There’s a lot of evangelical Christians contributing as well.
And yes, funding from within and without.
War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
- Start date
And yes, funding from within and without.
I am beyond fucking tired of people intentionally conflating "support for Israel" with "supporting Israel committing happy-time genocide".
Same level of tired with "maybe Israel has outsized and possibly illegal influence on US politics" with "that kind of sounds like what some anti-semites say, you are an anti-semite".
What I am really getting tired of is people ignoring the tri-partite elephant in the room here.
This war is between Jewish religious fundamentalists, supported by US Christian religious fundamentalists, to exterminate Muslim religious fundamentalists, in order to bring about something believed by religious fundamentalists.
It is disgusting to read people making this about all of Islam, or all of Judaism, or all of Christianity. This is happening because of fundamentalist lunatics of all these religions. Islam is not the problem. Judaism is not the problem. Christianity is not the problem. The problem is lunatic fundamentalists of all stripes.
The real question is why there is almost no pushback from the billions upon billions of self-proclaimed non-lunatic adherents to these faiths.
If you're OK with this, then you are no better. And how can any single rational entity come to any other conclusion that it's not your religion that is the problem, it is religion in general. Nothing but religion allows for this level of abject dehumanization and longing for the world to end.
If the religious would just grow the fuck up, we can get past this. Not before and not until then.
To put it another way: as an atheist, I am getting really fucking sick and tired of my blood and treasure being spent on bullshit wars over whose bearded creator is the bestest. Oh, that's not what the wars are really about? Funny thing, without that religious drive, most of these wars would not be fought at all. It takes an irrational bullshit reason to fight an irrational bullshit war.
PSA: There is only one Strait of Hormuz, and it is neither straight nor a straight.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Yeah, you're probably right. She's essentially out of it for being an asshole. Imagine THAT being the actual qualification for a Republican.
So it's, what...
Swallwell, who has no big money that I can see and is probably going to get knuckled under by the bigger spenders.
Steyer, who is throwing money at the problem and is a hilariously easy target for the right and would almost certainly lose.
Villagoroisa, who is a strong Union guy but just doesn't have the money to compete.
Mahan, who is a super-gross front for billionaires who are freaking out over having to pay a wealth tax.
At this point I fully expect them all to split the vote so badly that in a super-majority Dem state, we're going to have two Republican candidates. And as my wife says: who knows how bad that would really be -- it may even keep Trump off our backs for a year or two.
Oh, we don't. That would be super-illegal. So you set up a US-based non-profit that takes in the foreign money, and THAT entity does the donating. Did you think it would be more complicated than that? It's not. You just set up a network of PACs with names that have a lot of "Freedom" and "Patriot" in their names, and you can essentially walk into legislatures with cashier's checks, hand them out and call it "free speech".
It would be a really funny thing to say if that hasn't already happened, is happening and will continue to happen while Citizens United is the law of the land.
I understand this may be judged off-topic on multiple counts, please let me know where to go if I shouldn't do this here.
The first one was manufactured in 1955. The last one was manufactured in 1965. The newest -135 is over 60 years old. I would not have blamed that airframe for spontaneously disintegrating out of sheer desire to be put out of its misery.
If only we had a robust program to replace them, run by a company that is in no way cutting corners on safety and reliability.
After 50 years, it shouldn't be that hard to come up with one, right?
KC (cough) 46 (cough) Boeing (cough) (we're all gonna die)... why not pick a 45 year old airframe, amirite? Why do something silly like priority-order some 777s or A350s?
Sounds like there were two tankers involved. One crashed and one was able to land.
https://www.twz.com/air/kc-135-tanker-crashes-in-iraq-during-operation-epic-fury-sortie
A Democrat who doesn’t understand how credit and blame assignment work among the electorate and the importance of that in politics? The hell you say.
The way you definitely end up with more Trump is doing things that in any way shape or form bailout Trump from the consequences of his regime’s actions.
Voters will give the credit to Trump for the good you did for them, Sen. Kelly.
Do you seriously believe Trump will implement a policy proposed by Mark Kelly? The one he recently tried to impeach for the video reminding the troops of their duty to disobey?
This is just a political move. Trump will never implement it, despite being a TaX ReDuCTioN (and would help the working class, not that it matters to him), because it was proposed by Kelly*. If the Republicans in Congress do it despite Trump's objections Kelly still gets the credit (at least in the parts of US that are not glued to Fox, but they wouldn't vote for him anyway).
* and Kelly probably knows this, but proposed it anyway, basically ensuring it will almost certainly not be done
I'm not going to look for it right now, but there was an interview with Mearsheimer in the last couple of days where he said something like (paraphrased):
'Iran has an actual strategy, and it's a smart one. For the US, strategy has been replaced by a narrative'
I've been an atheist for nearly 40 years. What "converted" me? Seeing all of the televangelist scandals in the 80s, sitting down to read the Bible myself and coming to the realization that it was full of shit and the people preaching were also full of shit.
It was college that really helped me nail down my thoughts on religion: Taking some courses in philosophy was really helpful. Reading some of Dawkins' books about 10 years back was also useful.
So, I'm trying to make a summary of the first couple of weeks of war.
Have I missed something?
Good job US of A. Really good job.
- no war plan
- no war objectives beyond "bomb everything we can find"
- the strait is closed
- no plan for the inevitable oil crisis, including even surprise that this has happened at all
- No regime change because the population isn't armed, there's not a strong opposition at all and the Kurds have said "been there, done that, not doing that again"
- new tariffs for allies because why not
- ~150 US soldier wounded and ~8 dead
- the war has expanded to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein, Iraq (edit: goates pointed out correctly that I've forgotten to include Oman, Cyprus and Azerbaijan - thanks for the correction!)
- ~175 dead little girls because the US used 10+ years old plans to bomb a school
- 3000+ deaths between Lebanon and Iran
- the whole peninsula's economy is doomed
- Russia is making money
- China is collecting data and their ships are getting through
- $12b wasted on this crap
- a few airframes are gone
- you've pissed off basically ALL your allies at the same time while tanking the global markets
Have I missed something?
Good job US of A. Really good job.
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That's mere rhetoric. The point is that Iran can shut down the Persian Gulf by the mere threat of $20000 COTS speedboats with boom on them. The US is floating a $10000000000 one-off piece of machinery in the way to stop it. Again, it doesn't matter if you have better toys if the other side can just successfully Zerg-rush you with chump-change munitions. If Iran gets angry and/or desperate enough, they'll send 500 speedboats at the closest US carrier, and they'll probably succeed just by saturation. And of course, at that point we have to "turn Iran into glass", or "turn Iran into a parking garage", for having the utter audacity to fight back when they're being bombed and invaded.
I hate this timeline.
Oman, Cyprus and Azerbaijan have also been hit too.
It's times like this it's helpful to remind yourself that she laughed funny and was almost certain to start a war with Iran.
I'll never forget the literal quote of "I didn't feel like paying the high prices for eggs anymore."
Who cares about the price of everything else when you can wipe your tears away with almost free eggs?
Iran may or may not sustain missile coverage over the strait. Tehran doesn't just face military problems but widespread self-inflicted drought (the US should take better care of our own aquifers but greed is universal) and other economic issues. Taking the bait by putting boots on ground thus offering US forces as easy targets isn't necessary given air dominance, standoff weapons and 24/7 unblinking aerial and satellite surveillance.
Ground occupation's intimate personnel contact offers targets and creates LOAC and governance issues loitering expendable systems don't present. Occupation takes local responsibility from the enemy government and is more mediagenic obstacle than necessity to apply violence.
Ukraine showed the way expending UAS instead of troops in the most precise, demoralizing and costly way to Russian forces. UAS operators can aim precisely at not just vehicles but open hatches, and not just units but individual shooters. Ukraine even developed an efficient automated operator incentive system where success is rewarded with more combat assets:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1dEKmFvZQ
could that happen? I suppose anything is possible. But a CV isn't coming within several hundred miles of iran, or their speedboats. And in that gap there isn't much that is going to move without being seen. And in the worst case that somehow they get a bunch of them within 15 or 20 miles of a cv, it's just going to turn and outrun most of them or force them to give chase until they run out of gas or get wiped out by 80 different planes and helicopters.. Our leadership is a collection of morons, but the guys driving the boats are almost certainly much less so.
It seems
Turns out messing around in the Middle East isn't just a free pass for distracting from the trumpstein files it seems.
That's probably why they're deploying mines.
Recall the sinking of the Moskva. Iran definitely has missiles with the range, and while they might be unwilling to risk them for the low value targets on offer now, a carrier would not be a low value target.
Likud isn't a religious fundamentalist party. It caucuses with some hardline Orthodox parties, but Likud itself is not fundamentalist.
The part where after the last time the US killed a bunch of innocent bystanders there had been established a Pentagon office to reduce civilian casualties whose framework was along the lines of...
...but then it was scrapped by Trump, Hegseth, and Co.?
So you're saying money laundering is speech? I thought so. /s
A lot of them do it voluntarily. It's a whole thing. But my thoughts on that would fit better in another thread.
AIPAC gets its money from individual donors -- the list of their top donors leaked some time ago, and it's a lot of wealthy (and, not surprisingly, largely Jewish) Americans. Also, their largest donations go to Democrats: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/american-israel-public-affairs-cmte/summary?id=D000046963. I understand the concern about "foreign influence" and I'm sure you apply them equally to CAIR.
Someone else who is concerned about the policies of the state of Israel just tried to blow up a synagogue in Michigan. And an ISIS "sympathizer" tried to do a mass shooting at Old Dominion University's ROTC program, but got killed by one of the cadets who overwhelmed him. Guess we'll see more of this now.
Someone else who is concerned about the policies of the state of Israel just tried to blow up a synagogue in Michigan. And an ISIS "sympathizer" tried to do a mass shooting at Old Dominion University's ROTC program, but got killed by one of the cadets who overwhelmed him. Guess we'll see more of this now.
How pray tell could Iranian leadership conceal mustering them from overhead surveillance (and Israeli intel assets) then have a useful number survive the long journey to fight their way past (two so far) Carrier Strike Groups including their air wings, surface screen, submarine and satellite detection, USAF assets and the rest?
Why would speedboats be considered an act of desperation when they were built to use in martyrdom ops in the first place? It's not as if they're expected to survive success and return to (any) port.
Were a kamikaze swarm viable why was it not used early when damaging US forces would interfere with early strikes in a mediagenic manner by damaging warships?
Whose leadership did everything wrong:
https://news.usni.org/2022/05/05/warship-moskva-was-blind-to-ukrainian-missile-attack-analysis-shows
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-Burn through all the expensive interceptor missiles shooting down cheap strike drones.
-Publicly invite the Kurds to rebel after breaking multiple agreements with them in the past.
Hard disagreement on this. It’s wealth and the list for power behind this war. Trump isn’t a fundamentalist and the people around him generally aren’t. I don’t think Netanyahu is a fundamentalist.
These people want dominance, control and for any consequences do their past actions to be burnt away by the flames of war. They literally do not care about the death toll because they don’t think like humans do. They have zero empathy and have shown evidence of that many times.
This isn’t a religious war, although some of the lesser leaders want it to be. It’s a war of US carelessness and cruelty egged on by Netanyahu’s evil desires for subjugation of surrounding nations.
Religion may get some soldiers to pick up a rifle and it will galvanise an easily led population, but it won’t start a modern war.
Well, I would imagine that it's because the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group isn't parked close enough to land for it to ne in range of a speedboat.
Only an idiot would park a carrier group close enough to land so as to open itself to attack.
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That was my implied point. Those CSG don't need to sit in range of light systems. The speedboat meme is silly against anything but undefended surface vessels. Helicopter-launched Hellfires are an established solution for small boats long before they're close enough to be useful.
CNN claims from sources that Pentagon and NSC underestimated how much Iran would go after shutting down the Straits of Hormuz.
Really? Even lay people with a passing interest in geopolitics heard that this was something they would do. This is a regime which beats up teen girls for not dressing a certain way.
I hope the intel community and military intelligence were telling them this was likely to happen.
In fact the intel community said that they weren't going to get rid of the regime, even if they killed Khameni and a couple of layers of leaders, just with air strikes.
Netanyahu has tried to get several presidents to attack Iran, including Trump himself in the first term but he had advisors talking him out of it.
Finally the dimwit is now old and barely present and Netanyahu along with shit stains like Graham probably got to him as well as Rubio talking him into Venezuela, which was "easy" with no casualties and not a lot of blowback.
Really? Even lay people with a passing interest in geopolitics heard that this was something they would do. This is a regime which beats up teen girls for not dressing a certain way.
I hope the intel community and military intelligence were telling them this was likely to happen.
In fact the intel community said that they weren't going to get rid of the regime, even if they killed Khameni and a couple of layers of leaders, just with air strikes.
Netanyahu has tried to get several presidents to attack Iran, including Trump himself in the first term but he had advisors talking him out of it.
Finally the dimwit is now old and barely present and Netanyahu along with shit stains like Graham probably got to him as well as Rubio talking him into Venezuela, which was "easy" with no casualties and not a lot of blowback.
Also control doesn't work on tabletop rules where you have to park a unit there to maintain control.
As long as shipping companies, or their insurers, think the risk is high they'll just sit it out.
The oil isn't going anywhere (unless sunk). Which means the companies moving the oil get to profit from oil prices being higher when exploiting their other sources.
SA has an export terminal on the Red Sea, it has less capacity, but it can do. That means Kuwait, Iraq and UAE are bottled up. Political pressure would come form those countries. But they're also extremely wealthy with huge sovereign wealth funds. They can wait out a crisis and then slowly turn back on the flow to recover losses at higher prices.
Iran is already sanctioned and Israel and the US have been blowing up their oil infrastructure. They certainly don't give a fuck.
That CNN claim smells like admin ass covering, as they were surprised. But I doubt the military was. If they were they all need to be fired.
Its been Iran's major geopolitical lever they can pull for 50 years.
poker player surprised opponent throws in only real chip he has. news at 11.