International thread 2

[Heartofice]

The Endgame is probably to do the opposite to Obama.

[Maithanet]

You are forgetting that Bolton and his ilk think that the Iraq invasion was a good idea overall, with just a few minor errors in execution.  Thus doing that again on a larger scale is totally worthwhile before Iran gets nukes of its own.

Trump prefers to operate in chaos, and thus pissing off our allies, fighting a trade war with China, ratcheting up sanctions and saber-rattling with Iran, and trying to foment a coup in Venezuela all at once are all part of the multi-front US strategy of mumble mumble mumble. 

EDIT: spelling

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Trump prefers to operate in chaos, and thus pissing off our allies, fighting a trade war with China, ratcheting up sanctions and saber-rattling with Iran and trying to foment a coup in Venezuala all at once are all part of the multi-front US strategy of mumble mumble mumble. 

I shouldn’t laugh at this, but I can’t help myself.

 

One other thought came to mind regarding Wert’s question about political strategy. Trump has a great economy, and yet he’s never polled above 50%, which is insane considering every other president since Gallup has done polling has accomplished at least that. War time presidencies are remarkably re-electable. Perhaps the president is open to starting a war 6-12 months before the election to help stay in office?

[Werthead]

30 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

You are forgetting that Bolton and his ilk think that the Iraq invasion was a good idea overall, with just a few minor errors in execution.  Thus doing that again on a larger scale is totally worthwhile before Iran gets nukes of its own.

Yes, but Iran's nuclear ambition had been stymied by the deal. Now the deal is toast, Iran is more likely to try to get nukes. It's a bit like trying to avoid contracting lung cancer by doubling your smoking intake.

[Maithanet]

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yes, but Iran's nuclear ambition had been stymied by the deal. Now the deal is toast, Iran is more likely to try to get nukes. It's a bit like trying to avoid contracting lung cancer by doubling your smoking intake.

Trump campaigned on getting rid of the Iran deal because the Iran deal was Obama's biggest foreign policy accomplishment, and everything Obama did is terrible. 

With the new reality that the US has torn up the Iran nuclear deal, then the only option for Bolton et al is to ratchet up tensions.   This will either make Iran agree to a new (but probably essentially the same) Trump-approved nuclear deal or the US will lead a push for regime change through a coup/war.  It's win-win*

* except different from win-win in virtually all respects. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yes, but Iran's nuclear ambition had been stymied by the deal. Now the deal is toast, Iran is more likely to try to get nukes. It's a bit like trying to avoid contracting lung cancer by doubling your smoking intake.

You’re looking at it wrong. I’d say it’s more analogous to a boss looking for cause to fire an employee, and if no actual cause is there, the boss has to create it. Tearing up a working deal and making military threats will cause Iran (ideally) to take actions that can somehow justify a U.S. lead invasion/strike.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

You’re looking at it wrong. I’d say it’s more analogous to a boss looking for cause to fire an employee, and if no actual cause is there, the boss has to create it. Tearing up a working deal and making military threats will cause Iran (ideally) to take actions that can somehow justify a U.S. lead invasion/strike.

Ever heard about the Gulf of Tonkin? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

31 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Ever heard about the Gulf of Tonkin? 

JET FUEL CAN’T MELT STEEL BEAMS!!1!!1!!

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

JET FUEL CAN’T MELT STEEL BEAMS!!1!!1!!

Well, have you? No tin foil hat required.

With Bolton whispering in Trump’s ear, war with Iran is no longer unthinkable

Quote

 

It was a deception that would lead to millions of civilian deaths, and the deaths of nearly 60,000 US soldiers. In August 1964 President Lyndon B Johnson solemnly declared that, after two apparent North Vietnamese attacks on US navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, military action would take place.

Four years later, Senator Albert Gore – father of Bill Clinton’s future vice-president – warned in a closed Foreign Relations Committee session that, “If this country has been misled … the consequences are very great.” His suspicions were correct. The second Gulf of Tonkin attack might never have happened – and perhaps neither did. Communications to make it look like the attack occurred had been falsified. But US policy was already set on a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam war: and here was the perfect pretext.

This week it emerged that the US government is discussing sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible military action against Iran. “We’ll see what happens with Iran,” declared President Trump. “If they do anything, it will be a bad mistake.” The principal driving force behind this is Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, a man who thinks there is no problem to which the answer isn’t war: in the Bush era, his militarism was too much for the commander-in-chief who laid waste to Iraq. You can see them scrabbling for excuses already: the Trump administration says Iran-backed proxy groups are preparing attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, a claim forcefully denied this week by British major-general Christopher Ghika, the deputy commander of counter-terror operations in both countries. The US has blamed Iran, without evidence, for damage to Saudi oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Could an Iranian Gulf of Tonkin be looming?

 

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Well, have you? No tin foil hat required.

With Bolton whispering in Trump’s ear, war with Iran is no longer unthinkable

 

 

The joke was a reference to my understanding of the concept of a false flag attack, which is actually IMO just as likely to happen. And of course I know about it, and that it was likely a heavy wave slamming against a ship that started the Vietnam War. Was even further lost is that it's widely suspected that the ships in the Gulf were actively shelling the shoreline, so we started it anyways. 

That said, I think it will be more difficult to pull than you would expect. Americans are  wary of wars in the ME now, and the digital age will make it much harder to suppress what actually happened. Furthermore, I think the Administration will have a hard time explaining both why Iran is a major threat to us and that we can destroy them quickly. That's a hard s*** sandwich to sell.

Hopefully one positive will come out through all of this. Americans are grossly ignorant of what occurred in Iran prior to the revolution. Maybe some will learn that Iranians shout "Death to America" in the streets for a completely valid reason. 

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yes, but Iran's nuclear ambition had been stymied by the deal. Now the deal is toast, Iran is more likely to try to get nukes. It's a bit like trying to avoid contracting lung cancer by doubling your smoking intake.

For a smoking analogy I think it's more like deciding that in order reduce the social harms and costs of smoking it's a good idea to to removing all tobacco control policies and regulations and instead rely on people dying of lung cancer to decrease the smoking population.

[House Balstroko]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

The joke was a reference to my understanding of the concept of a false flag attack, which is actually IMO just as likely to happen. And of course I know about it, and that it was likely a heavy wave slamming against a ship that started the Vietnam War. Was even further lost is that it's widely suspected that the ships in the Gulf were actively shelling the shoreline, so we started it anyways. 

That said, I think it will be more difficult to pull than you would expect. Americans are  wary of wars in the ME now, and the digital age will make it much harder to suppress what actually happened. Furthermore, I think the Administration will have a hard time explaining both why Iran is a major threat to us and that we can destroy them quickly. That's a hard s*** sandwich to sell.

Hopefully one positive will come out through all of this. Americans are grossly ignorant of what occurred in Iran prior to the revolution. Maybe some will learn that Iranians shout "Death to America" in the streets for a completely valid reason. 

Since when did any government care about what the populace wants? You don't live in a direct democracy, therefore you have no say in these matters. Sad but true.

Iran is actually a threat to the other players in the region but not to the United States, therefore you should stay out of it. If Israel and Saudi Arabia want to deal with them, let them do it with their own troops. 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

An Austrian far-right leader with ties to American fascists sent a coffee invitation to a man now accused of murdering 50 Muslims in a Christchurch, New Zealand mosque.

Martin Sellner, the leader of the Austrian Identitarian Movement, received an approximately $1,700 donation from Brenton Tarrant in early 2018. Sellner and his movement push racist conspiracy theories, including one that Tarrant used as the title of his manifesto after he allegedly murdered 50 worshippers in March. After the financial ties were revealed, Sellner tried to distance himself from Tarrant. But Austrian and German news outlets reported this week that Sellner had exchanged emails with Tarrant until at least July 2018, and that both men invited each other to their respective countries.

The communications appear to have started after Tarrant made his donation, which was unusually large. Most donations to Sellner and his group “were in the area of two to three figures,” an Austrian official previously said of other donations. Tarrant’s four-figure donation prompted Sellner to write a thank-you note, which sparked a conversation.

 

Far-Right Leader Martin Sellner Emailed With New Zealand Mosque Shooter Months Before Massacre
Austrian thug Martin Sellner sent warm emails to the New Zealand mosque shooter and invited him for coffee months before the deadly attack.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/far-right-leader-martin-sellner-emailed-with-new-zealand-mosque-shooter-brenton-tarrant-months-before-massacre

[The Anti-Targ]

53 minutes ago, House Balstroko said:

Since when did any government care about what the populace wants? You don't live in a direct democracy, therefore you have no say in these matters. Sad but true.

Iran is actually a threat to the other players in the region but not to the United States, therefore you should stay out of it. If Israel and Saudi Arabia want to deal with them, let them do it with their own troops. 

Iran isn't a real threat to either of them in any genuinely existential sense. It barely rises to the level of threat to do substantial conventional damage by remote attacks.

It might say it wants to drive Israel into the sea, but it lacks any real capacity to do so. Even with nukes, Iran is signing its own death warrant if it was ever to use them aggressively. Nukes have always been about keeping your own country safe from external threats, that's why everyone calls it nuclear deterrence. And Iran cares sufficiently about its own self-preservation to be rational enough to treat nukes in the same way.

The only real threat of nuclear aggression is non-state military groups that don't have a populace or territory to preserve. The only arguably legit reason to worry about Iran having nukes is the question of whether it is crazy enough to give non-state aggressors nuclear weapons, or is incompetent enough that non-state aggressors could steal some weapons. Here I would argue that nukes are pretty well enough tracked that Iran would very quickly be identified as the supplier of any nukes used by non-state agressors, in which case it would be found to be directly guilty as if it deployed the nukes itself, in which case they'd be just as screwed. And if India and Pakistan can competently keep their nukes under lock and key Iran would be at least as effective with its security as them. There are enough extremists in India and Pakistan that if non-state aggressors really wanted to get hold of nukes they'd probably have already made some determined attempts, in Pakistan at least, by now (and possibly have done, and failed, that we just don't know about).

Things can always change of course and take a very dangerous turn. But it's too late to worry about Islamic radicals having access to nukes, because the Islamic world already has them with Pakistan. If things take a dangerous turn for the worse specifically with Islam's relations with the rest of the world, Pakistan's nukes are going to be there to defend Islam.

[The Anti-Targ]

21 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Far-Right Leader Martin Sellner Emailed With New Zealand Mosque Shooter Months Before Massacre
Austrian thug Martin Sellner sent warm emails to the New Zealand mosque shooter and invited him for coffee months before the deadly attack.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/far-right-leader-martin-sellner-emailed-with-new-zealand-mosque-shooter-brenton-tarrant-months-before-massacre

I have a developing hypothesis that 21st century social media has only really done net harm in terms of the spread of political ideologies. Fringe / extreme ideologies benefit the most from the existence of social media, because social media is excellent at connecting isolated groups and individuals,. and bringing fringe ideas in front of a wider audience.

Mainstream ideologies (which might still be harmful, but I'd argue less harmful than the hate-motivated fringe ideologies) don;t really benefit much from social media, since they are and have been effectively disseminated through traditional media.

So the end result is that more people are being exposed to harmful fringe ideologies, which only serves to increase those who are sympathetic or down right active supporters of those ideologies. My main basis for this line of thinking is flat earth. One of the more benign fringe ideas, if that's the only fringe idea a person has, but one that was virtually dead before social media. Now it's seeing somewhat of a renaissance. It'll never be anything but extreme fringe. But the net result of social media with flat earth is that more people have been duped into thinking the earth is flat than flat earth people have been brought around to accepting reality. Therefore a net negative for science. Anti-vaxx is another thing that I think has been amplified by social media, which is not only a net negative for science, but also a net negative for public health.

Here in New Zealand, I think the Christchurch terror attack has had a substantial silver-lining with most of the country taking time to reflect on its attitude towards racial and religious diversity and tolerance. But I'm not sure social media has really contributed all that much to this self-reflection. Whereas I think social media probably contributed to the radicalization of the terrorist.

I don't know what can or should be done about the overall negative effect of social media. But I think if the companies that programme bots to feed people recommendations based on past activities decide to not amplify exposure to harmful or provably incorrect ideas by feeding people watching harmful or ignorant content recommendations for more harmful or ignorant content. They can instead do some counter-programming to feed people recommendations of beneficial content. If people are watching videos that promote flat earth perhaps the bots can feed them recommendations for content that debunks flat earth, rather than just more flat earth promoting content.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

Since when did any government care about what the populace wants? You don't live in a direct democracy, therefore you have no say in these matters. Sad but true.

That worked so well for the U.K. Oh, wait……  

Quote

Iran is actually a threat to the other players in the region but not to the United States, therefore you should stay out of it. If Israel and Saudi Arabia want to deal with them, let them do it with their own troops. 

No, they really aren’t a threat outside of minor incidents. Iran spends around $20b on its military. That’s about 1/5 of what its competitors in the region are spending. Iran is a paper tiger, and one who would probably be open to normalized relations with a simple apology and acknowledgement of past wrongs.

[JGP]

Agreed. Iran is more or less a contained regional power, and a mid sized one at that.

[Aurane]

What do you guys think will happen to the west Balkans during the next decade? It appears that Serbia is being pushed further from the influence of the EU and closer to the CSTO and China. Meanwhile, North Macedonia seems to be taking steps to become a member of the EU.

[The Anti-Targ]

The West Balkans is a part of the world I basically know nothing about, which isn't very good, since I have several colleagues who emigrated from there to here and I really should take more of an interest in their home countries. One problem though is they all seem to be pretty entrenched in their views about who's fault various problems in the post-Soviet era were, including who were the real war criminals. As my colleagues come from different parts a you can't have a civil conversation about the area with 2 of them in the room.

[Luzifer's right hand]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48320983

Quote

Austria's Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has resigned a day after secret video footage mired him in a corruption scandal.

Good riddance! 

I just hope the our goverment collapses today.