What the collapse of a company owing $300 billion means for the world
DdCno1 @ DdCno1 @kbin.social Posts 0Comments 437Joined 2 yr. ago
DdCno1 @ DdCno1 @kbin.social
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The concept is great.
Is it? I really don't see how cryptocurrency is a good thing for humanity. The name is a problem in and on itself, since it's not currency and can not scale up to be used as one.
Sure, let's roll with that, but why did you argue this? What's the point?
You are very naive to assume that 1) this chaos would remain contained in the Middle East 2) that America could decouple itself from the Middle East even as oil runs out (which isn't happening just yet) and 3) that nobody else would move into the power vacuum. We have seen the chaos that comes when there is nobody at the helm in America (during the Trump presidency), including in the Middle East. Isolationism doesn't work and the sole remaining superpower can not afford to be this foolish.
Let's say all of these "developing" aspects equate the US to Iran - even though none of them are even close, which is why you had to use that crutch of using the word developing, implying there is a clear development in one direction, even though it's far more complex than that: So what?
It's still just whataboutism, still an intentional or unintentional attempt at normalizing a rogue state. Like I said, none of this gives Iran the right to behave in the way it does. You could easily use that same logic to excuse what North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Belarus, Vietnam, China are are doing, but that's all this argument does, it's not productive; there is nothing of substance coming out of it. Hell, the user I initially replied to even argued that because America is bad, it should leave Iran alone, which makes zero sense. We can list the faults and issues America has all day and I have been more than critical of the many issues the sole remaining world power has, but at the end of that day, this changes nothing about the asymmetric warfare Iran is conducting based on the same nihilistic zero-sum principle that Russia is using. This is the last thing we should encourage, as everyone gets hurt by it, not just the long list of nations and individuals affected by it, but also ordinary Iranians.
Any charge you level against Iran is 10 times applicable to the US and its allies.
Let's go through the list:
- Autocratic theocracy: There is no Western autocratic theocracy. The closest equivalent ally would be Saudi Arabia, which I would be the last person to defend nor want as an ally.
- Tortures and murders their own population: Again, only Saudi Arabia. As awful at it is, Iran still executes many times more people than even the Saudis.
- Supporting and directing terrorists: Nope. You can point at CIA actions from the past, but if we go back in time, Iran is going to look even worse by comparison.
- Selling arms to Russia: When Russia looked like it was opening up to the West, the West was trading with it, including arms. Can't see how this is comparable to the situation now.
- Hurting trade: Obviously not a thing the West is interested in. The free flow of goods is one of the hallmarks of the Western world.
- Conducting information warfare: RFA and similar Cold War era efforts that are somehow still holding out are almost quaint compared to the massive troll farms countries like Iran are doing.
So no, your attempt at whataboutism, which you tried even though I said no matter what the USA has done, none of it justifies Iran being a menace, falls flat on its face.
The evil deeds of the west have largely given us the problems we have in the middle east today.
Colonialism has created many of the issues this region has today, yes, and the second Gulf War - which I protested in the streets against, by the way - is a more recent example of detrimental Western involvement, as is the installation of the Shah in Iran a few decades earlier. However, blaming most or all of the issues the Middle East has on Western powers is in a way infantilizing, robbing the people and their governments in this region of their agency, which they clearly have and which was clearly the main force since the 1940s that shaped this part of the world. You cannot understate the massive impact the pan-Arabic movement had for example - or more recently, the Arab Spring.
Can you explain to me the differences between Saudi Arabia and Iran, that makes the former a friend and ally to the US, deserving of our high tech weaponry and political support on the world stage, while the other is a villain deserving of annihilation?
Saudi Arabia managed, through intense diplomatic efforts since WW2, to enamor itself with the West. They offered two things: Oil and a strategic partnership. The West was willing to overlook that it's an autocratic hellhole, Saudi Arabia was willing to pinch their noses whenever said West dared to make the most benign attempts at encouraging a more open and tolerant society. There is no denying however that patience is running out just as much as oil is, but since Saudi Arabia is a more than willing counterweight to Iran, which fundamentally threatens it through centuries-old religious animosity and its entirely different style of autocratic governance.
Iran set itself up, through their own will, as an opponent of the West. The Islamic Revolution was not just a revolution against the Western-backed Shah, but also one against the West and its ideals itself. Saudi Arabia isn't a fan of Western ideals either, but it managed to toe the line just well enough to never anger it to the point that the economic and military alliance was endangered. Iran could have easily played the same game, but decided to stubbornly and arrogantly push against a foe that is ultimately far more powerful and could, if enough political will accumulated, annihilate it - never the other way around though, which is why Iran is still trying to get its nuclear weapons program off the ground, as both a deterrent and a potential first strike weapon.
Iran isn’t worse than the US or its allies
It is. Just going by the aforementioned number of executions, it is.
it just stands in the way of US interests. Those interests which, by the way, are not the fairytales called “democracy” or “human rights”
Don't put words in my mouth. The most important value to the West after ensuring its own security and that of its allies is the free flow of goods and people. Iran endangers both. They are endangering the close ally Israel through Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, they are endangering the far less close, but still important ally Saudi Arabia and they are hurting global trade, which impacts everyone, even you. A nation like Iran can only push so many buttons before something happens in response. This bombing campaign is a warning. It tells them both that America knows exactly what its gaggle of proxies are up to and where they are and it's an unspoken warning that these precise strikes hitting those plausibly deniable groups could just as easily hit official Iranian assets, which would hurt far more.
Why should an autocratic theocracy that tortures and murders their own population and is supporting and directing terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, that is selling arms to Russia, that is hurting trade, conducting information warfare against the West and so on and so forth not be allowed to do all of these things? Really?
Do you really think just because the USA has done terrible things this gives Iran the right to be a menace? What kind of logic is that? Iran is an obvious threat and the rest of the world, including the US and no matter what the US has done, has a right to respond to this threat. The idea that just because Iran is a big bully in the Middle East they have an inherent right to behave in this manner is absurd. It's the same kind of logic that China uses whenever it tries to strongarm its neighbors and receives deserved pushback.
What conspiracy do you think I’m subscribing to?
You are spreading the conspiracy theory that there is a concerted effort from the USA to manufacture consent for a war, whereas in reality, the opposite is the case. This isn't a war and there is absolutely zero indication that one is being prepared for. What Iranian proxies are experiencing right now is nothing but a reality check, a message to them and their masters in Tehran that they have overstepped their bounds. Remember that this attack on American soldiers has been just the latest in a long string of attacks. If America didn't respond to their soldiers getting killed - which were there not as an occupying force, but with full consent of the host country Jordan, which has been a close American ally for many decades - then this would message to regimes like Iran and their affiliated groups that it's fine to kill Americans, that nothing of significance would happen in return. This can obviously not be allowed to happen.
Not everything is a conspiracy. The Iranian government has been aggressive, both inwards and towards other countries, for many years and they finally managed to go that one step too far. It's unsurprising that there is increased interest in the internal affairs of this country and that human rights activists like this one are being listened to more at the moment.
Why are you hoping that they don't? Given the shenanigans the Iranian navy has been up to, promoting much of it to submersible status would be a good thing.
It did not decide that it was likely. The wording is very specific and deliberate: The preliminary ruling states that "at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention". Notice how careful the wording is: "At least some", "alleged", "appear to be capable of falling within" - this kind of wording is being used to express a great deal of uncertainty.
The soldier is standing on a pedestal.
It wasn't. Only 18% wanted him to continue after the war at the beginning of November:
He is in far worse straits right now:
They established that South Africa has a case, that the case falls under the jurisdiction of the court and that "at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention". Notice how careful the wording is: "At least some", "alleged", "appear to be capable of falling within" - this kind of wording is being used to express a great deal of uncertainty. Legal language like this is incredibly precise and it demands to be read with the same amount of precision.
Thank you for this. I noticed that there are no photos or other material that show any of the restraints, just the closed body bags with Hebrew tags. You would think that they would immediately photograph or film such restraints, but for some reason, they did not and they are only mentioned in the article text in both this article and the Al Jazeera source. The article on Al Jazeera's website, which includes a video overlayed with ominous music (not something a reputable outlet would do), includes the lie that the men stripped and restrained for processing a while ago were out in the cold, even though one could easily access weather data for Gaza that showed it wasn't cold at all at the time.
From a logical perspective, it would make no sense for Israel to leave the bodies behind with restraints, whereas burying bodies they come across is perfectly reasonable for the purposes of preventing disease. If the goal of this burial had been to hide executions or a massacre, then they wouldn't have tagged them, which would place the blame entirely on them.
The most reasonable explanation, in absence of more concrete evidence, is that these are either civilians found in the rubble or killed in the crossfire - or Hamas fighters who died in combat. They could also be people killed by Hamas (who just murdered a pro-peace activist after abducting and torturing him). I think what happened here is that IDF cleanup crews buried these people, likely without identifying them beyond checking if any hostages are among them, and now returning Palestinians are exhuming the bodies again in order to find missing relatives.
I also have a really hard time believing random unnamed eyewitness reports of mass executions. Given the enormous prevalence of smartphones and their extensive use to document this conflict, one would expect that an act this significant, this unquestionably monstrous would be filmed. It would be the single greatest rallying cry for the Palestinian cause imaginable. Watch any video of the aftermath of a bombing raid in Gaza and you see more people with cameras than people trying to help the wounded. If a random Belgian with a bulky camera can secretly film executions of civilians by German forces during WW1, then surely so can Gazans with much more readily available, much more concealable smartphones.
The ruling that said nothing more than to ask Israel to behave? Why would a distraction from this even be necessary?
We should have seen this coming. These same tankies have been claiming that North Korea is a workers' and peasants' paradise for years, that any non-flattering information on this country is just evil Western propaganda. I wish I was making this up. Even moderate tankies who acknowledge that NK is in a very poor shape by any metric try to blame this on Western sabotage, which is 1:1 a lie that the regime tells its own citizens.
Out go the experts, in go the yes-men. Xi has always used corruption, both real and made-up (there's plenty of either), as an excuse to get rid of people who might endanger his grip on power. With totalitarian regimes like his, expertise and experience are a considered a threat instead of being encouraged.
Thanks. I had only heard of them using explosives salvaged from ships that sank off the coast of Gaza during WW2.
Yes, from the Ottomans and also from local landowners, especially after the British took over. They preferred purchasing land with few Arab tenants in order to evict as few people as possible. This meant that much of the land was of poor quality for agricultural use, which they solved, after the founding of Israel, by coming up with innovative irrigation methods.
The problem is that those ghost cities aren't actual cities. The housing is largely worthless and uninhabitable, crumbling before it's even finished, often only "finished" to look that way from afar. You can't actually do anything with it other than tear it down.