Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group that commits warcrimws against both Yemenis and people thousands of miles away.
Here’s just one example, executing men for gayness:
“In addition to death sentences that include crucifixion and stoning, the Houthi court sentenced 23 men to prison for periods of up to 10 years. Three of them were also sentenced to public flogging”
Saudi Arabia who they’re fighting against by proxy, and who we sell lots of bombs to, and are soon going to help get nuclear technology, not so great either.
>Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group
IMO this is kind of bad framing because it suggests that they're the minority in Yemen, when in reality they basically are the government of 70-80% population of Yemen and absorbed 60+ percent of the Yemeni regular army.
They are basically at this point the de-facto Yemeni government
That's why relying on mercs (which is what both UAE and Saudi chose in Yemen) is a double edged sword. At some point the cash isn't enough of a motivator and they will just run away.
We seem to be in need of a mercenary Uber, where individual mercenaries will have their reputation and the potential customers will be able to check it.
The Houthis also explicitly allow Chinese vessels and Chinese ships have been able to traverse the red sea without issue. Which means China actually has more ability to access oil than other countries right now.
I suspect the Chinese won’t be happy with the pipeline and refinery attacks on Saudi Arabia but i also assume that there will still be plenty of Chinese bound oil for the foreseeable future.
Well at some point the problem becomes so acute that others in the world are going to have to step up and help solve it.
Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. It's an intolerable premise and if the price to be paid is global oil catastrophe it's a price well worth paying and America will force the issue as we have. You can deny this or you can accept that other actors have agency in the world and interests and they may take action that negatively affects you indirectly. You can help them, ignore them, fight against them. But we live in a world where other countries and other people will do things and you have to figure out how to best deal with it.
We have seen what happened with North Korea, but at least China and Russia can somewhat keep a lid on it. Which is the minimum they owe the rest of us since they created that problem. Iran's government is ideological in a way that westerners don't really understand (and to some extent Putin is too via his desires regarding Ukraine but the Russian system isn't too alien to our own views - they play tennis and vacation in Europe and all that stuff). Their government is simply not interested in the things that you and I are interested in.
With Iran you add in the pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iranian continued attacks coordinated in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Israel via Palestine and it's desire to continue to destabilize the region, supporting Russia's war against Ukraine, and helping Russia evade sanctions (never mind domestic repression and murder) and you've really got a problem on your hands that needs solved one way or another if we're going to go the whole peace and stability for the globe route. The primary problem right now is that the rest of the world would rather see the United States take care of this problem (and it's having a tough time but there's a lot of nuance there) then to help because if you are Europe you're somewhat on Iran's side for some god awful reason, if you are Russia, well you work with Iran, if you are the gulf powers you have no power besides your oil, and if you are China you are not going to spend any resources (nor do you have power projection capabilities). So what do we do?
You can sit here yelling until you are blue in the face that this is Trump's war, or he shouldn't have started it (ignoring history) or some nonsense about ancient colonialism (Iran itself is attempting to be a Neo colonial power) or how Israel is so bad or something but Iran's behavior in the region simply cannot continue if you value peace and stability and global trade. Yea whatever Trump isn't a force for that either I get it, but that's not a good argument to make things worse by also letting Iran do crazy shit.
China's stockpiles are dwindling, strategically that's bad for China especially if they want to invade democratic Taiwan. You still need oil to run the military, no amount of batteries are going to power jet fighters or missiles for the foreseeable future. But dwindle they will and eventually China (and others) will be forced to buy oil and it will raise prices. We're all going to have to deal with that eventuality.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine also cut off large amounts of oil and gas supplies via sanctions, and the United States clamping down on both Venezuela and Iran has further restrained oil supplies as the US has also gone after Russian shadow fleet tankers which were adding additional capacity to the market. The EU has done a little bit here too after the US led the way.
Global chokepoints are a problem. Having so much of the world (primarily Asia) rely on oil and gas from the Middle East where you've got these militant groups funding by Iran who can at a whim decide if they don't get some concession that they're going to cut off oil for everyone else is intolerable. Again, say what you want but we as a planet should not be beholden to this kind of behavior.
If we accept your premise, the current war has made us less safe, because we've had previous, stronger nuclear deals that have now been torn up in a failed attempt to replace their leader with someone more favorable to the US.
Iran probably wasn't following the JCPOA, denied inspectors access to certain sites, and you'd also have to say you 100% trust American intelligence to verify that Iran isn't building a nuclear weapon in secret and if you want to do that I've got a war to sell you in Iraq.
Separately that doesn't resolve the other issues, funding militant groups, &c.
China is the reason we don’t have 5-6 dollar gas. They literally cut their imports to prevent economic disaster. If they begin buying at regular levels we would be the ones hurting more.
No that's not the only reason. High oil prices affect their economy quite a bit, and much of their imports form what I understand come from the Middle East.
I doubt that the world will subscribe to the idiocy of the current US admin. China will just push harder for renewables while Europe and the rest of the world will try to coup with the shock but I am certain they won’t go to war with Iran because they have no reason. Eventually US will have to decide if it’s going to do anything or just live with high oil prices for long or just go back home in a British Suez fashion.
> Eventually US will have to decide if it’s going to do anything or just live with high oil prices for long or just go back home in a British Suez fashion.
This is the flaw in your thinking. It won't be the US who alone decides to live with high oil prices, it'll be everyone.
Vague promises of "pushing for renewables" is a gross mischaracterization and misunderstanding of the importance of oil and gas to the global economy. Note, I'm not anti-renewable or whatever, but chalking this up to a "US problem" is willfully ignorant.
Jews don't have an order from God to destroy Muslims...
I think with all the atrocities coming out of Israel, people have lost track of the fact that the other side is still composed of completely deranged religious maniacs that pose incredible danger to the rest of the world.
Like I already feel the whataboutism (The US is the threat!), but don't forget the long string of pure intentionally-kill-innocent-people terrorist attacks done in the name of God.
Besides the point and whataboutism, but I'm not advocating that Israel should have nuclear weapons. They do, and I'm not sure there's much we can do about it at this point. Same with North Korea. I'm opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and just because one country has one doesn't mean other countries should go and get them too.
Maybe we should have brokered some kinda deal with Iran to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon then, huh.
At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it. Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
> Maybe we should have brokered some kinda deal with Iran to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon then, huh.
Maybe we should have brokered some kind of deal with Russia to prevent them from invading Ukraine. Do you trust American intelligence 100% to verify Iran is not building a nuclear bomb? And if they weren't, why also were they funding these militant groups? What's the point? It's Neo-colonialism in the Middle East.
> At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it.
The leadership wasn't really rational in your western sense. I'm not sure where you are coming up with that. If they were rational they wouldn't be murdering their own civilians, chanting death to Israel and death to America as a national past time (no sane nation does this, or if you want to argue they do then don't get mad when Americans are burning the Koran or whatever) and funding militants. You're trying to argue from a place that assumes your values about economics and prosperity and global human rights with an entity that does not care about those values.
If they were rational as you'd like them to be they'd just not do any of the things they've been doing. Why does Iran have to get special treatment to not build a nuclear weapon? Have you thought about that? Why do we have to pay them off? Why are they special snowflakes who get to hold the world hostage less they build nuclear bombs to threaten others?
> Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
That's the fault of the rest of the world then for failing to come together to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Iran clearly has the capability to flatten every major hospital and university and desalination plant in Israel, like Israel has done in Gaza, but they don't.
It's also clear that Iran having nukes would be a strategic deterrent to Israel's ultraviolent territorial expansionism.
"Ancient" colonialism? The US and Israel are both actively seeking to expand their colonial territory.
This was an interesting piece of fiction you've written, with some very impressive mental gymnastics on display. However, it's so wrong that engaging with it would be doing you a disservice because it would make you think it's even an intellectually respectable position to have in the first place.
the reason China was using stockpiles is they want to time the gasoline price shock right to the midterm elections. The moment they stop using stockpiles and start purchasing the prices will jump
> time the gasoline price shock right to the midterm elections.
Donald Trump can end this at any time if he wants. It would have been better to not have started it, thou. Less killing of innocent people, less spending on weapons, better mental health for USA soldiers...
And why is China suddenly at fault for America's actions?
lol. The orange man is doing more damage to the USA than China could ever do short of actual war. He is destroying the US militarily, economically and politically. They emphatically support his efforts.
At some point they might prefer stability and sanity. I would bet that at this point they don't care much either way.
China is playing long, most of the ~unchanging things are in their favor and the US already proved that they're unreliable. People won't forget that soon even if Trump is gone.
Stability and sanity is not happening whether the conflicts stop in Yemen+Hormuz or not. At that point it's just going to go back to tarriff wars and new terror campaigns that the US admin will start somewhere else
More properly called Ansar Allah, supported by Iranian regime, and guilty of war crimes against everyone from fellow Yemenis to people thousands of miles away.
Women, gays and infidels are pubished by Houthi police.
The Houthi's have a Saudi backed adversary, I haven't heard about them lately in mainstream media how are they faring? I just thought they would be a tough resistance for the houthis restraining them from what they're currently doing
The problem is that "being at war" isn't really the problem, it's a symptom. A lawless and destabilized gulf region is the result of incomplete and inneffective military action, and in a darkly hilarious way is only treatable by more whack-a-mole warfare.
It wasn't a war we could win. We fought it anyway. Now we're stuck trying to lose in a tolerable way. Which requires more fighting.
At some point the balance will tip and China will take over patronage of the right selection of powers to push us out, which will disentangle western involvement (and make it their problem, of course). But at this stage there really is no hope for genuine stability.
Will this bring oil prices down in Europe? Oil tankers could still go to the mediteranian via the suez canal. This will not help asia, but I can imagine if it is too dangerous the go through bab al-mandab strait it is more lucrative to sell the crude oil to europe at a discount?
No. A cynic might think a significant part of this half-arsed Iran war was:
- make sure fuel prices increase globally
- The US economy is relatively well-shielded from the fallout by its own fossil fuel sources, local and in colonies like Venezuela.
- export more US fossil fuels, especially to Europe, at inflated prices. US insiders reap the profits.
- further kneecap European competitiveness in energy intensive sectors, steal market share. Oh well, small gift to China here too, but still a net win for the US.
I believe there were pieces of a plan. This global energy shift gambit being one of them. I don’t think there was a unified strategy with contingencies etc though (if there was it certainly wasn’t very good).
> Friedman [...] advocates a deal with Iran which would essentially allow it a secure sphere of influence in the region and an alliance with Turkey to counterbalance Iran and Israel.
The US sells oil and refined products to other countries. So a supply crunch would raise prices even there too. Everyday Americans are not getting fuel for cheap.
I have a suspicion that the caring is starting to mount, otherwise there’s no need to offer a $1.3T election bribe (which I’ll file a the other dividend / bribes that were never sent and the bridge Trump sold me)
Sure, if you make oil prices increase, US oil companies and their shareholders rake in more cash. But it's harmful for the average American because filling up the tank costs a lot more. Then that price hike spreads to everything else that relies on oil (which is pretty much everything) leading to inflation and rising interest rates (already starting to happen, the shielding you mention doesn't seem to be working, which makes sense in a relatively free-market economy). If the situation drags on, unemployment rises due to soaring costs across the board, and the economy goes to hell.
A rise in crude prices might pay off for a small country that lives almost exclusively off it (say, Saudi Arabia, in the hyphotetical case that it could keep exporting as normal) but for the US? I don't think it does. Surely, Europe is more exposed than the US and will suffer even more, but this is not a zero-sum game.
So I don't think it's an elaborate plan, it's just Trump being reckless as usual.
I wouldn't assume this administration gives a shit about inflation or rising interest rates or how the rest of the economy is doing. Do you have any reason to believe they do?
If you think so little of them, then imagine what the people who pay $5M for a meal with him can convince him to do. Or what people who pay his son-in-law/iran-negotiator 25M a year can call and ask him to do.
We have no doubt that the best people are in US government and that they have the best tools at their disposal. Around the world, we are simply trying to figure out, while munching on plenty of popcorn, how this incredible sequence of actions will play out; a sequence clearly crafted using highly complex strategic planning tools that employ the most advanced techniques from game theory, AI, and who knows what else.
That's just the media noise. Yea there were purges. But its a big leap to go from "some" to "all" the best people. Government is the largest employer in the country. The nonsense you see constantly by politicians and other leaders is a tiny fraction of what the government workforce is. This is why despite the chaos you see in the media, life hasn't changed much for the great majority of people all things considered. The government remains functional where it needs to be.
The purges haven’t reached too deep into the rank and file yet, which is why the walls are still standing. But they’ve hit the top of the pyramid hard, which is why nothing makes sense.
Someone hasn't been paying attention to the Pentagon or State Department purges, both of which would lead precisely to this type of mistake.
We had a retard in the Oval Office 2017-2021 surrounded by "the deep state" (i.e. career managers of the ultra-complex organization called "the government"), and politically constrained by Congress.
Now we have that same retard, but supported by vast purges of aforementioned managers, and politically unconstrained by the cultists and cowards (the two forms of GOP representative) in Congress.
The US is the world's must vulnerable economy to oil shocks. I mean the real economy, not the farce that the markets currently are.
The Venezuela comment is extremely weird. You know Venezuela has negligible production, right, and that it would take 100s of billions of investments, over decades, to get reasonable production that would make a difference. That's ignoring that currently there is a laughably illegitimate puppet government -- literally just Madero's government minus him, as they did the coup with the US -- that has a 100% chance of a violent overthrow in the future. Which is exactly why all of the oil companies are shrugging and saying no thanks.
Venezuela is a farce -- much like $5000 "dividend" for a government literally on the precipice of bankruptcy, as Bessent runs around, near tears, trying to convince everyone that they're the house and he's the big dog German Shepherd instead of the face of a failing empire having its last pathetic gasp, to laughter all around -- that Trump thinks gives him leverage against Canada. It is unbelievably pathetic business, like renaming a 400+ year old name on a lake like a little bitch.
There is zero scenario where this has benefitted the US, but a drunkard incompetent secdef (sorry "secwar") convinced a foolish demented rapist, who already had Israel whispering in his ear, how easy and painless this foolish debacle will be.
This was clearly a secret attempt of Trump's to be the world's best president for getting off fossil fuels and moving to renewables. The man is playing 7 dimensional chess bro!
When all is said and done it will be he, not AOC or Bernie or any "Green New Deal" folks, that will be remembered by history as the president who did more to get people off fossil fuels than any other.
He's so clever that he's probably even playing chess in a Hilbert space. The whole world envies American voters, who will receive $5,000 if they re-elect this incredible genius.
I think the "stable" in stable genius actually refers to the points of stability under transformations. Brower's fixed point theorem. Do your own research!
Trump is just accelerating the course of history. The fall of American hegemony, the humiliation of the MIC, the petrodollar, the fossil fuels, the USD as reserve currency is like speedrunning the historical events to reach the next more balanced equilibrium state
I've never seen oil prices decrease due to any regional disruption; the market is global. If the price in Alberta went up when the Straight closed, I wouldn't hold my breathe for Europe in this scenario.
>I've never seen oil prices decrease due to any regional disruption; the market is global.
oil spiked and then crashed during the gulf war & the iraq war in 03.
the gulf war probably because of western price control methods kicking in, the iraq war because of an increase in confidence that the region would produce oil after western 'securing' of oil fields allowing further volume investment from the UAE and friends.
I guess it really just depends on what the definition of 'regional disruption' is.
I wouldn’t count on safe Med passage, I think last month a drone attacked a ship in Egypt. And the channel to Suez isn’t exactly wide or out of range for Houthis.
GCC will have to talk to Iran now, there is no reasonable way out of this quagmire other than a regional accommodation with Iran. Talk about a regression but here we are.
This is part of the Houthis preventing Saudi Arabia from exporting any oil at all. So no I don’t think it’s gonna make oil lower. Higher probably. But oil is doing very weird things.
VLCCs are too large to fit through the Suez Canal. I don't know how much of Saudi export is using VLCCs versus Suezmax or smaller tankers, but I've heard that much of the Red Sea oil export is currently going through Bab al-Mandab, not that I have a source on hand.
Not really. It is very hard and expensive to get these oil well pumping again. That is why we had negative oil prices during covid. Plus, when we are talking about the Gulf states, they have extremely low production cost. The discount would be against world prices, not production cost.
It doesn't matter if in Texas wells are producing it at a penny for barrel, if the global prices are high that oil is going to be sold to Philippinos, Japanese, Italians or South Africans.
So, at the same time, it doesn't matter if some new routes open or close, it doesn't particularly favor one or the other buyer, it's still sold globally on a bid.
> Will this bring oil prices down in Europe ... This will not help Asia
This hurts Europe more than Asia.
The UK, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, and others are similarly opposed to the Houthis having conducted airstrikes on the Houthis (eg. 2025) as well as helping target them directly or indirectly.
And a large portion of global shipping is owned by Greek conglomerates - a country that is a close ally of Israel.
Most GCC states also have some form of defense agreement with the UK or France. If those turn out to be meaningless, it reduces their incentive to cut preferential deals with European states.
Additionally, this further enhances Turkiye and Pakistan's hand, as Saudi Arabia has signed defense pacts with both and Pakistan has threatened action against Iran yesterday if further incidents threaten Saudi Arabia. If they were able to dislodge the Houthis without direct European intervention, then it is a massive black stain on the EU's power projection capacity and it's claim that it should be treated as a great power. It also gives Turkiye additional leverage against the EU.
Finally, the Houthis struck the East-West Pipeline [0]. Much of the KSA's oil is in Eastern Saudi Arabia around Dhahran. Most large Asian states like China, India, Japan, and South Korea have continued operations in Iran that allowed them continued passage. European states lack access to GCC oil as a result of Perim island being controlled by the Houthis.
Yeah the EU leadership has been really shortsighted on these past decades (especially since the 10s), especially in their strategic energy and industrial sectors.
Be it the Ukranian conflict, the ME crisis, the NA wars and instabilities, etc. The EU is the one that geopolitically speaking lost the most.
Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests, I simply do not understand how they could leave foreign actors to dictate policies that affect thier own territory and enterprises without any sort of critical thought.
But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
It was cheaper, I don't think it's much more complex than that. And with fossil fuels, countries without significant local production are always dependent on someone else, with most potential suppliers being problematic in some way.
Of course we should have gone for renewable energy more forcefully, but that wouldn't have resolved the issue. That change will take time, and you can't arbitrarily accelerate it.
Nuclear is cheapest, then lignite, then hard coal, and then gas. Germany phased out the cheapest option first, now continues with the second, and is expanding the most expensive.
The obvious choice would have been to do what China and India are doing - phase out gas power first and focus on electrification. But Europe did the opposite.
Well the US benefit massively because of their investments in shale gas. Meanwhile the Europe suffers massively and they banned shale gas although they could exploit vast resources.
Sure, the environment, etc but Europe hasn't invested strategically in that, either. China has.
EU opposes the Houthis because they are a horrifying slave state that distributes children as sex slaves to their troops.
EU opposes Russia because it is a horrifying fascist dictatorship that has repeatedly invaded it's neighbors, and constantly talks about it's historical claims to EU territory.
In the NA conflicts it's harder to draw such a clear line, because the conflicts typically have about 15 sides each, but the basic algorithm you can use is generally that EU tries very hard to pick sides based on morality, not geopolitical interests.
Those can be said for other economic partners that are being used so no. That's not it, that's just rhetoric for the masses. _You'll here the same thing tomorrow, after I say the complete opposite today._
The issue was 1990s-2000s Germany argued it was in Europe's best interest to integrate Russia into the European fabric, but 1990s-2000s France+UK+Italy argued it was in Europe's best interest to integrate the Mediterranean into the European fabric.
When the UK left the EU and France+Italy were in the midst of their economic doldrums due to the Eurozone crisis, this left the hard power states within the EU comparatively weakened.
But the collapse of Minsk II and the ongoing war in the Middle East led to a cascading crisis for a unified Europe.
Minsk per the people that brokered it was just a temporary patch to prepare Ukraine for the invasion. So no. That's not it.
It's business and by now it should be clear to anyone that there's no morality involved in this space.
There's nothing wrong with Russia as energy partner, as long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot by blowing up the alternatives. South of EU had proper energy supplies from ME/NA. For example crisis in ME was mitigated by Russian energy or NA energy (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, etc).
The new hegemons like Turkey, Israel, etc came only later, yet we can't say they're Saints can we? Also to appease the US administration line a lot of green energy projects were put on hold, and were only restarted this year after the Hormuz situation.
The only real explanation is shortsightness for personal interests (but even then you'd have to have all your capitals abroad), or being a tool for foreign interests.
> Japan, and South Korea have continued operations in Iran that allowed them continued passage.
1.How do they pay Iran considering the sanctions?
2.Do you think EU shouldn't sanction Iran even though they violated NNPT and their terrible record on human rights because Iran can threaten them with a sufficient price?
> a country that is a close ally of Israel
Are they? They never sent a single weapon or soldier to help israel, they have no formal or informal mutual defense agreement. Israel buy no military equipment from Greece. You mistake mutual interest because of a common enemy - Turkey to close alliance.
1. Waivers, state owned enterprises, shell corporations, barter trades, and using their own currencies for transactions
2. I agree. I'm just being prosaic as to why European states are in the pickle they are today.
3. They are closely entwined via logistics, but Cyprus would be an even closer Israel-Cyprus ties. The reality is, the Saudi-Turkiye-Kuwait-Pakistan alliance is a direct reaction to the Israel-Greece-Cyprus-UAE-India cooperation or the now signed Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral.
Donald Trump hosted roughly 20 oil and gas executives from major companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Occidental Petroleumat his Mar-a-Lago resort on April 11, 2024.
His message to the room was essentially that giving $1 billion to his campaign was a low-cost investment that would guarantee massive financial returns for their companies
This is the ballad of the black gold
They call it Texas tea
But it's bigger than a cowboy with a lasso
It's deeper than a black hole
Create monopolies
Except they collect your fee when you pass Go
Crisis international
The government de facto
We got no control of this fiasco
Darker than the back roads
Bubble hotter than Tabasco
More than what you bargained for or asked for
The U.S. leadership has a bad habit of starting conflicts that the bulk of the population doesn't want, which leads to large political costs and resulting half-measures. Our current leadership literally ran on "no more wars." Morons.
Why does that have to be the only reason? I personally think it has nothing to do with "Hacker" news, but I understand that sentiment has been in the fringe lately with HN becoming increasingly political.
All we had to do was not bomb Iran (starting with a school full of girls). There was no benefit to the US in this war, it’s 100% for Israel. Bribery and blackmail, not democracy, are now determining world events.
The poster blaming everything "100%" on Israel tells me that they are not a person of nuance, and people who engage in rigid, black-and-white thinking often have overly simplistic views about how the world works (e.g. Jews control the world).
Correlation does not mean causation, but it hints at it.
Israel means the state of Israel in this case, very clearly. Don't draw the antisemitism card for everything. You must have heard of the boy who cried wolf, surely?
That's... a very convoluted way of looking at the world. If he stated any other rigid thought, as, "we must exterminate all mosquitos, they are 100% not needed", would you then conclude he's antisemitic too?
It’s in quotation marks because it’s a quotation. The BBC have not independently verified that the Houthis have taken control of the island, they are reporting what a government source has said.
Houthis 'take control' of Perim Island - government source
published at 09:00
Houthi rebels have "taken control" of Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to a source. Earlier, we were reporting that the group had reached the key island.
The AFP news agency also says Houthis have "taken over" Perim Island, also referred to as Mayyun, according to eyewitnesses and a local government official.
"Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it yesterday," the official tells AFP.
It's funny to see the evolution of language. Quotation marks indicated that something was a direct quote. Then people started to use them as a sarcasm indicator. Now we're to the point where people can't even recognize them as indicating a direct quote.
I'm unconvinced that this is a pattern that is distinguished by the nation being reported on. Headlines vary. Both of your example headlines might appear at different times in the outlets I read.
I think this was just a stylistic choice and that this whole thread is a weird tangent.
“40 beheaded babies” and mass/systematic rape propaganda accepted with zero verification (journalism 101) and, once debunked, zero retractions were made
Hamas-run, but not Likud-run
Condemnation of atrocities by Israel and the US that comes from Israeli and Western voices is given significantly more weight than the same claims coming from Palestinian or Arab voices. After all, the native lacks the capacity to be objective.
Israeli gov statements are taken as undeniable fact, while Palestinian (Gaza or West Bank) gov spokespeople or even Palestinian people in general are barely even platformed
Over-representation of Zionists in editorial teams of every major newspaper and news channel across all Western countries, which (naturally) led to coordinated suppression of any Palestinian voice internally and externally (started to change only relatively recently).
Those have the same implication even if it's written slightly differently. "US insists" makes it clear that "open" is a claim by the US, not an independent fact. The first one doesn't match the supposed pattern where one side's claims are stated as facts, despite the lack of quotation marks.
I don't see anything stated as fact (without quote marks) here solely on the basis of Trump having said it, and I see use of quote marks for things he has said, eg. 'Trump says Iran war will end "immediately" after US midterm elections': https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cp7r8vgl2lgt
The BBC's main sin in relation to Trump is sane-washing, treating his bizarre outbursts as if they were reasonable things for a US president to say. Eg. were he to say "I have a solid gold prostate!" they'd have an Anthony Zurcher piece entitled "Is Trump's prostate really made of gold?" with a quote from a doctor saying "while it seems unlikely and would probably be uncomfortable, having a gold prostate would be unlikely to cause any noticeable side effects as the metal is inert" and a discussion of the benefits of replacing a cancer-prone organ with a noble metal.
This is completely standard journalistic practice when reporting a quote on something that is currently contentious or unproven. For example, consider the two hypothetical headlines:
Activists decry police murder of protester
Activists decry police "murder" of protester
The first implies that the police murdering the protestor is an established fact. The second makes it clear that it is the activists who used the term "murder" rather than it being a non-contentious fact.
Both versions are fancifully direct in our era a media+police stenography, try:
Mayor denounces "radical activists" rioting and damaging city property in response to an officer-involved incident that resulted in one fatal kinetic altercation with a "loud and provocatively dressed" man.
Read McSweeney's guide to ambiguous grammar, where they lead you step by step from the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to the ultimate say-nothing sentence speed was involved in a jumping-related incident while a fox was brown, and the punchline is you can then translate "the St Louis County Police Department was involved in an officer-involved shooting after officers came under heavy gunfire" to "a police officer shot a black person"
But no, that's the language issued by police departments covering their asses. Journalists are a little bit covering their asses in making clear what is a quote and what isn't, but they're still responsible for what they choose to quote, and to be clear on whether they have verified the claims they're quoting.
Ideally, unverified claims shouldn't even be in an article. But when there _has_ been some kind of stramash, they just don't know who did what, the need to rush out an article to get clicks means they'll just quote both sides and try to give them equal prominence until they can do more verification.
oh like this article that says a child was hit by a "LAPD bullet" as though wild bullets roam the streets of LA looking for children instead of being fired from a gun by a person who made a decision.
It doesn't help when snippets are post leaving out the other context clues where things like "according to" or "anonymous source stated" or similar attribute of the quote. Just putting words between quotation marks does not lead me to believe they were quotes if there is no attribution. Otherwise, it's a Trump level "people tell me" type of "quote".
When I moved from the US to the UK, the use of quotation marks in news headlines was something that confused me. In the US, these would be "scare quote", with the quotation marks basically standing in for the words "so-called". In the UK, that is NOT their meaning. The quotation marks mean "we are not ourselves in a position to verify this, but it is the words that a source has told us". Very different meaning -- and once I got used to it, I think the UK use of language in this case is more honest and useful.
tl;dr: two countries, divided by a common language.
This is like this in most of Europe: when in "quotes", it is not the journalist, but the person who said something. For example, Obama said "Yes we can". He did not say yes we can, he said "Yes we can".
It is not about the quotes being verified or unverified. It is about something said by somebody, that you are reporting.
It’s not so much ‘we are not in a position to verify’ as the fact that the person who said the thing, and what they said, is itself newsworthy.
If you’re reporting that “Government sources say Houthis have ‘taken control’ of an island” then the fact that government sources used the words ‘taken control’ is itself interesting.
The headlines “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Zelensky”, “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Putin”, and “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Taylor Swift” all tell of vastly different news events.
It's a garbage habit that they've all fallen into. The quotes will fall away when future stories refer back to this story.
That single quoted phrase was set in the context of other words, and that context defined its meaning. We know this to an extent that almost no one could have imagined since LLMs have become a huge part of the world.
My favorite example of this is how no article in Britain during Corbyn's leadership of the labor party would ever quote an entire sentence that he had said. Thousands of articles, and the quotes were all fragmentary phrases and lone words framed in editorial.
edit: Brits and the BBC especially do this more than most, likely because of their bizarre libel laws (that were once even worse than they are now.)
It's because they been taken to court for mindlessly parroting shit they hear, but instead of actually verifying the truth of the claim (ya know, the entire purpose of a journalist) they just put it in quotes as some kind of "buyer beware" disclaimer
This war started as a regime change operation in Iran, one of the shakiest regimes in the world pre-war, but ironically the war might end up with most of the nations who supported the war (either vocally or quietly) "regime changed" (loosely defined), including Israel, US, some European countries and now possibly some Gulf nations, awhile the Iranian regime seem to have tightened its grip more than ever.
Yet MAGA supporters were saying early in the war that they are "plan trusters" as prior US admins sucked at regime change because it is a "skills issue" and none of the prior admins had the triple digits IQ of Hegseth, Trump and Bessent.
Not sure where you get the shaky regime idea, but Iran was not on the verge of collapse from protests prior to the war. It may have been on the verge of more aggressive clamping down from the IRGC, but collapse wasn’t around the corner.
If they were going to try this it needed to be done months earlier when the protests were raging. Instead the brain trust fumbled the initiative and let the Iranian leadership kill and scourge their local allies into compliance. Then fumbling the decapitation strike coupled with the decades of preparation for a decapitation strike (via redundancy of command) the genius brigade seemed to be unaware of because they fired all the experts, and the total repression of the protesting populace, led to an unusually strong system in Iran. They also almost certainly let racism play a big role in underestimating the Iranians, who are a very technically sophisticated society and have been preparing for this scenario since day one of the revolution.
Everything that’s happened was predictable and predicted, which is why other administrations who were more than happy to topple foreign governments when it suited them to not do so in Iran. MAGA feels like the junior dev that blames the compiler for their own syntax errors.
Do you even realize that one of the only reason anybody still supports this war is precisely because of comments like yours? By dividing people into teams, and antagonizing them, you result in people never willing to stomach giving an inch and doubling down on stupid.
Obviously this war has been the US' latest great failure, and at the beckoning of a foreign power which makes it especially catastrophic. If people could focus on this, rather than trying to divide things into teams and then sling mud, they'd have vastly better outcomes come November (and on) than just using it for divisive mudslinging which does nothing but ensure that all elections, regardless of how bad the decisions of a incumbent, or how awful a challenger, will remain these sort of 50/50 coinflips.
>This war started as a regime change operation in Iran
I believe this war started with a tomahawk missle murdering a school full of children and then the US denying involvement. I very clearly remember it. US attacks Iran unprovoked. First act, murder their children in school. If you wanted to solidify opposition to the US in Iran, I don't think they could have done a more effective job.
They haven't denied it yet, it's still under investigation. They may be able to workout they were the only country in this war with Tomahawks responsible for the triple-tap missile strike, after the mid terms. Or they may just move on from it and never talk about it again, like the Epstein files.
My quibble here is with the house style "Iran-backed" that they attach to every mention of the Houthi's. While it's fine for governments to use that language, I don't think journalists should use it without being very specific to its relevance to the particular subject under discussion. The "Houthis claim major advance in Yemen - what you need to know" article could omit "Iran-backed" in its entirety and lose no information of substance, and amend the last bullet point to say that this is especially relevant given the current US-Iran conflict.
As I type this I feel somewhat vindicated by the update to the page, "Iran does not dictate every Houthi decision - but they appear increasingly aligned", which I think does a good job of clarifying the relationship. It does, however, say "Iran has publicly backed the Houthis during the latest fighting. The geography helps explain why", which is useful factual evidence (since Iranian officials have indeed made public statements in support of the Houthis) but the use of "backed" in this sentence is bad style since that word has been used in exactly this context to have a much deeper meaning than Iran saying "we've got your back bro"
Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group that commits warcrimws against both Yemenis and people thousands of miles away. Here’s just one example, executing men for gayness:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/27/yemen-houthis-sentence-m...
“In addition to death sentences that include crucifixion and stoning, the Houthi court sentenced 23 men to prison for periods of up to 10 years. Three of them were also sentenced to public flogging”
Saudi Arabia who they’re fighting against by proxy, and who we sell lots of bombs to, and are soon going to help get nuclear technology, not so great either.
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/saudi-arab...
Yes, Sharia law is bad everywhere, unfortunately.
>Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group
IMO this is kind of bad framing because it suggests that they're the minority in Yemen, when in reality they basically are the government of 70-80% population of Yemen and absorbed 60+ percent of the Yemeni regular army.
They are basically at this point the de-facto Yemeni government
The other side is Al Qaeda. So who do you support? Wipe out the Houthis and you'll get another Syria where Al Qaeda controls the country.
Aren’t they all? I guess it is better that they fight each other.
Do they do double-tap strikes on schools and hospitals? Do they shoot children 355 times to make sure they're dead like with Hind Rajab?
Just trying to see how the compare to the US and Israeli militaries when it comes to war crimes.
The Houthis created a fake audio of a major Yemeni commander telling his troops to retreat which was subsequently amplified on Twitter/X.
Apparently, this helped the Houthis advance quickly as the opposition forces were in disarray.
https://x.com/BashaReport/status/2097862335494795579
Oh wow! Dario and Scam were right!
We should stop everybody else from developing AI, except for both of them which are the most appropriate stewards for this technology.
Holy shit. This is really interesting. AI used to impersonate, social media to amplify, and that led to a significant military defeat?
I don't want to live in interesting times anymore.
They also used Claude in a fairly sophisticated way to design their missile guidance system (PDF, search for GTG-87001).
https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/e50be2e51e7695dc4b1366a37a245a...
[delayed]
Twitter/X should be held liable.
This is the chaos that silicon valley and the current US government has fully gotten behind.
That's why relying on mercs (which is what both UAE and Saudi chose in Yemen) is a double edged sword. At some point the cash isn't enough of a motivator and they will just run away.
We seem to be in need of a mercenary Uber, where individual mercenaries will have their reputation and the potential customers will be able to check it.
One of the later, not as good, seasons of Westworld has that as an app
Likely Palantir built it already
Hideo Kojima intensifies
Xe Services rebrands yet again to eXe
My understanding is we haven’t gotten to full Hormuz apocalypse mode because the Chinese have a ton of stockpiles. And the Red Sea has been an option.
Those conditions seem to be changing.
The Houthis also explicitly allow Chinese vessels and Chinese ships have been able to traverse the red sea without issue. Which means China actually has more ability to access oil than other countries right now.
I suspect the Chinese won’t be happy with the pipeline and refinery attacks on Saudi Arabia but i also assume that there will still be plenty of Chinese bound oil for the foreseeable future.
Well at some point the problem becomes so acute that others in the world are going to have to step up and help solve it.
Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. It's an intolerable premise and if the price to be paid is global oil catastrophe it's a price well worth paying and America will force the issue as we have. You can deny this or you can accept that other actors have agency in the world and interests and they may take action that negatively affects you indirectly. You can help them, ignore them, fight against them. But we live in a world where other countries and other people will do things and you have to figure out how to best deal with it.
We have seen what happened with North Korea, but at least China and Russia can somewhat keep a lid on it. Which is the minimum they owe the rest of us since they created that problem. Iran's government is ideological in a way that westerners don't really understand (and to some extent Putin is too via his desires regarding Ukraine but the Russian system isn't too alien to our own views - they play tennis and vacation in Europe and all that stuff). Their government is simply not interested in the things that you and I are interested in.
With Iran you add in the pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iranian continued attacks coordinated in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Israel via Palestine and it's desire to continue to destabilize the region, supporting Russia's war against Ukraine, and helping Russia evade sanctions (never mind domestic repression and murder) and you've really got a problem on your hands that needs solved one way or another if we're going to go the whole peace and stability for the globe route. The primary problem right now is that the rest of the world would rather see the United States take care of this problem (and it's having a tough time but there's a lot of nuance there) then to help because if you are Europe you're somewhat on Iran's side for some god awful reason, if you are Russia, well you work with Iran, if you are the gulf powers you have no power besides your oil, and if you are China you are not going to spend any resources (nor do you have power projection capabilities). So what do we do?
You can sit here yelling until you are blue in the face that this is Trump's war, or he shouldn't have started it (ignoring history) or some nonsense about ancient colonialism (Iran itself is attempting to be a Neo colonial power) or how Israel is so bad or something but Iran's behavior in the region simply cannot continue if you value peace and stability and global trade. Yea whatever Trump isn't a force for that either I get it, but that's not a good argument to make things worse by also letting Iran do crazy shit.
China's stockpiles are dwindling, strategically that's bad for China especially if they want to invade democratic Taiwan. You still need oil to run the military, no amount of batteries are going to power jet fighters or missiles for the foreseeable future. But dwindle they will and eventually China (and others) will be forced to buy oil and it will raise prices. We're all going to have to deal with that eventuality.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine also cut off large amounts of oil and gas supplies via sanctions, and the United States clamping down on both Venezuela and Iran has further restrained oil supplies as the US has also gone after Russian shadow fleet tankers which were adding additional capacity to the market. The EU has done a little bit here too after the US led the way.
Global chokepoints are a problem. Having so much of the world (primarily Asia) rely on oil and gas from the Middle East where you've got these militant groups funding by Iran who can at a whim decide if they don't get some concession that they're going to cut off oil for everyone else is intolerable. Again, say what you want but we as a planet should not be beholden to this kind of behavior.
If we accept your premise, the current war has made us less safe, because we've had previous, stronger nuclear deals that have now been torn up in a failed attempt to replace their leader with someone more favorable to the US.
Iran probably wasn't following the JCPOA, denied inspectors access to certain sites, and you'd also have to say you 100% trust American intelligence to verify that Iran isn't building a nuclear weapon in secret and if you want to do that I've got a war to sell you in Iraq.
Separately that doesn't resolve the other issues, funding militant groups, &c.
China is the reason we don’t have 5-6 dollar gas. They literally cut their imports to prevent economic disaster. If they begin buying at regular levels we would be the ones hurting more.
No that's not the only reason. High oil prices affect their economy quite a bit, and much of their imports form what I understand come from the Middle East.
I doubt that the world will subscribe to the idiocy of the current US admin. China will just push harder for renewables while Europe and the rest of the world will try to coup with the shock but I am certain they won’t go to war with Iran because they have no reason. Eventually US will have to decide if it’s going to do anything or just live with high oil prices for long or just go back home in a British Suez fashion.
> Eventually US will have to decide if it’s going to do anything or just live with high oil prices for long or just go back home in a British Suez fashion.
This is the flaw in your thinking. It won't be the US who alone decides to live with high oil prices, it'll be everyone.
Vague promises of "pushing for renewables" is a gross mischaracterization and misunderstanding of the importance of oil and gas to the global economy. Note, I'm not anti-renewable or whatever, but chalking this up to a "US problem" is willfully ignorant.
Why can Israel have a nuclear weapon? It is also an insanely violent ethno-theocratic regime.
You can ask the same question of the US. They're the only ones to have actually used them (and they try to justify it still).
Jews don't have an order from God to destroy Muslims...
I think with all the atrocities coming out of Israel, people have lost track of the fact that the other side is still composed of completely deranged religious maniacs that pose incredible danger to the rest of the world.
Like I already feel the whataboutism (The US is the threat!), but don't forget the long string of pure intentionally-kill-innocent-people terrorist attacks done in the name of God.
Besides the point and whataboutism, but I'm not advocating that Israel should have nuclear weapons. They do, and I'm not sure there's much we can do about it at this point. Same with North Korea. I'm opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and just because one country has one doesn't mean other countries should go and get them too.
Maybe we should have brokered some kinda deal with Iran to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon then, huh.
At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it. Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
> Maybe we should have brokered some kinda deal with Iran to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon then, huh.
Maybe we should have brokered some kind of deal with Russia to prevent them from invading Ukraine. Do you trust American intelligence 100% to verify Iran is not building a nuclear bomb? And if they weren't, why also were they funding these militant groups? What's the point? It's Neo-colonialism in the Middle East.
> At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it.
The leadership wasn't really rational in your western sense. I'm not sure where you are coming up with that. If they were rational they wouldn't be murdering their own civilians, chanting death to Israel and death to America as a national past time (no sane nation does this, or if you want to argue they do then don't get mad when Americans are burning the Koran or whatever) and funding militants. You're trying to argue from a place that assumes your values about economics and prosperity and global human rights with an entity that does not care about those values.
If they were rational as you'd like them to be they'd just not do any of the things they've been doing. Why does Iran have to get special treatment to not build a nuclear weapon? Have you thought about that? Why do we have to pay them off? Why are they special snowflakes who get to hold the world hostage less they build nuclear bombs to threaten others?
> Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
That's the fault of the rest of the world then for failing to come together to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Iran clearly has the capability to flatten every major hospital and university and desalination plant in Israel, like Israel has done in Gaza, but they don't.
It's also clear that Iran having nukes would be a strategic deterrent to Israel's ultraviolent territorial expansionism.
"Ancient" colonialism? The US and Israel are both actively seeking to expand their colonial territory.
This was an interesting piece of fiction you've written, with some very impressive mental gymnastics on display. However, it's so wrong that engaging with it would be doing you a disservice because it would make you think it's even an intellectually respectable position to have in the first place.
the reason China was using stockpiles is they want to time the gasoline price shock right to the midterm elections. The moment they stop using stockpiles and start purchasing the prices will jump
I’m playing an industrializing China game in Victoria 3.
Made trade deals with the US and France, both turned around and insulted me within a few months.
Turns out my construction sectors winding down caused an iron glut in my market and crashed their GDPs by 10% presumably by undercutting them.
Well roughly now would be when you’d time a huge shock
OTOH midterm generic ballots are much more stable than top line presidential horse race polling. So it might only matter at the margins.
> time the gasoline price shock right to the midterm elections.
Donald Trump can end this at any time if he wants. It would have been better to not have started it, thou. Less killing of innocent people, less spending on weapons, better mental health for USA soldiers...
And why is China suddenly at fault for America's actions?
lol. The orange man is doing more damage to the USA than China could ever do short of actual war. He is destroying the US militarily, economically and politically. They emphatically support his efforts.
IMO it is a good thing that the USA is no longer paying for (among others):
- NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,
- tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):
https://wjno.iheart.com/content/2025-03-17-qa-how-many-count...
At some point they might prefer stability and sanity. I would bet that at this point they don't care much either way.
China is playing long, most of the ~unchanging things are in their favor and the US already proved that they're unreliable. People won't forget that soon even if Trump is gone.
Stability and sanity is not happening whether the conflicts stop in Yemen+Hormuz or not. At that point it's just going to go back to tarriff wars and new terror campaigns that the US admin will start somewhere else
More properly called Ansar Allah, supported by Iranian regime, and guilty of war crimes against everyone from fellow Yemenis to people thousands of miles away.
Women, gays and infidels are pubished by Houthi police.
Yes. So sad an American supported liberal regime wasn't installed by the US in Yemen.
IIRC their official slogan has literally "Curse the Jews" in it.
Yep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarkha
> "God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam"
The Century of American Humiliation continues
The Houthi's have a Saudi backed adversary, I haven't heard about them lately in mainstream media how are they faring? I just thought they would be a tough resistance for the houthis restraining them from what they're currently doing
If Dems win next time around they should repeal the AUMF at the very least. We cannot be at war at all times.
The problem is that "being at war" isn't really the problem, it's a symptom. A lawless and destabilized gulf region is the result of incomplete and inneffective military action, and in a darkly hilarious way is only treatable by more whack-a-mole warfare.
It wasn't a war we could win. We fought it anyway. Now we're stuck trying to lose in a tolerable way. Which requires more fighting.
At some point the balance will tip and China will take over patronage of the right selection of powers to push us out, which will disentangle western involvement (and make it their problem, of course). But at this stage there really is no hope for genuine stability.
Will this bring oil prices down in Europe? Oil tankers could still go to the mediteranian via the suez canal. This will not help asia, but I can imagine if it is too dangerous the go through bab al-mandab strait it is more lucrative to sell the crude oil to europe at a discount?
No. A cynic might think a significant part of this half-arsed Iran war was:
- make sure fuel prices increase globally
- The US economy is relatively well-shielded from the fallout by its own fossil fuel sources, local and in colonies like Venezuela.
- export more US fossil fuels, especially to Europe, at inflated prices. US insiders reap the profits.
- further kneecap European competitiveness in energy intensive sectors, steal market share. Oh well, small gift to China here too, but still a net win for the US.
It's nice to think there was some sort of plan, but the truth is much scarier.
I believe there were pieces of a plan. This global energy shift gambit being one of them. I don’t think there was a unified strategy with contingencies etc though (if there was it certainly wasn’t very good).
Why do you believe "there were pieces of a plan"? Any reporting to corroborate that theory?
"concept of a plan"
>some sort of plan
George Friedman, The Next Decade
> Friedman [...] advocates a deal with Iran which would essentially allow it a secure sphere of influence in the region and an alliance with Turkey to counterbalance Iran and Israel.
Seems to be in contradiction.
I think the idea is 3 regimes in power to keep a balance between them instead of two rivals?
Short-term benefits seem to be good enough for America in this new age.
The US sells oil and refined products to other countries. So a supply crunch would raise prices even there too. Everyday Americans are not getting fuel for cheap.
Nobody cares about everyday Americans, it's about American corporations. Exxon and friends are printing money.
I have a suspicion that the caring is starting to mount, otherwise there’s no need to offer a $1.3T election bribe (which I’ll file a the other dividend / bribes that were never sent and the bridge Trump sold me)
Realpolitik might just be the best way to do things after all.
Please don't leave us in suspense: what would "realpolitik" be in this instance?
Sure, if you make oil prices increase, US oil companies and their shareholders rake in more cash. But it's harmful for the average American because filling up the tank costs a lot more. Then that price hike spreads to everything else that relies on oil (which is pretty much everything) leading to inflation and rising interest rates (already starting to happen, the shielding you mention doesn't seem to be working, which makes sense in a relatively free-market economy). If the situation drags on, unemployment rises due to soaring costs across the board, and the economy goes to hell.
A rise in crude prices might pay off for a small country that lives almost exclusively off it (say, Saudi Arabia, in the hyphotetical case that it could keep exporting as normal) but for the US? I don't think it does. Surely, Europe is more exposed than the US and will suffer even more, but this is not a zero-sum game.
So I don't think it's an elaborate plan, it's just Trump being reckless as usual.
I wouldn't assume this administration gives a shit about inflation or rising interest rates or how the rest of the economy is doing. Do you have any reason to believe they do?
You honestly think the Trump administration is intelligent enough to think all of that through and execute it?
I just dont think these guy are even capable to plan that much.
If you think so little of them, then imagine what the people who pay $5M for a meal with him can convince him to do. Or what people who pay his son-in-law/iran-negotiator 25M a year can call and ask him to do.
Then you probably believe that the US government only consists of the half dozen clowns you see on TV every day.
We have no doubt that the best people are in US government and that they have the best tools at their disposal. Around the world, we are simply trying to figure out, while munching on plenty of popcorn, how this incredible sequence of actions will play out; a sequence clearly crafted using highly complex strategic planning tools that employ the most advanced techniques from game theory, AI, and who knows what else.
That's the point this time around. They went full authoritarian and purged all the competent people.
That's just the media noise. Yea there were purges. But its a big leap to go from "some" to "all" the best people. Government is the largest employer in the country. The nonsense you see constantly by politicians and other leaders is a tiny fraction of what the government workforce is. This is why despite the chaos you see in the media, life hasn't changed much for the great majority of people all things considered. The government remains functional where it needs to be.
The purges haven’t reached too deep into the rank and file yet, which is why the walls are still standing. But they’ve hit the top of the pyramid hard, which is why nothing makes sense.
Yes, if the rest just listens and executes their wishes, then you're all clowns.
Someone hasn't been paying attention to the Pentagon or State Department purges, both of which would lead precisely to this type of mistake.
We had a retard in the Oval Office 2017-2021 surrounded by "the deep state" (i.e. career managers of the ultra-complex organization called "the government"), and politically constrained by Congress.
Now we have that same retard, but supported by vast purges of aforementioned managers, and politically unconstrained by the cultists and cowards (the two forms of GOP representative) in Congress.
You're missing a key part: energy prices in US go up too. It doesn't matter if US and its colonies are net producers.
Its almost like not having meaningful power projection capabilities when you rely on imports for essential industries is not good!
The US is the world's must vulnerable economy to oil shocks. I mean the real economy, not the farce that the markets currently are.
The Venezuela comment is extremely weird. You know Venezuela has negligible production, right, and that it would take 100s of billions of investments, over decades, to get reasonable production that would make a difference. That's ignoring that currently there is a laughably illegitimate puppet government -- literally just Madero's government minus him, as they did the coup with the US -- that has a 100% chance of a violent overthrow in the future. Which is exactly why all of the oil companies are shrugging and saying no thanks.
Venezuela is a farce -- much like $5000 "dividend" for a government literally on the precipice of bankruptcy, as Bessent runs around, near tears, trying to convince everyone that they're the house and he's the big dog German Shepherd instead of the face of a failing empire having its last pathetic gasp, to laughter all around -- that Trump thinks gives him leverage against Canada. It is unbelievably pathetic business, like renaming a 400+ year old name on a lake like a little bitch.
There is zero scenario where this has benefitted the US, but a drunkard incompetent secdef (sorry "secwar") convinced a foolish demented rapist, who already had Israel whispering in his ear, how easy and painless this foolish debacle will be.
ROFL.
This was clearly a secret attempt of Trump's to be the world's best president for getting off fossil fuels and moving to renewables. The man is playing 7 dimensional chess bro!
When all is said and done it will be he, not AOC or Bernie or any "Green New Deal" folks, that will be remembered by history as the president who did more to get people off fossil fuels than any other.
He's so clever that he's probably even playing chess in a Hilbert space. The whole world envies American voters, who will receive $5,000 if they re-elect this incredible genius.
I think the "stable" in stable genius actually refers to the points of stability under transformations. Brower's fixed point theorem. Do your own research!
I heard if you inject yourself with bleach you can perceive the higher dimensions. Many people say this.
Trump is just accelerating the course of history. The fall of American hegemony, the humiliation of the MIC, the petrodollar, the fossil fuels, the USD as reserve currency is like speedrunning the historical events to reach the next more balanced equilibrium state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
"MIC"???
Military industrial complex. all the companies who make an supply weapon or technology to the US military basically. lockheed and palantir and so on
military industrial complex
I've never seen oil prices decrease due to any regional disruption; the market is global. If the price in Alberta went up when the Straight closed, I wouldn't hold my breathe for Europe in this scenario.
>I've never seen oil prices decrease due to any regional disruption; the market is global.
oil spiked and then crashed during the gulf war & the iraq war in 03.
the gulf war probably because of western price control methods kicking in, the iraq war because of an increase in confidence that the region would produce oil after western 'securing' of oil fields allowing further volume investment from the UAE and friends.
I guess it really just depends on what the definition of 'regional disruption' is.
I wouldn’t count on safe Med passage, I think last month a drone attacked a ship in Egypt. And the channel to Suez isn’t exactly wide or out of range for Houthis.
GCC will have to talk to Iran now, there is no reasonable way out of this quagmire other than a regional accommodation with Iran. Talk about a regression but here we are.
This is part of the Houthis preventing Saudi Arabia from exporting any oil at all. So no I don’t think it’s gonna make oil lower. Higher probably. But oil is doing very weird things.
VLCCs are too large to fit through the Suez Canal. I don't know how much of Saudi export is using VLCCs versus Suezmax or smaller tankers, but I've heard that much of the Red Sea oil export is currently going through Bab al-Mandab, not that I have a source on hand.
Aren’t these groups working with, no against, China?
And against, not with, Western Europe?
So being prices down where, in eastern Europe?
> if it is too dangerous the go through bab al-mandab strait it is more lucrative to sell the crude oil to europe at a discount?
I suspect they would sooner curtail production rather then sell at a discount due to route restrictions.
Not really. It is very hard and expensive to get these oil well pumping again. That is why we had negative oil prices during covid. Plus, when we are talking about the Gulf states, they have extremely low production cost. The discount would be against world prices, not production cost.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/james-franco-first-time
most large tankers are too large for both the Suez and Panama Canals.
There are tankers built specifically for the Suez Canal
Suezmax tankers, panamax, etc. Anything bigger needs to go around
Which are already being used to transit the Suez Canal.
Oil is sold globally.
It doesn't matter if in Texas wells are producing it at a penny for barrel, if the global prices are high that oil is going to be sold to Philippinos, Japanese, Italians or South Africans.
So, at the same time, it doesn't matter if some new routes open or close, it doesn't particularly favor one or the other buyer, it's still sold globally on a bid.
Until we bar export.
why would Exxon allow export ban and lose exorbitant profits ?
> Will this bring oil prices down in Europe ... This will not help Asia
This hurts Europe more than Asia.
The UK, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, and others are similarly opposed to the Houthis having conducted airstrikes on the Houthis (eg. 2025) as well as helping target them directly or indirectly.
And a large portion of global shipping is owned by Greek conglomerates - a country that is a close ally of Israel.
Most GCC states also have some form of defense agreement with the UK or France. If those turn out to be meaningless, it reduces their incentive to cut preferential deals with European states.
Additionally, this further enhances Turkiye and Pakistan's hand, as Saudi Arabia has signed defense pacts with both and Pakistan has threatened action against Iran yesterday if further incidents threaten Saudi Arabia. If they were able to dislodge the Houthis without direct European intervention, then it is a massive black stain on the EU's power projection capacity and it's claim that it should be treated as a great power. It also gives Turkiye additional leverage against the EU.
Finally, the Houthis struck the East-West Pipeline [0]. Much of the KSA's oil is in Eastern Saudi Arabia around Dhahran. Most large Asian states like China, India, Japan, and South Korea have continued operations in Iran that allowed them continued passage. European states lack access to GCC oil as a result of Perim island being controlled by the Houthis.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemens-houthis-rea...
Yeah the EU leadership has been really shortsighted on these past decades (especially since the 10s), especially in their strategic energy and industrial sectors.
Be it the Ukranian conflict, the ME crisis, the NA wars and instabilities, etc. The EU is the one that geopolitically speaking lost the most.
Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests, I simply do not understand how they could leave foreign actors to dictate policies that affect thier own territory and enterprises without any sort of critical thought.
But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
It was cheaper, I don't think it's much more complex than that. And with fossil fuels, countries without significant local production are always dependent on someone else, with most potential suppliers being problematic in some way.
Of course we should have gone for renewable energy more forcefully, but that wouldn't have resolved the issue. That change will take time, and you can't arbitrarily accelerate it.
No, gas has always been the most expensive source of electricity. Take a look at the German merit order from 2018:
https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...
Nuclear is cheapest, then lignite, then hard coal, and then gas. Germany phased out the cheapest option first, now continues with the second, and is expanding the most expensive.
The obvious choice would have been to do what China and India are doing - phase out gas power first and focus on electrification. But Europe did the opposite.
Well the US benefit massively because of their investments in shale gas. Meanwhile the Europe suffers massively and they banned shale gas although they could exploit vast resources.
Sure, the environment, etc but Europe hasn't invested strategically in that, either. China has.
I guess you only need maybe 20% of them to be puppets to mess around. It’s a lot easier to damage than to build.
Aren't those really easy to explain?
EU opposes the Houthis because they are a horrifying slave state that distributes children as sex slaves to their troops.
EU opposes Russia because it is a horrifying fascist dictatorship that has repeatedly invaded it's neighbors, and constantly talks about it's historical claims to EU territory.
In the NA conflicts it's harder to draw such a clear line, because the conflicts typically have about 15 sides each, but the basic algorithm you can use is generally that EU tries very hard to pick sides based on morality, not geopolitical interests.
Those can be said for other economic partners that are being used so no. That's not it, that's just rhetoric for the masses. _You'll here the same thing tomorrow, after I say the complete opposite today._
The issue was 1990s-2000s Germany argued it was in Europe's best interest to integrate Russia into the European fabric, but 1990s-2000s France+UK+Italy argued it was in Europe's best interest to integrate the Mediterranean into the European fabric.
When the UK left the EU and France+Italy were in the midst of their economic doldrums due to the Eurozone crisis, this left the hard power states within the EU comparatively weakened.
But the collapse of Minsk II and the ongoing war in the Middle East led to a cascading crisis for a unified Europe.
Minsk per the people that brokered it was just a temporary patch to prepare Ukraine for the invasion. So no. That's not it.
It's business and by now it should be clear to anyone that there's no morality involved in this space.
There's nothing wrong with Russia as energy partner, as long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot by blowing up the alternatives. South of EU had proper energy supplies from ME/NA. For example crisis in ME was mitigated by Russian energy or NA energy (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, etc).
The new hegemons like Turkey, Israel, etc came only later, yet we can't say they're Saints can we? Also to appease the US administration line a lot of green energy projects were put on hold, and were only restarted this year after the Hormuz situation.
The only real explanation is shortsightness for personal interests (but even then you'd have to have all your capitals abroad), or being a tool for foreign interests.
> Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests
It's an open secret that Russian money is deep, deep in European politics.
> Japan, and South Korea have continued operations in Iran that allowed them continued passage.
1.How do they pay Iran considering the sanctions? 2.Do you think EU shouldn't sanction Iran even though they violated NNPT and their terrible record on human rights because Iran can threaten them with a sufficient price?
> a country that is a close ally of Israel
Are they? They never sent a single weapon or soldier to help israel, they have no formal or informal mutual defense agreement. Israel buy no military equipment from Greece. You mistake mutual interest because of a common enemy - Turkey to close alliance.
1. Waivers, state owned enterprises, shell corporations, barter trades, and using their own currencies for transactions
2. I agree. I'm just being prosaic as to why European states are in the pickle they are today.
3. They are closely entwined via logistics, but Cyprus would be an even closer Israel-Cyprus ties. The reality is, the Saudi-Turkiye-Kuwait-Pakistan alliance is a direct reaction to the Israel-Greece-Cyprus-UAE-India cooperation or the now signed Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral.
I see, thank you for the prompt response, I think calling them close allies is overstating it.
Donald Trump hosted roughly 20 oil and gas executives from major companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Occidental Petroleumat his Mar-a-Lago resort on April 11, 2024.
His message to the room was essentially that giving $1 billion to his campaign was a low-cost investment that would guarantee massive financial returns for their companies
Reflection Eternal | Ballad of the Black Gold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryFMKYNJeTM
Attacking Iran and then backing down has just shown all the West's enemies that the US has no resolve.
The U.S. leadership has a bad habit of starting conflicts that the bulk of the population doesn't want, which leads to large political costs and resulting half-measures. Our current leadership literally ran on "no more wars." Morons.
In other news, Cantor Fitzgerald lost about 150 information-technology workers when the north tower collapsed on this day 25 years ago.
I wouldn't be surprised if this got downvoted off the front page in minutes, just like the other story about diesel being at all time highs.
There is a well coordinated group here that seems unusually allergic to inconvenient truths.
Why does that have to be the only reason? I personally think it has nothing to do with "Hacker" news, but I understand that sentiment has been in the fringe lately with HN becoming increasingly political.
Just to be clear, everything is political - whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
Yes yes, my tinfoil protected brains thinks the same!
Or wait, maybe just flamewar style debates are not so welcome here, so people flag instead have another debate about who is more evil?
All we had to do was not bomb Iran (starting with a school full of girls). There was no benefit to the US in this war, it’s 100% for Israel. Bribery and blackmail, not democracy, are now determining world events.
Trump has had it out for Iran since 1980, but sure, just blame it on the Jews.
Whoa. That's not at all what they said and shows you lack intellectual honesty.
Is blaming the government of Israel equivalent to blaming the Jews?
Not always, but often.
The poster blaming everything "100%" on Israel tells me that they are not a person of nuance, and people who engage in rigid, black-and-white thinking often have overly simplistic views about how the world works (e.g. Jews control the world).
Correlation does not mean causation, but it hints at it.
Israel means the state of Israel in this case, very clearly. Don't draw the antisemitism card for everything. You must have heard of the boy who cried wolf, surely?
That's... a very convoluted way of looking at the world. If he stated any other rigid thought, as, "we must exterminate all mosquitos, they are 100% not needed", would you then conclude he's antisemitic too?
Oh, antisemitism is now allowed?
How exactly would you recommend criticizing the actions of the State of Israel then, without being labeled antisemitic?
I'm sick of this equivocation. Nobody is claiming that Jewish people in general manipulated Trump into touching the stove.
Some facts:
* Netanyahu met with Trump in February to show him a presentation intended to convince him to attack Iran.
* Netanyahu convinced Trump that it would be fast and easy.
* Trump's own intelligence agencies and cabinet members called this "farcical" and "bullshit."
* Trump gave the green light anyway, based on Netanyahu's presentation, and against the advice of CIA, State, and the Joint Chiefs.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...
Trump has decided that he'd sink along with the entire Middle east
What makes you think this, out of the non-stop parade of Trump crazy bullshit, is the issue that will finally sink him?
Wait for the November
Because his supporters have huge trucks and need tons of gas.
Why all the quotation marks in the article? It's not like they interviewed toddlers that said funny things.
It’s in quotation marks because it’s a quotation. The BBC have not independently verified that the Houthis have taken control of the island, they are reporting what a government source has said.
It has nothing to do with verification.
They are simply reporting what sources have said:
Houthis 'take control' of Perim Island - government source published at 09:00
Houthi rebels have "taken control" of Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to a source. Earlier, we were reporting that the group had reached the key island.
The AFP news agency also says Houthis have "taken over" Perim Island, also referred to as Mayyun, according to eyewitnesses and a local government official.
"Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it yesterday," the official tells AFP.
They need to start doing this when other "regimes" make wild claims.
They do.
They always have.
It's funny to see the evolution of language. Quotation marks indicated that something was a direct quote. Then people started to use them as a sarcasm indicator. Now we're to the point where people can't even recognize them as indicating a direct quote.
I think the parent was pointing out that Israel's or USA's claims are usually stated without quotes, such as:
Israel invades Lebanon due to risk of Hezbollah attacks
rather than:
Israel says "risk of Hezbollah attacks" reason for invasion
I'm unconvinced that this is a pattern that is distinguished by the nation being reported on. Headlines vary. Both of your example headlines might appear at different times in the outlets I read.
I think this was just a stylistic choice and that this whole thread is a weird tangent.
This is a stunning amount of credulity after "looted vs found" and "https://x.com/i/status/1322999903753220099" -style memes.
I don't know what your comment means. Can you say more?
But generally, yes, I think cynicism has run amok among the very-online.
A few more examples:
“40 beheaded babies” and mass/systematic rape propaganda accepted with zero verification (journalism 101) and, once debunked, zero retractions were made
Hamas-run, but not Likud-run
Condemnation of atrocities by Israel and the US that comes from Israeli and Western voices is given significantly more weight than the same claims coming from Palestinian or Arab voices. After all, the native lacks the capacity to be objective.
Israeli gov statements are taken as undeniable fact, while Palestinian (Gaza or West Bank) gov spokespeople or even Palestinian people in general are barely even platformed
Over-representation of Zionists in editorial teams of every major newspaper and news channel across all Western countries, which (naturally) led to coordinated suppression of any Palestinian voice internally and externally (started to change only relatively recently).
And the list goes on.
Are there good examples of this from the BBC? Genuine question - no snark intended.
US insists Strait of Hormuz is open as it exchanges strikes with Iran - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9gkpp0dkeo
Iran says Strait of Hormuz is 'open' but tracking shows few ships moving - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwydexp39ddo
Those have the same implication even if it's written slightly differently. "US insists" makes it clear that "open" is a claim by the US, not an independent fact. The first one doesn't match the supposed pattern where one side's claims are stated as facts, despite the lack of quotation marks.
I don't see anything stated as fact (without quote marks) here solely on the basis of Trump having said it, and I see use of quote marks for things he has said, eg. 'Trump says Iran war will end "immediately" after US midterm elections': https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cp7r8vgl2lgt
The BBC's main sin in relation to Trump is sane-washing, treating his bizarre outbursts as if they were reasonable things for a US president to say. Eg. were he to say "I have a solid gold prostate!" they'd have an Anthony Zurcher piece entitled "Is Trump's prostate really made of gold?" with a quote from a doctor saying "while it seems unlikely and would probably be uncomfortable, having a gold prostate would be unlikely to cause any noticeable side effects as the metal is inert" and a discussion of the benefits of replacing a cancer-prone organ with a noble metal.
I am not saying this is necessarily incorrect but is it empirically actually true. Have people compared lots of different articles.
This is completely standard journalistic practice when reporting a quote on something that is currently contentious or unproven. For example, consider the two hypothetical headlines:
Activists decry police murder of protester
Activists decry police "murder" of protester
The first implies that the police murdering the protestor is an established fact. The second makes it clear that it is the activists who used the term "murder" rather than it being a non-contentious fact.
Both versions are fancifully direct in our era a media+police stenography, try:
Mayor denounces "radical activists" rioting and damaging city property in response to an officer-involved incident that resulted in one fatal kinetic altercation with a "loud and provocatively dressed" man.
> officer-involved incident
Ah, the past exonerative tense. https://archive.is/wPVdy
Read McSweeney's guide to ambiguous grammar, where they lead you step by step from the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to the ultimate say-nothing sentence speed was involved in a jumping-related incident while a fox was brown, and the punchline is you can then translate "the St Louis County Police Department was involved in an officer-involved shooting after officers came under heavy gunfire" to "a police officer shot a black person"
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-...
But no, that's the language issued by police departments covering their asses. Journalists are a little bit covering their asses in making clear what is a quote and what isn't, but they're still responsible for what they choose to quote, and to be clear on whether they have verified the claims they're quoting.
Ideally, unverified claims shouldn't even be in an article. But when there _has_ been some kind of stramash, they just don't know who did what, the need to rush out an article to get clicks means they'll just quote both sides and try to give them equal prominence until they can do more verification.
https://patch.com/california/northhollywood/my-daughter-died...
oh like this article that says a child was hit by a "LAPD bullet" as though wild bullets roam the streets of LA looking for children instead of being fired from a gun by a person who made a decision.
It doesn't help when snippets are post leaving out the other context clues where things like "according to" or "anonymous source stated" or similar attribute of the quote. Just putting words between quotation marks does not lead me to believe they were quotes if there is no attribution. Otherwise, it's a Trump level "people tell me" type of "quote".
In that case, that seems like a variation of the "past exonerative tense".
Do you consider every trial defendant to be exonerated?
Presumably to indicate that the parts in quotes are indeed quoted literally from the source that is mentioned in the same sentence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...
When I moved from the US to the UK, the use of quotation marks in news headlines was something that confused me. In the US, these would be "scare quote", with the quotation marks basically standing in for the words "so-called". In the UK, that is NOT their meaning. The quotation marks mean "we are not ourselves in a position to verify this, but it is the words that a source has told us". Very different meaning -- and once I got used to it, I think the UK use of language in this case is more honest and useful.
tl;dr: two countries, divided by a common language.
This is like this in most of Europe: when in "quotes", it is not the journalist, but the person who said something. For example, Obama said "Yes we can". He did not say yes we can, he said "Yes we can".
It is not about the quotes being verified or unverified. It is about something said by somebody, that you are reporting.
This is precisely what the word quote means!
It’s not so much ‘we are not in a position to verify’ as the fact that the person who said the thing, and what they said, is itself newsworthy.
If you’re reporting that “Government sources say Houthis have ‘taken control’ of an island” then the fact that government sources used the words ‘taken control’ is itself interesting.
The headlines “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Zelensky”, “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Putin”, and “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Taylor Swift” all tell of vastly different news events.
Is it really a different meaning? Isn't the implication that they tried, and failed, to independently verify the claim?
No, it's a statement of who is making the claim.
Does “so-called” not mean “words that someone has told us”?
Huh? That's how quotation marks are used here in the US too
It's a garbage habit that they've all fallen into. The quotes will fall away when future stories refer back to this story.
That single quoted phrase was set in the context of other words, and that context defined its meaning. We know this to an extent that almost no one could have imagined since LLMs have become a huge part of the world.
My favorite example of this is how no article in Britain during Corbyn's leadership of the labor party would ever quote an entire sentence that he had said. Thousands of articles, and the quotes were all fragmentary phrases and lone words framed in editorial.
edit: Brits and the BBC especially do this more than most, likely because of their bizarre libel laws (that were once even worse than they are now.)
It's because they been taken to court for mindlessly parroting shit they hear, but instead of actually verifying the truth of the claim (ya know, the entire purpose of a journalist) they just put it in quotes as some kind of "buyer beware" disclaimer
Journalism is just as much reporting what different influential people say, whether the underlying statement is true or not.
> actually verifying the truth
That's the job of the reader, not the journalist. Unless you're living under oppression. So you have misunderstood the purpose of reporting.
The BBC only assumes government sources as truth when it's from the crown or Israeli / US governments
This war started as a regime change operation in Iran, one of the shakiest regimes in the world pre-war, but ironically the war might end up with most of the nations who supported the war (either vocally or quietly) "regime changed" (loosely defined), including Israel, US, some European countries and now possibly some Gulf nations, awhile the Iranian regime seem to have tightened its grip more than ever.
Yet MAGA supporters were saying early in the war that they are "plan trusters" as prior US admins sucked at regime change because it is a "skills issue" and none of the prior admins had the triple digits IQ of Hegseth, Trump and Bessent.
Not sure where you get the shaky regime idea, but Iran was not on the verge of collapse from protests prior to the war. It may have been on the verge of more aggressive clamping down from the IRGC, but collapse wasn’t around the corner.
Triple digit when summed I assume?
If they were going to try this it needed to be done months earlier when the protests were raging. Instead the brain trust fumbled the initiative and let the Iranian leadership kill and scourge their local allies into compliance. Then fumbling the decapitation strike coupled with the decades of preparation for a decapitation strike (via redundancy of command) the genius brigade seemed to be unaware of because they fired all the experts, and the total repression of the protesting populace, led to an unusually strong system in Iran. They also almost certainly let racism play a big role in underestimating the Iranians, who are a very technically sophisticated society and have been preparing for this scenario since day one of the revolution.
Everything that’s happened was predictable and predicted, which is why other administrations who were more than happy to topple foreign governments when it suited them to not do so in Iran. MAGA feels like the junior dev that blames the compiler for their own syntax errors.
Do you even realize that one of the only reason anybody still supports this war is precisely because of comments like yours? By dividing people into teams, and antagonizing them, you result in people never willing to stomach giving an inch and doubling down on stupid.
Obviously this war has been the US' latest great failure, and at the beckoning of a foreign power which makes it especially catastrophic. If people could focus on this, rather than trying to divide things into teams and then sling mud, they'd have vastly better outcomes come November (and on) than just using it for divisive mudslinging which does nothing but ensure that all elections, regardless of how bad the decisions of a incumbent, or how awful a challenger, will remain these sort of 50/50 coinflips.
“Someone was wrong, now I need to pretend they weren’t so that their feelings don’t get hurt so that we can all pretend it didn’t happen”
> the triple digits IQ of Hegseth, Trump and Bessent.
One digit each.
>This war started as a regime change operation in Iran
I believe this war started with a tomahawk missle murdering a school full of children and then the US denying involvement. I very clearly remember it. US attacks Iran unprovoked. First act, murder their children in school. If you wanted to solidify opposition to the US in Iran, I don't think they could have done a more effective job.
They haven't denied it yet, it's still under investigation. They may be able to workout they were the only country in this war with Tomahawks responsible for the triple-tap missile strike, after the mid terms. Or they may just move on from it and never talk about it again, like the Epstein files.
My quibble here is with the house style "Iran-backed" that they attach to every mention of the Houthi's. While it's fine for governments to use that language, I don't think journalists should use it without being very specific to its relevance to the particular subject under discussion. The "Houthis claim major advance in Yemen - what you need to know" article could omit "Iran-backed" in its entirety and lose no information of substance, and amend the last bullet point to say that this is especially relevant given the current US-Iran conflict.
As I type this I feel somewhat vindicated by the update to the page, "Iran does not dictate every Houthi decision - but they appear increasingly aligned", which I think does a good job of clarifying the relationship. It does, however, say "Iran has publicly backed the Houthis during the latest fighting. The geography helps explain why", which is useful factual evidence (since Iranian officials have indeed made public statements in support of the Houthis) but the use of "backed" in this sentence is bad style since that word has been used in exactly this context to have a much deeper meaning than Iran saying "we've got your back bro"
The first question should be: who supplies their military equipment?
The next question should be: who benefits?
its a hint to the western audience that they're supposed to be sad about this.