of the war since day one.
“It is increasingly clear that as the world continues down this volatile path, our long-term national interest requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe,” Starmer told reporters.
He said the war had highlighted the need for the UK to “go further” in realigning with Europe.
“I do think that, when it comes to defence and security, energy emissions and the economy, we need a stronger relationship with Europe.”
Trump makes no secret of Starmer frustrations
Trump has made no secret of his frustration with Starmer refusing to bend to his will.
Starmer, in return, has avoided naming the US president directly, instead talking about the importance of US-UK ties more broadly.
“Whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I’m going to act in the British national interest in the decisions that I make,” he told reporters on Wednesday, local time.
He pointed to the king’s state visit to Washington later this month as a sign of the two nations’ shared history, a relationship that has long weathered the comings and goings of prime ministers and presidents.
US withdrawal from NATO would be devastating for the security alliance. It’s also not as simple as Trump withdrawing the US alone; he needs congressional approval for it to happen.
Leaders will lobby for Trump to stick with NATO, but begging him looks unlikely.
Instead, Starmer and his European colleagues are forging ahead with their own efforts to ease the pain coming from the war.
He announced the UK will convene a meeting of 35 countries later this week to explore “all viable diplomatic and political measures” to restore access in the Strait of Hormuz.
Australia looks likely to be among them, while the US reportedly hasn’t been invited.
It’s emblematic of a globe no longer able to rely on a US president to play the role of leader of the free world.
It is no longer a free world at this moment in time.