The Houthis created a fake audio of a major Yemeni commander telling his troops to retreat which was subsequently amplified on Twitter/X, telegram, etc.
Apparently, this helped the Houthis advance quickly as the opposition forces were in disarray.
OK, that is a plausible argument given Dario's public positions. I have to admit that I keep cutting them some slack for standing up against automated kill chains, and domestic surveillance.
Automated kill chains and domestic surveillance are happening regardless of what one corporation wants. These technologies will never be inaccessible to the government or government contractors who already have zero issues navigating red tape.
The point of regulation is to kill competitors and prevent private individuals from having unfettered access.
To be clear, I don't think they're doing it because they want all the money, I think they truly believe that this is existentially threatening, and are trying to regulate their open source competition away because they think that's the way to be safe. That they can be trusted with the power, but if it's out and about, that's unsafe - they like to compare it to nukes, and they want nuclear non-proliferation.
This is the most "I get both sides" issue in my mind these days. I am still not sure where I fall, or if there is even a correct position with which to agree. It really seems like there are no good options.
On the one hand, if all knowledge work ended up in two dude's hands, that is really bad. On the other hand, if every surviving child victim of war (US, RU, IL, CN, whatever) has access to the knowledge to make custom viruses for a few grand, that is also really bad.
Yeah, it's really tough, there's so much potential good, and so much potential bad. My intuition says that decentralized will probably be better, the other way seems to concentrate power while also not really keeping it out of the hands of anyone. It doesn't seem likely that the US firms will be able to convince the Chinese to agree to an international regulatory framework for this stuff. Opinion polls there have the populace being quite optimistic about the benefits of this stuff, and I think the cat's too far out of the bag to really put it back in, anyway.
yeah and so does the ardupilot documentation including examples. A basic guidance system, which is like single waypoint navigation, is a solved problem. It's in basically every prosumer drone too.
You have far, far too much faith in the professionalism of armed forces in the developing world. 99% of it is just random 22 year old guys with guns and dual-use communication tech.
I dont know that its a matter of professionalism. Everyone in the world has known that AI can generate video and audio that is imperceptibly fake, for years. And thats to say nothing of man-made forgeries in the years prior.
I have a hard time seeing people on the front line throwing down arms and running away because of an unsourced twitter clip.
We, as in the terminally online, have known that AI can generate imperceptibly fake footage. There are still plenty of average people who still gets caught off guard.
You gotta touch grass and get outside and talk to normies.
And then recognize that the normies you talk to are VASTLY MORE internet-savvy than the illiterate child soldiers on the front lines in Yemen. You have no concept of the info environment they live in. It is all magic electronic soup.
If that's true, it's insane that it worked. It should be obvious to not take orders from twitter. There's a chain of command for a reason and random people on social media are no part of it. Sounds like the opposition forces would have to be so stupid that any number of Looney Tunes style tricks would have worked. Maybe next they can send out a rabbit in a dress to make opposition fall in love with it.
I just realized how much money one could make by hacking Truth Social and posting some "truths" under Trump's account. It's a relatively new, relatively complex platform; surely there are bugs.
> The US President routinely announces policy decisions on social media…
Yes, our current President also does stupid things, and our military forces shouldn't be using his incoherent ramblings on Twitter to make snap judgements on the battlefield without checking with their chain of command either.
> ...and our military forces shouldn't be using his incoherent ramblings on Twitter to make snap judgements on the battlefield without checking with their chain of command either.
You mean the chain of command that has been purged of experienced professionals?
This belies a fundamental misunderstanding of Yemeni society. Arab political structure is based on tribal loyalty. Leaders of tribes pledge allegiance to other tribes or coalitions of tribes. They're not part of the same command structure because such a thing does not exist. Usually instead of being defeated tribal loyalties change with the political winds and tribe leaders neogtioate with other leaders. Twitter is also ubiquitous in Arabia and the natural place for political announcements.
While that's helpful and insightful, it's not hugely the issue.
The military units are not very well organized, they don't have clear and stringent command, control and communications.
They understood a regional commander to be fleeing, units fell back.
This is kind of stuff is absolutely as old as time, and it's #1 rule in conflict aka deception.
The parallel would be reproducing a General's order to withdraw - meaning the command would have legitimacy among troops and junior officers, believing their own commanders were just out of the loop.
And yes - their command structure will be de facto organized along social lines, but it's more descriptive.
Not the military stuff but Arab tribal society, read "The First Muslim" by Lesley Hazleton, about Arab society around the year 600. It's an absolute eye-opener.
AoW is one of the most important historical treatises, it's not just 'something that was written in history', maybe the oldest true 'textbooks' of objective knowledge, and also realpolitik. Also there's hints of metaphysics in there, in a way. It absolutely stands up today.
The very first work of the Western Cannon: Trojan Horse.
Information / espionage and deception has made most of history; Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander etc.
A fun exercise would be to look at battles of history from the lens of information warfare and deception, and contemplate the outcome without it.
That sounds like a fake storyline. The much simpler explanation
is that the local Saudi merc army sucked. If you followed the
whole conflict in the last 20 years this is largely the case -
the Saudis aren't really great at warfare, typically depending on
foreign mercenaries (also for cleaning etc...). These in turn
have very low morale.
It’s actually embarrassing the industry haven’t implemented optional signing into everything with a text box,
with the press of a USB key or other device into/onto what you’re using.
This can be used to verify consistent identities for the cost of an AirTag or less - but without mandating it as a government-involved thing, which is most of the holdup.
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.
It looks like the strait is still closed, the Taliban is back in charge and Syria is run by a former ISIS fighter. I think maybe the point is that the US has put in a lot of effort and resources into these areas with no outcomes benefitting our country, or the the world even
Most southern Yemenis don't want unification. North and South Yemen were separate countries for decades. When unification first happened there was optimism but South Yemen (which is about 20% of the total population of Yemen) was always hesitant about how little political power they'd have. North Yemen is 80% of the population and, today, almost entirely controlled by the Houthis.
I don't think native Yemeni are motivated enough to fight for unification. That's why all the fighters are mercenaries hired by the UAE or Yemen
We've seen Sunni majorities in Syria and Lebanon run for generations by oppressive Shia-supremacist regimes, so while I agree that the resistance against Ansar Allah doesn't have a lot of local legitimacy, I think you have to be a little careful about reading legitimacy into the dominant power in Yemen; once a group gets the upper hand, it can be hard to shake them off. There's a whole interesting history to how Yemen got here.
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.
China has a backdoor for oil from Russia and Iran (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-ax...) which is part of what feeds their massive reserves. Russia and Iran have an interest in continuing this trade since they're sanctioned by the US and most crude is priced in USD. It's not a major source of their oil due to threats of sanctions from the US, but in a pinch they can ramp it up if needed.
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
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
The context of this is which party China would prefer to win the midterms. The dems winning would distract Trump from being able to fuck up the rest of the world a bit.
My bet would be that China doesn't care much either way, they win regardless.
We agree that China won't care long term. They cannot lose in the current setup
In my view the worst that can happen for China is that Trump gets limited by anything. He's hurting US relations more than he's hurting China short or long-term. Relations take longer to build than trade
"Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"
> "Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"
Yeah, that's the obvious answer, but I suspect there's a point where if the US fucks things up too quickly and too messily, there's fewer customers for China's crap and/or the random throws of monkey shit drag China into messes they don't feel like dealing with.
Slow erosion of the US's global power is likely better for them than an implosion that might cause collatoral damage.
> The situation you're imagining is one of a global all encompassing depression caused by a single government.
Doesn't even have to go that far (though it pretty easily can, the US is a big enough market). If the US causes a refugee crisis that affects one of China's allies, or fucks with the global oil supply enough or a thousand other things, that stuff is still annoying to China even if it's usually relatively better for them than it is for the US.
> Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
The people in the US choosing do not care if the rest of America feels it or not.
The USA can use that money that way. It's not though. Spending isn't decreasing and any savings in tax has easily been overwhelmed by the increased costs facing consumers, especially in the last two years.
> 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?
Partially true. Seems most likely that Trump didn't like the Iranian provisions for reparations to end the war. A hard stance they've taken, one Trump would never go for (because of how incompetent it would make him look), and here we are.
> Donald Trump can end this at any time if he wants.
I'm not really sure that's true. The US is no longer a credible negotiator. I'm not sure negotiating a peace would necessarily end the situation immediately.
The US isn't even negotiating. Fairly sure they don't have a full negotiating team and they're doing it via 1-2 Trump flunkeys and Pakistan intermediating.
Eh? They didn't/aren't using their stockpiles to anywhere near the extent the US has! There reserves are much bigger - they have about a years supply - yet they used less in absolute terms than the US!
What they did was aggressively reduce demand by accelerating the switch to EV's and firing up a few more coal powerstations.
In terms of influencing the midterms - I suspect China isn't anywhere near the front of the queue in hoping Trump get's a beating given the chaos he is causing.
Complaining about foreign interference is ironically straight from the Hillary playbook.
They are strategically using their stockpiles. There are a lot of factors in their strategy and some of them conflict. This has an effect on the world market.
How much of their strategy is to change elections vs other concerns I don't know.
It's so amazing to watch people (presumably Americans) over and over make everything about American domestic politics. That the only way to explain Trump's behaviour is on the domestic terms that Americans know and are comfortable with.
I see this over and over again with the Canada stuff. Or Greenland stuff. Not taking it seriously because "oh that's just Trump deflecting cuz of [Epstein|Midterms|etc]." Meanwhile the actual blast radius here is far far far outside of the domestic arena.
When will people just take this guy at his word? He says he wants to conquer or do X Y and Z. That's it. He said those things. Believe him. Stop trying to make it about yourself. (And also he wants to make personal money off manipulating the stock market and oil prices.)
It's not a good look, esp to the victims of Trump outside the US who have no power to vote in American elections and yet are victims of American power.
Yeah Chinese oil reserves were much larger than was publicly known. They immediately cut imports by a massive amount as soon as the war started and have been able to keep it up for months. Without that the economic fallout would have been far greater.
Not that they are doing it for this reason, but they have done a lot to shield trump from the consequences of his stupid war. But those supplies can only hold for so long; things can get much worse for the world economy in the near future.
20+ years of preparation does a pretty good job though.
I often wonder about the world we would live in if the Brooks Brothers Riot had not succeeded. That appears to have been the turning point for the fall of the USA, and even more sadly, humanity.
China took 5.5 million barrels per day of demand off of the table overnight. A quarter of what went through the strait. They single-handedly stopped catastrophe by months.
Even with that, global strategic petroleum reserves are quickly draining. Last I looked, the US was down to ~290M. There is a legal limit of 250M (though laws don’t matter anymore). The structural floor is also estimated to be somewhere north of 200M.
The world is about to not be able to meet all oil demand for any price.
Don't think that's 100%. They do have a ton of stockpiles and timed additional buys very well, but their reduction in oil imports (9%?) appears to be actual usage drops rather than running down stockpiles. They're at much higher levels now than when this kicked off.
Which if correct is a crazy display of flexibility in the economy
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.
This is also mentioned in the article that you linked:
> In April 2016, during UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait, Houthi representatives gave the United States a "sincere apology" for the "Death to America" slogan, claiming that the slogan was used for "domestic consumption as a means to attract support in the streets and create a common cause between their supporters to keep them united."
> During the Red Sea crisis, Houthi supporters waved the flag of Palestine every Friday during anti-Gaza genocide and anti-western attacks on Yemen demonstrations, alongside the slogan and flag of Yemen. A new Houthi slogan appeared after the group's re-designation as a terrorist organisation: "America is the mother of terrorism" set on a red background.
> A new Houthi slogan appeared after the group's re-designation as a terrorist organisation: "America is the mother of terrorism" set on a red background.
> Women, gays and infidels are pubished by Houthi police.
The EU & US don't have ANY issues supporting and financing governments that punish gays and infidels. Hint: New Syrian government, Saudi government (which is also famous for publicly beheading gays)
So why not accept the Houthis too ? Otherwise, my apologies, your stance just sounds like the usual disgusting Western sanctimonious hypocrisy.
What would you expect instead? I think the US supports the Saudis because they are the primary competitor to Iran in the middle east. But no one (?) in the middle east has great support for women, gays, or infidels.
I think you're right that strategic / economic interests have outweighed cultural issues / human rights.
Strategic / economic interests have always outweighed cultural issues / human rights. The women, gays, infidel line is purely to get political support or deflect political criticism from a portion of the population.
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.
While it is hard to say, all signs point to China not wanting to take over. That isn't to say they could, but China seems content to rule their corner of the world and let the US rule the ocean. (their corner includes Taiwan which the US is not content to allow China to rule)
Which is completely insane. The Venezuelan ship attacks have zero to do with what force was authorized for. The AUMF was for the use of force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Were people on the boats in Venezuela? No. Then it's not force authorized by that AUMF.
But Trump found a smokescreen to hide behind. And Congress is too spineless to impeach him for unauthorized use of military force. And here we are.
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
My understanding is that the Saudi are basically fighting the war in Yemen but denying it's them. The de jure government has effectively lost this war ATM.
They're making big noises about taking Sana’a in their current offensive and there's been heavier fighting than in recent months. Other than that, it's hard to tell. Personally, it seems like the Yemeni gov't forces have quite a hill to climb.
The mainstream media has made it sound like the fall of Mocha was at least somewhat surprising, but I don't think that's accurate. It was pretty clear the Houthis would reach the port as late as last week.
The Houthis are one side of a protracted civil war between North Yemen and South Yemen, which was until relatively recently two different countries, and the other side of that civil war is heavily backed by the Gulf States. The Houthis are also a Shiite minority opposing an overwhelmingly Sunni population.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 EU and Macron welcomed the new Syrian president who is a former ISIS fighter in Europe. So much about morals when hundreds of French citizens were killed by ISIS in France.
The EU is like the US, it does business with vile and despicable people if it is in its own interest.
"By some estimates, they influence 75% of legislation"
> But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
Even if the lobbying was not reason for all the bad decisions of the EU, the EU parliament has no way to actually propose any laws on its own. All the laws emanate from the commission which is also bought and paid for by you guessed it, the lobbies.
> 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.
Pakistan and Iran fought a skirmish in December 2024 [0] that was quickly deescalated, but Pakistan is increasingly misaligned with the IRGC as it's working closer with Iran's political leadership [1].
I don't expect a war to happen, but Iran will double down support for Afghanistan as well as lay the red carpet for India to continue operating in the country.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From my observations, it seems to be kind of hit and miss. Sometimes they trade, he takes money amd do what was asked. Other times, he takes money and dont do what was asked.
We dont have to imagine this. We kind of see both variants in the open.
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)
Yes this is true but the oil companies are amassing a lot of wealth the entire world is now much much more dependent on the US for oil. Giving the US much more economic leverage. Who ever cared about every day Americans?
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
> 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.
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).
People are so politically blinded that it's almost impossible to explain the plan, but to anyone with the strength to keep a level head, it's pretty clear what the plan was, and frankly it probably had a 50% success chance. But Trump rolled a critical failure on it.
Iranians were rioting against the regime, Israel intelligence handed the US a report that the collective "Head" of the Iranian regime will be all together at one place, at one time.
Cut off the head, and the rioters riding high on the win will topple the rest. Coming off of the swift clean victory in Venezuela, and Trumps incredible desire to put feathers in his cap, it was an irresistible proposition.
So he decided to cut off the head, which was successful. The miscalculation however was that the rioters got scared/apathetic rather than motivated. The power vacuum was filled by the same people who were there before. I'm sure Mossad and the CIA were probably on the ground trying to ground swell support, but evidently it didn't happen.
The only people who ever would have taken any of this as a "Plan" are the moronic current admin.
Killing a few heads of Iran was known to not be an effective strategy, because the power is in the hands of the IRGC as an institution and large group, not the figureheads. This is especially hilarious when the Trump admin was so freaking stupid, they couldn't figure this out even after it didn't work the first time. They continued trying to kill random figureheads as if that plan would have had more success if you killed people nobody had previously heard of.
None of this is "miscalculation" or bad luck or taking a reasonable gamble. It's stupidity. There was not evidence to believe this plan had a strong chance. There was no organized resistance. Claims of supporting the Kurds, a group the Trump admin has fucked over more than once (nit: Other Kurds, they aren't a single group), happened only after the war was already going tits up and involved absurd tweets about "dropping them weapons" as if that's just a thing you can do on a whim and as if the Kurds themselves were willing, ready and able to resist the Iran regime.
We did not "Cut off the head" in Venezuela. We conspired with insiders to replace one figurehead with another. It was not a victory except for extremely weird people who think abducting a foreign head of state is somehow a good thing.
The Pentagon was actively telling the admin all of this, which is why some of them were fired.
What happened was even dumber than this absurd post-hoc rationalization: Israel was fucking pissed after Oct 7th, which is reasonable, and decided that "Mowing the grass" was done, and they were going to Finally fix this. They planned to attack Iran. Their strikes over the next year were done to enable this. Shortly before their planned attacks were to start, Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first, as Iran would probably attack US bases in retaliation anyway, and may end up pulled in regardless. IE, there's a chance Kamala would also have gotten sucked into this quagmire in some fashion, depending on how Iran had reacted to just Israel's strikes. Nobody was in a strong position to tell Israel "No, don't start this war, that's stupid, it's stupid, you've already neutered all the proxy groups, just take your victory and go home"
This is Israel's war. They don't mind the straight being screwed up. They don't mind the world economy falling down.
> Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first,
I prefer the version where Bibi quietly threatens Trump with videos/etc from his island vacations.
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?
This administration keeps trying to intimidate the Fed into lowering interest rates, which makes me believe it holds that as important, and they keep claiming there isn't inflation regardless of reality. I don't think they really care about how the economy is doing, but they care about how the summary numbers look.
> But it's harmful for the average American because filling up the tank costs a lot more.
The fun part about this is that it shows what people actually care about.
What happens if petroleum prices go up? People use less. It's the entire premise of a carbon tax. Fuel costs more so people buy a hybrid or electric vehicle, power utilities find renewables or nuclear more attractive relative to natural gas, etc. In a market economy this is the primary way to get people to switch from something to alternatives -- which is pretty important if you think climate change is a problem.
This is obviously not why Trump is doing it, but it's the consequence of it anyway. So now we get to see what people care about. Do you like higher oil prices because it speeds up the transition away from fossil fuels, or dislike them because of who it is that caused it this time?
The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.
The US is the world's most 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.
Using that lens then you could view the Iran war is simply a failed ( so far ) attempt to grab Iranian oil revenues, perhaps emboldened by the relatively quick success of the Venezuela adventure.
The truth is probably much more multi-headed - though hard to see how the US would have gone to war without some assessment of their own energy situation.
This is actually a pretty popular take. And it's not just oil. US is gaining dominance in LNG as well. Qatar is now buying US LNG exports. Europe, now cut off from both Russian and Iranian oil, is the most dependent on the US its been since reconstruction.
When Iran hit some of Exxon's oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, their stock actually shot up. Because they have an even greater investment in LNG in Texas which are now incredibly valuable
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.
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.
i don't see why deals can't change. It's just a contract, the IRS could create a tax incentive for US producers to sell to US refineries at a discount. US producers could do it on their own if they so chose as well.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no reason to think someone else won’t escalate this further disrupting supplies even more. That will push prices up.
Even if they don’t, if oil can’t get through this straight it will have to go somewhere else, which will increase shipping traffic and demand for “your oil” right? And wouldn’t that also push up prices?
The Iranian-backed Houthis also struck the Saudi East-West oil pipeline [0], pumping stations and refining capability. Reductions in export output initially estimated around 700,000 barrels per day now missing from the market.
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.
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.
I am saying that adding your tribal bit to your post is just completely self defeating. And yes, the goal is indeed to avoid hurting people's feelings. I don't know why you'd mock that. People are not machines, and when you make somebody angry at you, or otherwise make him feel insulted - he'll happily argue that 2+2=5 just to avoid giving an inch to you.
Bridge building hasnt worked. Hillary's biggest campaign failure was drawing back from her deplorables comment, she should have leaned into it - thats what Trump did, go harder into division, and he's president now. Instead of being milquetoast corporate stooge full of fake politics talk, she might have seemed to actually stand for something. You're bringing 1990s politics into the 2020s and its proven multiple times it doesnt work any more. A small group of fanatics is actually more powerful than a large cohort of half-committed these days.
It's not about bridge building, but rather not bridge burning. When people are antagonistic to 'the other side', it means the last thing in the world they'd ever think of doing is aligning with you. 2028, after Iran, should be a landslide. But watch - it's going to be another coin flip. And people themselves are creating that scenario by acting like half-witted tribal kids on a playground, instead of actual thinking/empathetic adults.
Do you realise that the only reason the average US taxpayer keeps getting wrecked into one pointless forever war after the other no matter who is in power is because the elites are never held accountable for their mad self-enriching adventures?
Holding people like Hegseth (who literally insider traded defense equities right before the start of the war) and Trump accountable (who practically made a gazillion insider trading each mad meme he posted while the world burnt) is not "dividing people into teams"
It's universal. Politics in the US has become so completely broken. Last presidency was Weekend at Bernie's, now we have one where El Presidente is trying to LARP as General Jack D. Ripper.
The reason people accept, and even defend, all of this is solely because they find "the other side" detestable, and people like our GP here play exactly into this by making themselves completely detestable to anybody that's already not as far out, and in the same direction, on the partisan horseshoe of stupidity as they are.
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.
>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.
All the Kingdoms in middle east are very fragile. Gulf coast countries economies are crashing due to the blockade. Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. One Arab spring away from a new government and this could be the spark.
The goal wasn't regime change. They didn't even propose a replacement, unlike Venezuela where there was someone to step in. Trump admitted it was Israel's demand, plus there are signs of market manipulation.
Some Iranian-Americans are very pro-Shah, particularly the many kicked out during the revolution. They were celebrating the war like it'd bring back the Shah, but frustrated that the US govt and even Western media as a whole ignored the exiled royal family... because that's not the point of the war.
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.
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 western audience doesn't need the hint to dislike it - the curse upon the Jews victory to Islam and shooting random vessels and taking crew hostages (very relevant here) are doing the job just fine.
Ansar Allah is an operational arm of the IRGC, with devolved autonomy over local matters --- approximately the same relationship an American state has with the federal government. What's your issue with "Iran-backed"? They're explicitly Khomeinist and most definitely are backed by Iran.
I think people read things like "Iran-backed" and immediately frame it in terms of US/Iran conflicts, but GCC/Iran conflicts are the more salient geopolitical frame, at least until like last year.
And the Saudis asked the US to strike the Houthis because they don't trust the leadership of their own officers, but the US said "no". MbS is furious with the Trump crime family as a result. (While the Saudis have tons of US equipment but it's mostly a show force because they're unable to employ it effectively.)
People can pretend whatever they want, but this affects technology heavily too.
Everything you buy has to be shipped. That needs gas. Everything with plastic has oil in it.
Economic downturns/depressions/panics affect investment and the amount of money available for companies to keep running. Plus consumer/business demand. Especially hard on startups who aren’t profitable or don’t even have a product out yet.
Even if you ignore the extremely obvious political stuff, this will directly affect the entire audience here.
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.
There's a far cry between someone showing off some weird contraption they hacked together versus posting about the Houthi's military campaign. If you can't see that, then I'm not sure what else to say.
Totally, but I didn't say political means everything I said everything is political, which means anything a human does to any extent, tacitly or otherwise, is embedded in a power structure.
His supporters are a minority. There are others who voted for him as they felt it was the least bad option, but they are not supporters (and many of them regret their vote, though they probably would have stayed home, or voted third party). The supporters are a loud and vocal minority though.
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.
This would be the wrong conclusion to take from it. Trump is incredibly unpopular domestically and the war is dumb and pointless and was sprung on the US population by surprise and planned and executed with complete and utter incompetence, and the negative economic consequences are way out of proportion to any conceivable benefit we will get out of it. It's not a lack of resolve, it's a rational reaction to incompetent leadership.
"The West's enemies" have to be careful not to give the US an excuse to commit to a real war, rather than fight it with basically pocket change the way we are now while we look for a way out.
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.
Just so it's clear that you're trying to cause confusion: these are light water reactors that cannot in any way shape or form be used to make bombs.
Slightly harder to design and build. Much cheaper to run. Excellent for power. Bad for bombs.
And, yes, just to get ahead of your next question: the US (and Europe and Russia and China) have offered to help Iran create these. Explaining it to them. Send people and engineers who have done it. Just get them from us. Or for free. We have tried everything. Iran has systematically refused everything, yet insist their program is for peaceful purposes only.
I'm not saying Saudi Arabia is perfect, far from it. But they are not looking to destroy the world or the region, and yes, sorry to say, but Iran is.
I 100% agree Iran wants nukes, but I don't think it's a given they want to "destroy the region".
It is more likely they want to get the same level of safety countries with nukes get, e.g. North Korea's leadership is at no risen of getting a "democratizing" invasion.
Then again, who knows what the next leader will do.
Iran's current government started killing people to maintain power HOURS after they got to power. They have continued killing, constantly, people in their power, for about 55 years now. Including in january, and they're still killing more of their people for the crime of protesting one by one. They torture them first, especially if they're female.
The IRGC has constantly used every weapon they have, and by that I mean firing it, not as a means of defense, but as a means of attack. That too, is something they're still doing, before and after the US-Iran escalation.
Allowing this particular bunch of assholes get a nuclear weapon is a level of stupidity that is barely describable. If they want such a weapon for safety, that'll be the first time in their history.
And yes, I get it, a lot of people really hate Israel. There is even some justification for that. But do you believe for even one second this government will stop after bombing Israel?
> It doesn't look like foreign conquest is part of their MO.
sigh this is aljazeera ... They don't mention what Iran did in the Iran-Iraq war (Iraq gave up after ~1 year, and Iran tried to conquer Iraq for 7 years. Oh and you might want to Google "plastic keys to heaven". You see, according to the IRGC allah provides cheap demining equipment in the form of minority children. And before you say they've now stopped you might want to look at the pictures they're spreading TODAY about the Houthi's "success". There's a ~10 year old boy on those pictures ...)
If what you say is remotely true, what is the intention behind Hezbollah, the Houthi's, Iraq's religious parties, and Iran's participation in Syria's civil war (delivering the soldiers).
Please note that if you give an explanation, and you say it's "to feel safe", note that Iran helped kill 600,000 Syrians (they brought the soldiers to kill everyone). Houthi's in Yemen killed tens of thousands and starved hundreds of thousands ... to death, with Iran's help.
I mean this is what they do to feel safe, and you are trying to give an argument that they should have nukes so they'll be safe?
I'll make a guess, now you're going to "compare" it to some US actions, or perhaps Israel? And we won't be discussing that Iran's IRGC probably killed more of their own people "only to feel safe" in 3 days of January protests than Israel did in 3 years of war in Gaza.
>But they are not looking to destroy the world or the region, and yes, sorry to say, but Iran is.
Then why did Iran discontinue their other WMD programs, like much cheaper and easier to manage chemical weapons programs?
Why is Iran holding back and not targeting Israel's water infrastructure? If they just want to kill everyone they have options right now that they aren't taking.
Why does Iran hold back if they would use a nuke as soon as they get one because they just want to destroy the region?
Iran objectively wants to build a nuke, and has willingly sacrificed everything to do it, but it wouldn't have taken becoming a rogue state and trillions of dollars of GDP to kill Israel to their liking. Other than a nuke, Israel's retaliation options are fairly limited.
I didn’t say they’re given them a bomb. I said nuclear technology.
I’m just pointing out that we’re oh so happy to give people who murder gay people weapons and very advanced technology. Because they’re the bad people we like who give us cheap oil.
It’s all just used as a narrative to justify war. Like when we go invade somewhere to promote ‘democracy’ but still give money and power to all the little kingdoms with zero Democracy.
Iran had a pretty strict P5 agreement under Obama that would have prevented Iran getting nukes for sanctions relief and other benefits. For some reason, a president decided to toss it for no apparent benefit.
Trump literally said a day or two ago that if Iran had nukes, he'd treat them a lot nicer and would cozy up to them like with China, Russia, and North Korea. Given that what government wouldn't serious consider obtaining nukes if only as a matter of survival?
>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
Ansar Allah isn't even close to a majority of the population of Yemen. Yemen is majority-Sunni. Ansar Allah is a militant Zaydi revivalist movement, and what they're attempting to revive is a Zaydi caste system.
I’ll never understand this mentality. The Houthis commit human rights violations. We’re here talking about the Houthis.
We’re not talking about Israel’s war crimes, or America’s war crimes, or Japan’s war crimes, or China’s war crimes, or Cambodia’s war crimes, or Germany’s war crimes, or Britain’s, or Armenia’s, or North Korea’s, South Korea’s, Italy’s, or actually any other country’s.
So why do you think we shouldn’t condemn the Houthis?
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.
Edit: Downvote me as much you want doesn't change the facts. the front line fighters for Yemen government is Al Qaeda. It was same thing as Syria which is why we have an Al Qaeda leader as their president.
Saudi is the exactly same as Iran. Both far right countries. Both execute gays. Both don't support women's rights. Both execute kids. My point is there is no good side so the best option is not to pick a side and get out of the middle east.
As an American, I love that the American right wing immediately point out how Islamist treat gays, as if the American right isn’t still trying to outlaw gay marriage and kill trans people. Get a grip you guys.
> Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group that commits warcrimws ...
The Syrian President and current Western/Israeli "good boy" - belongs to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which has committed warcrimes which make the Houthis look like choir boys. He was former Al-Qaeda too with a multi-million dollar bounty. Done an utterly ridiculous number of beheadings, chaining & rape of women, torture, the whole galore of works carried out by a popular ruthless terrorist in a long career.
Now he is fully supported by the US AND the EU.
So, any time, any citizen of a Western nation complains about "war crimes" and wants "regime change", I call them deeply disgusting, sanctimonious hyprocrites. You fellows have lost any and all moral standing to talk about "war crimes".
Geopolitics is way too complicated for such black and white thinking. Do you know who amongst the governments of those countries decided to back this Syrian president? I certainly don't. What percentage of the (huge) populations that you're damning as "deeply disgusting, sanctimonious hypocrites" do you think know who the current Syrian president is, his history, know who amongst their governments backed him, voted for the people who backed him? Humans just physically can't keep track of everything, especially things so far outside of their daily life and physical experience. You can't reasonably hold them responsible for everything bad that happens in the world that their countries contributed to, especially things that are entirely abstract for them.
> Geopolitics is way too complicated for such black and white thinking. Do you know who amongst the governments of those countries decided to back this Syrian president? I certainly don't.
I am very much against black and white thinking. But the typical US and even EU liberal citizen is mired in such thinking when it comes to talk about "war crimes and "regime change". If you don't know who in the EU govt decided to back this Syrian President, then I can only facepalm since even as a poor, "low-IQ" third-worlder (according to MAGA folks), I am educated on the same. Please look at Ursula von der Leyen and her €620 million support package.
Yes, I will hold you folks responsible. This is not some "abstract idea" - it is basic, common knowledge and you fellows always, always fall to your media propaganda.
Really? You’ve spent the time to learn every member of the EU government that supported them? And you think that’s a good use of everyone’s time? I guarantee you that the average US citizen hasn’t bothered to do that with even their members of congress, many don’t know the name of their representative, let alone those of a foreign government, they’re generally much more concerned with how they’re going to make enough money to pay to live as costs rise. Not to mention the flurry of domestic cultural infighting related concerns.
You’re certainly free to hold whoever you want responsible, but I’d argue it’s not a realistic position. And keep in mind that it’s hard for someone living here to have an accurate view of what the average American believes, even harder for someone living outside the country - dominant opinions vary widely between regions of the US. I’m sorry that our government supports war criminals of varying degrees on our behalf, though, would certainly be nice if our leaders were more principled on that front.
> Geopolitics is way too complicated for such black and white thinking.
Your comment reeks of western superiority and exceptionalism.
Its not black and white thinking. It just hypocrisy at the highest level.
The EU does not spend a single day without going around telling anyone and everyone that human rights are very important and that we should do absolutely everything to keep things that way but then turns around and welcomes the head of a (former) terrorist group in Europe.
Even Macron welcomed the guy in Paris even though ISIS killed hundreds of French citizens.
Can anyone then reasonably blame China or India when they continue doing business with Russia? If so why the double standards?
The US and the EU love to criticize other nations but don't mind supporting war criminals and dictators when its suits them and even give them money and/or sell them weapons.
After the Ukraine war ends, I'll bet you you'll see Putin or his successor being invited to cocktail parties in Frankfurt or London, no question about it.
No, I don't blame China or India for continuing to do business with Russia, it seems completely rational for them to do so. They're powerful enough to ignore the structures the US has built to try to exert leverage internationally. Seems like you're building lots of straw men in your mind of what US/EU citizens actually think, or the propaganda apparatus you're using to keep on top of this stuff has built them for you.
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
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'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.
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 think it's a fair example given how untruthful the US administration has been about whether the strait is "open" or not compared to the practical reality. Both would work with or without quotes, but the Iranian one is quoted. Still doesn't show systematic bias, but it's what I asked for.
I'm pretty sure the Iranian one is quoted because they used the word, whereas the US one is not quoted because the statements that the reporting was pulled from never used the actual word "open."
I see how it would read as bias if one interprets them as scare quotes, but it really does just mean "this is verbatim" when used here.
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.
Yes, it's been true for a long time. See the book "Manufacturing Consent" for example, but there's been lots of research since. There are numerous ways that the western media biases news to build support for the objectives of those in power.
It would be nice to see research rather than polemics by far-leftists. Especially when that book is itself written by someone supportive of genocidal dictatorships.
“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).
On the BBC specifically, try reading through their articles, especially from early on, and tell me what the editorial slant is. Yes, most of the content is neatly wrapped in quotation marks, but what picture were they trying to paint?
My point is that both UK and Western media immediately jumped on and recirculated the claim in the first few days without confirmation. This was just enough to sear the image of beheaded babies into the minds of viewers & readers in the West, helping to justify Israel’s campaign to starve out the “human animals” and raze Gaza (a least in the mind of the avg citizen).
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.
Not reporting on Trump is not an option because his words and actions have huge ramifications for the world.
I think in general the press has gotten much better at just straight up saying that Trump is lying or wrong, as opposed to previous policy of only reporting counter claims from other parties.
I don't think that's true and would be curious to see evidence otherwise.
I believe BBC and other outlets with journalistic standards use quotes when reporting what officials say and only drop the quotes when they have independent verification, like eyewitness reports from one of their own journalists.
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.
My point about verification is simply that if the BBC had independently verified it’s true then they wouldn’t use the quote in the headline. They’d just say taken control without quote marks, because it wouldn’t be a 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.
I understand that ostensibly it is a statement of who is making the claim. But doesn't the media organization have an expectation to research and validate such claims? And so if they didn't, then that must mean that they weren't able to?
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.
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" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown)
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".
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
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.)
The Houthis created a fake audio of a major Yemeni commander telling his troops to retreat which was subsequently amplified on Twitter/X, telegram, etc.
Apparently, this helped the Houthis advance quickly as the opposition forces were in disarray.
https://x.com/BashaReport/status/2097862335494795579
[flagged]
This is the chaos that silicon valley and the current US government has fully gotten behind.
Liable for Yemeni troops taking orders from social media?
Do they have a chain of command? Are people in charge?
... even though they aren't?
Holy shit. This is really interesting. AI used to impersonate, social media to amplify, and that led to a significant tactical 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...
Yeah, I saw that. I wonder if there are any other AI labs that are naive (good?) enough to admit this type of thing.
Obviously, it's happening with all decent models.
It's not naivete/goodness, this is totally aligned with their playbook of trying to get AI to be heavily regulated.
OK, that is a plausible argument given Dario's public positions. I have to admit that I keep cutting them some slack for standing up against automated kill chains, and domestic surveillance.
Automated kill chains and domestic surveillance are happening regardless of what one corporation wants. These technologies will never be inaccessible to the government or government contractors who already have zero issues navigating red tape.
The point of regulation is to kill competitors and prevent private individuals from having unfettered access.
To be clear, I don't think they're doing it because they want all the money, I think they truly believe that this is existentially threatening, and are trying to regulate their open source competition away because they think that's the way to be safe. That they can be trusted with the power, but if it's out and about, that's unsafe - they like to compare it to nukes, and they want nuclear non-proliferation.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
This is the most "I get both sides" issue in my mind these days. I am still not sure where I fall, or if there is even a correct position with which to agree. It really seems like there are no good options.
On the one hand, if all knowledge work ended up in two dude's hands, that is really bad. On the other hand, if every surviving child victim of war (US, RU, IL, CN, whatever) has access to the knowledge to make custom viruses for a few grand, that is also really bad.
Yeah, it's really tough, there's so much potential good, and so much potential bad. My intuition says that decentralized will probably be better, the other way seems to concentrate power while also not really keeping it out of the hands of anyone. It doesn't seem likely that the US firms will be able to convince the Chinese to agree to an international regulatory framework for this stuff. Opinion polls there have the populace being quite optimistic about the benefits of this stuff, and I think the cat's too far out of the bag to really put it back in, anyway.
Makes me want to be a frontier model provider just to get the ring-side seat on what every bad actor in the world is doing.
Elon is tapping the empty seat next to him.
Where did Anthropic get that information to train their model on is a good question to ask as well.
The engineering library of your local college has all the information needed for ballistic guidance systems.
Or they don't have that information in the training data and it wasn't actually nearly as helpful for developing a missile as they claim.
yeah and so does the ardupilot documentation including examples. A basic guidance system, which is like single waypoint navigation, is a solved problem. It's in basically every prosumer drone too.
"AI is critical for National Defense."
"But I don't see it helping us, it's just helping our enemies get closer to parity ."
"Precisely. How else are we going to justify the budget?"
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet” seems like the golden rule we’ve all forgotten
Where men are men and 14-year old girls are FBI agents.
Where men are men, women are also men, and children are FBI agents.
Yet here we are, believing that the Houthis used fake AI voice to achieve a battlefield victory.
I think GP is saying that the story of fake AI voices is what's fake. HNers are the ones "falling for it". Not the Saudi merc forces
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.
Can't read the Twitter link, but that sounds made up.
Where in the battlefield decision making process are they listening to social media recordings to make combat decisions?
What do you think the chain of command looks like in the third world?
Even in the Russia/Ukraine conflict they use Telegram for basic operations. All chat applications are dual-use.
> What do you think the chain of command looks like in the third world?
I have no idea, but Im certain that twitter recordings do not put frontline forces in disarray.
> use Telegram for basic operations
an encrypted private communication channel is very different than public social media
You have far, far too much faith in the professionalism of armed forces in the developing world. 99% of it is just random 22 year old guys with guns and dual-use communication tech.
> too much faith in the professionalism
I dont know that its a matter of professionalism. Everyone in the world has known that AI can generate video and audio that is imperceptibly fake, for years. And thats to say nothing of man-made forgeries in the years prior.
I have a hard time seeing people on the front line throwing down arms and running away because of an unsourced twitter clip.
We, as in the terminally online, have known that AI can generate imperceptibly fake footage. There are still plenty of average people who still gets caught off guard.
You gotta touch grass and get outside and talk to normies.
And then recognize that the normies you talk to are VASTLY MORE internet-savvy than the illiterate child soldiers on the front lines in Yemen. You have no concept of the info environment they live in. It is all magic electronic soup.
> > What do you think the chain of command looks like in the third world?
> I have no idea, but Im certain that twitter recordings do not put frontline forces in disarray.
And yet as a counterexample: reality.
Last time I checked, group chats in Telegram weren't e2ee.
And most chat apps are either e2e encrypted or HTTPS, both of which are hard to break for third world nations.
But leaks of those messages onto twitter are probably the most valuable info source for what the enemy is doing.
Third world? Have we forgotten the Pete Hegseth Signal fiasco?
The ship of state is the only vessel that leaks from the top.
If it was involving a reasonably solid military I would agree.
Sauds, on the other hand . . .
It gave demoralized soldiers an excuse to flee rather than fight. Nobody was going to question the reprieve offered by an order to retreat, even fake.
India Today version https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/houthis-ai-cloned-yeme...
If that's true, it's insane that it worked. It should be obvious to not take orders from twitter. There's a chain of command for a reason and random people on social media are no part of it. Sounds like the opposition forces would have to be so stupid that any number of Looney Tunes style tricks would have worked. Maybe next they can send out a rabbit in a dress to make opposition fall in love with it.
Twitter is huge in KSA. Much more significant a share than other countries. Something like 60% to 70% of the population are active users.
Yep, the Commander In Chief only issues orders on Truth Social.
I just realized how much money one could make by hacking Truth Social and posting some "truths" under Trump's account. It's a relatively new, relatively complex platform; surely there are bugs.
they've already had a very similar idea at truth social themselves, they're now selling premium early access to market moving news
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/12/truth-social...
it's actually amazing to type that out and notice it's not a joke
Oh we see it as a joke outside the US, just not a very funny one.
The US President routinely announces policy decisions on social media…
You’d lose a lot of money always waiting for news through officials channels.
Who knows how slow Yemini military channels are.
You’d bet your life on it?
> The US President routinely announces policy decisions on social media…
Yes, our current President also does stupid things, and our military forces shouldn't be using his incoherent ramblings on Twitter to make snap judgements on the battlefield without checking with their chain of command either.
> ...and our military forces shouldn't be using his incoherent ramblings on Twitter to make snap judgements on the battlefield without checking with their chain of command either.
You mean the chain of command that has been purged of experienced professionals?
We really are in a bad spot aren't we. In so many ways, strategically, reputationally, introspectively. It's hard to imagine coming back from this.
> It's hard to imagine coming back from this.
You don't even need to try because it's not happening.
> You’d bet your life on it?
This is why it succeeded: lizard brain decisions overcame training in the armed forces.
Donald duck lies every other minute, especially on Fridays it seems. Fog is a tactic of war and a way to make money I guess.
This belies a fundamental misunderstanding of Yemeni society. Arab political structure is based on tribal loyalty. Leaders of tribes pledge allegiance to other tribes or coalitions of tribes. They're not part of the same command structure because such a thing does not exist. Usually instead of being defeated tribal loyalties change with the political winds and tribe leaders neogtioate with other leaders. Twitter is also ubiquitous in Arabia and the natural place for political announcements.
While that's helpful and insightful, it's not hugely the issue.
The military units are not very well organized, they don't have clear and stringent command, control and communications.
They understood a regional commander to be fleeing, units fell back.
This is kind of stuff is absolutely as old as time, and it's #1 rule in conflict aka deception.
The parallel would be reproducing a General's order to withdraw - meaning the command would have legitimacy among troops and junior officers, believing their own commanders were just out of the loop.
And yes - their command structure will be de facto organized along social lines, but it's more descriptive.
> This is kind of stuff is absolutely as old as time,
I've only very recently become interested in ancient history, so I'm still very ignorant about this.
Are there any particular examples of this tactic you'd suggest studying?
Not the military stuff but Arab tribal society, read "The First Muslim" by Lesley Hazleton, about Arab society around the year 600. It's an absolute eye-opener.
It's Art of War.
"18. All warfare is based on deception. "
AoW is one of the most important historical treatises, it's not just 'something that was written in history', maybe the oldest true 'textbooks' of objective knowledge, and also realpolitik. Also there's hints of metaphysics in there, in a way. It absolutely stands up today.
The very first work of the Western Cannon: Trojan Horse.
Information / espionage and deception has made most of history; Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander etc.
A fun exercise would be to look at battles of history from the lens of information warfare and deception, and contemplate the outcome without it.
Canon, not cannon. Then again, since this is about war, maybe it should be cannon. Lol.
While that may be true, most of the forces fighting the Houthis are Saudi hired mercenaries. Many of them are literally children from Sudan.
That sounds like a fake storyline. The much simpler explanation is that the local Saudi merc army sucked. If you followed the whole conflict in the last 20 years this is largely the case - the Saudis aren't really great at warfare, typically depending on foreign mercenaries (also for cleaning etc...). These in turn have very low morale.
If this is real, the interesting part is this Adelalhasanii user who amplified it. Seems like a Yemini who's supportive of the Houthis.
This is why you should always sign orders with your public key smh
It’s actually embarrassing the industry haven’t implemented optional signing into everything with a text box,
with the press of a USB key or other device into/onto what you’re using.
This can be used to verify consistent identities for the cost of an AirTag or less - but without mandating it as a government-involved thing, which is most of the holdup.
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.
Likely Palantir built it already
Hideo Kojima intensifies
One of the later, not as good, seasons of Westworld has that as an app
Xe Services rebrands yet again to eXe
Please stop trying to design the torment nexus.
I would bet that already exists since a while
you just described a fixer
You joke but even though there’s not an app per se, Russia is using the “gig economy” to run sabotage ops in Europe.
How do they do that?
They find telegram channels where people ask for jobs and offer them $500-2k to light a fire. There's millions of people who can't find jobs.
Damn I bet that would work well in the US too. That's actually mind-blowing
It's called Blackwater.
In the past you could just hire Swiss.
That's so 2009. What we need is mercenary Tinder.
Isn't it just blackwater, or whatever it's been renamed as?
It's not clear that non-mercenary Arab armies are much better in this respect.
It's not clear that Western armies are better either, as we've seen time and again in Iran, Afghanistan and Syria.
Politically constrained. It's just the stated goal is impossible given the political RoE.
I'm not aware of any mass desertions by Western armies.
What are you talking about here, exactly?
It looks like the strait is still closed, the Taliban is back in charge and Syria is run by a former ISIS fighter. I think maybe the point is that the US has put in a lot of effort and resources into these areas with no outcomes benefitting our country, or the the world even
Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness by Kenneth M. Pollack
It's not a perfect book, but it illustrates a lot of military failures that haven't really been encountered much in the West in the last 80 years.
Most southern Yemenis don't want unification. North and South Yemen were separate countries for decades. When unification first happened there was optimism but South Yemen (which is about 20% of the total population of Yemen) was always hesitant about how little political power they'd have. North Yemen is 80% of the population and, today, almost entirely controlled by the Houthis.
I don't think native Yemeni are motivated enough to fight for unification. That's why all the fighters are mercenaries hired by the UAE or Yemen
We've seen Sunni majorities in Syria and Lebanon run for generations by oppressive Shia-supremacist regimes, so while I agree that the resistance against Ansar Allah doesn't have a lot of local legitimacy, I think you have to be a little careful about reading legitimacy into the dominant power in Yemen; once a group gets the upper hand, it can be hard to shake them off. There's a whole interesting history to how Yemen got here.
Iraq saw massive desertion amongst all non-mercenary ranks during Desert Storm and OIF.
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.
China has a backdoor for oil from Russia and Iran (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-ax...) which is part of what feeds their massive reserves. Russia and Iran have an interest in continuing this trade since they're sanctioned by the US and most crude is priced in USD. It's not a major source of their oil due to threats of sanctions from the US, but in a pinch they can ramp it up if needed.
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
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.
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
The context of this is which party China would prefer to win the midterms. The dems winning would distract Trump from being able to fuck up the rest of the world a bit.
My bet would be that China doesn't care much either way, they win regardless.
We agree that China won't care long term. They cannot lose in the current setup
In my view the worst that can happen for China is that Trump gets limited by anything. He's hurting US relations more than he's hurting China short or long-term. Relations take longer to build than trade
"Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"
> "Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"
Yeah, that's the obvious answer, but I suspect there's a point where if the US fucks things up too quickly and too messily, there's fewer customers for China's crap and/or the random throws of monkey shit drag China into messes they don't feel like dealing with.
Slow erosion of the US's global power is likely better for them than an implosion that might cause collatoral damage.
I'm curious what you think that may be.
The situation you're imagining is one of a global all encompassing depression caused by a single government.
Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
> The situation you're imagining is one of a global all encompassing depression caused by a single government.
Doesn't even have to go that far (though it pretty easily can, the US is a big enough market). If the US causes a refugee crisis that affects one of China's allies, or fucks with the global oil supply enough or a thousand other things, that stuff is still annoying to China even if it's usually relatively better for them than it is for the US.
> Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
The people in the US choosing do not care if the rest of America feels it or not.
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...
The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
Wow, how shortsighted.
> - NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,
NATO consists of a lot of countries, why would they only work for USA shipping? And where do you think that shipping comes from?
> - tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):
Of course they do. But they're not usually idiots about it.
> The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
You advocate for tariffs but don't understand how tariffs work...
> The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
I was feeling miserable reading this thread until I saw this, thanks for cheering me up.
> The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens
How is that going? Any progress there? Are US citizens richer than they were before?
> Are US citizens richer than they were before?
Some of them certainly are richer, specifically people with the last name Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/trump-presid...
The USA can use that money that way. It's not though. Spending isn't decreasing and any savings in tax has easily been overwhelmed by the increased costs facing consumers, especially in the last two years.
it appears that you are not smart enough, or well informed enough, to comment on this.
> 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?
He can't. Bibi is in charge.
Partially true. Seems most likely that Trump didn't like the Iranian provisions for reparations to end the war. A hard stance they've taken, one Trump would never go for (because of how incompetent it would make him look), and here we are.
> Donald Trump can end this at any time if he wants.
I'm not really sure that's true. The US is no longer a credible negotiator. I'm not sure negotiating a peace would necessarily end the situation immediately.
> The US is no longer a credible negotiator.
The US isn't even negotiating. Fairly sure they don't have a full negotiating team and they're doing it via 1-2 Trump flunkeys and Pakistan intermediating.
Blaming the current situation on the actions of China is beyond bizarre.
China has some influence. They did do what was said - but only if you take the absolute most charitable reading (which is a expected here).
Eh? They didn't/aren't using their stockpiles to anywhere near the extent the US has! There reserves are much bigger - they have about a years supply - yet they used less in absolute terms than the US!
What they did was aggressively reduce demand by accelerating the switch to EV's and firing up a few more coal powerstations.
In terms of influencing the midterms - I suspect China isn't anywhere near the front of the queue in hoping Trump get's a beating given the chaos he is causing.
Complaining about foreign interference is ironically straight from the Hillary playbook.
They are strategically using their stockpiles. There are a lot of factors in their strategy and some of them conflict. This has an effect on the world market.
How much of their strategy is to change elections vs other concerns I don't know.
It's so amazing to watch people (presumably Americans) over and over make everything about American domestic politics. That the only way to explain Trump's behaviour is on the domestic terms that Americans know and are comfortable with.
I see this over and over again with the Canada stuff. Or Greenland stuff. Not taking it seriously because "oh that's just Trump deflecting cuz of [Epstein|Midterms|etc]." Meanwhile the actual blast radius here is far far far outside of the domestic arena.
When will people just take this guy at his word? He says he wants to conquer or do X Y and Z. That's it. He said those things. Believe him. Stop trying to make it about yourself. (And also he wants to make personal money off manipulating the stock market and oil prices.)
It's not a good look, esp to the victims of Trump outside the US who have no power to vote in American elections and yet are victims of American power.
> He said those things. Believe him.
He says a lot of things he doesn't do though. Beleiving him is a bad heuristic and so is disbeleiving him.
Per the OP, the Houthis say only Saudi ships are blocked, everyone else is safe.
Yeah Chinese oil reserves were much larger than was publicly known. They immediately cut imports by a massive amount as soon as the war started and have been able to keep it up for months. Without that the economic fallout would have been far greater.
Not that they are doing it for this reason, but they have done a lot to shield trump from the consequences of his stupid war. But those supplies can only hold for so long; things can get much worse for the world economy in the near future.
China is also reducing gasoline and diesel use by adoption of EVs.
A slow, ongoing reaction is not going to fix a sudden, large action.
20+ years of preparation does a pretty good job though.
I often wonder about the world we would live in if the Brooks Brothers Riot had not succeeded. That appears to have been the turning point for the fall of the USA, and even more sadly, humanity.
China took 5.5 million barrels per day of demand off of the table overnight. A quarter of what went through the strait. They single-handedly stopped catastrophe by months.
Even with that, global strategic petroleum reserves are quickly draining. Last I looked, the US was down to ~290M. There is a legal limit of 250M (though laws don’t matter anymore). The structural floor is also estimated to be somewhere north of 200M.
The world is about to not be able to meet all oil demand for any price.
Don't think that's 100%. They do have a ton of stockpiles and timed additional buys very well, but their reduction in oil imports (9%?) appears to be actual usage drops rather than running down stockpiles. They're at much higher levels now than when this kicked off.
Which if correct is a crazy display of flexibility in the economy
[9%] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-fa...
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.
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"
This is also mentioned in the article that you linked:
> In April 2016, during UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait, Houthi representatives gave the United States a "sincere apology" for the "Death to America" slogan, claiming that the slogan was used for "domestic consumption as a means to attract support in the streets and create a common cause between their supporters to keep them united."
> During the Red Sea crisis, Houthi supporters waved the flag of Palestine every Friday during anti-Gaza genocide and anti-western attacks on Yemen demonstrations, alongside the slogan and flag of Yemen. A new Houthi slogan appeared after the group's re-designation as a terrorist organisation: "America is the mother of terrorism" set on a red background.
They did that just as they began the starvation siege of Taiz.
> A new Houthi slogan appeared after the group's re-designation as a terrorist organisation: "America is the mother of terrorism" set on a red background.
Well, they're not wrong.
They are wrong. Muhammad's terror campaigns predate the US by more than a thousand years.
Kind of a good example on why conflating Judaism with Zionism leads to anti-semitism.
> Women, gays and infidels are pubished by Houthi police.
The EU & US don't have ANY issues supporting and financing governments that punish gays and infidels. Hint: New Syrian government, Saudi government (which is also famous for publicly beheading gays)
So why not accept the Houthis too ? Otherwise, my apologies, your stance just sounds like the usual disgusting Western sanctimonious hypocrisy.
What would you expect instead? I think the US supports the Saudis because they are the primary competitor to Iran in the middle east. But no one (?) in the middle east has great support for women, gays, or infidels.
I think you're right that strategic / economic interests have outweighed cultural issues / human rights.
Strategic / economic interests have always outweighed cultural issues / human rights. The women, gays, infidel line is purely to get political support or deflect political criticism from a portion of the population.
I remember hearing from leftwing media how Kurdish fighters are feminists and LGBT-friendly. Look I have nothing for or against them, but lol.
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.
One of the best solutions would have been doing what we can to get off oil.
Luckily, we reversed that policy and have been using as much oil as possible.
All hail the great barrel of goo.
well duh... oil companies dude. You think those executives are going to accept declining profits?
While it is hard to say, all signs point to China not wanting to take over. That isn't to say they could, but China seems content to rule their corner of the world and let the US rule the ocean. (their corner includes Taiwan which the US is not content to allow China to rule)
I think USA has not been at war like less than 5 years in total since its creation.
source: https://www.raffaellocortina.it/scheda-libro/piergiorgio-odi...
I don't have the book here with me so I cannot check the exact amount of years but it's ridiculously small.
Do please tell me what years we were at war between Vietnam and Desert Storm...
Kosovo and Grenada, to name two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
Plenty to consider there
There is no AUMF, and I believe Congress already repealed previous ones?
I thought the remaining issues were a dispute related to the timing requirements in the War Powers Resolution, plus unsettled Constitutional law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...
The 2001 AUMF hasn't been repealed. It was used as recently as 2025 to justify attacks on Venezuelan ships.
Which is completely insane. The Venezuelan ship attacks have zero to do with what force was authorized for. The AUMF was for the use of force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Were people on the boats in Venezuela? No. Then it's not force authorized by that AUMF.
But Trump found a smokescreen to hide behind. And Congress is too spineless to impeach him for unauthorized use of military force. And here we are.
It was 1991 and 2002 AUMFs that were repealed in December 2025. I appreciate the correction.
(That said, the 2001 AUMF hasn't been invoked against Iran.)
Theres videos of American MRAP armored vehicles that they've captured starting to show up on Telegram/X etc now
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
My understanding is that the Saudi are basically fighting the war in Yemen but denying it's them. The de jure government has effectively lost this war ATM.
They're making big noises about taking Sana’a in their current offensive and there's been heavier fighting than in recent months. Other than that, it's hard to tell. Personally, it seems like the Yemeni gov't forces have quite a hill to climb.
The mainstream media has made it sound like the fall of Mocha was at least somewhat surprising, but I don't think that's accurate. It was pretty clear the Houthis would reach the port as late as last week.
The Houthis are one side of a protracted civil war between North Yemen and South Yemen, which was until relatively recently two different countries, and the other side of that civil war is heavily backed by the Gulf States. The Houthis are also a Shiite minority opposing an overwhelmingly Sunni population.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 EU and Macron welcomed the new Syrian president who is a former ISIS fighter in Europe. So much about morals when hundreds of French citizens were killed by ISIS in France.
The EU is like the US, it does business with vile and despicable people if it is in its own interest.
> Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests
It's an open secret that Russian money is deep, deep in European politics.
> Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests,
The European parliament has been bought 10 times over by the lobbies.
See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...
"By some estimates, they influence 75% of legislation"
> But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
Even if the lobbying was not reason for all the bad decisions of the EU, the EU parliament has no way to actually propose any laws on its own. All the laws emanate from the commission which is also bought and paid for by you guessed it, the lobbies.
> 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.
A Pakistan-Iran war was not on my bingo card.
Pakistan and Iran fought a skirmish in December 2024 [0] that was quickly deescalated, but Pakistan is increasingly misaligned with the IRGC as it's working closer with Iran's political leadership [1].
I don't expect a war to happen, but Iran will double down support for Afghanistan as well as lay the red carpet for India to continue operating in the country.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan_cro...
[1] - https://quwa.org/pakistan-defence-news/pakistan-iran-mediati...
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.
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.
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 just dont think these guy are even capable to plan that much.
Then you probably believe that the US government only consists of the half dozen clowns you see on TV every day.
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.
Its been way more effective at murdering US citizens for sure.
The ICE recruits are raising the bar.
Oh and now the FBI can consider those with a background in bestiality, so lots of fresh talent there
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.
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.
Yes, if the rest just listens and executes their wishes, then you're all clowns.
I personally believe the well-sourced journalism explaining how the President ignored the opinions of Government experts to do what he wanted.
> https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/iran-war-warn...
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.
From my observations, it seems to be kind of hit and miss. Sometimes they trade, he takes money amd do what was asked. Other times, he takes money and dont do what was asked.
We dont have to imagine this. We kind of see both variants in the open.
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)
Thats just the weekly circus. If Dems win everything this election, the next circus will be months of impeachment inquiries followed by no action.
If more action is even more meddling with Middle East countries, at this point no-action might be the right thing to do...
Yes this is true but the oil companies are amassing a lot of wealth the entire world is now much much more dependent on the US for oil. Giving the US much more economic leverage. Who ever cared about every day Americans?
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
Military industrial complex. all the companies who make an supply weapon or technology to the US military basically. lockheed and palantir and so on
It's nice to think there was some sort of plan, but the truth is much scarier.
>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.
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).
"concept of a plan"
Why do you believe "there were pieces of a plan"? Any reporting to corroborate that theory?
People are so politically blinded that it's almost impossible to explain the plan, but to anyone with the strength to keep a level head, it's pretty clear what the plan was, and frankly it probably had a 50% success chance. But Trump rolled a critical failure on it.
Iranians were rioting against the regime, Israel intelligence handed the US a report that the collective "Head" of the Iranian regime will be all together at one place, at one time.
Cut off the head, and the rioters riding high on the win will topple the rest. Coming off of the swift clean victory in Venezuela, and Trumps incredible desire to put feathers in his cap, it was an irresistible proposition.
So he decided to cut off the head, which was successful. The miscalculation however was that the rioters got scared/apathetic rather than motivated. The power vacuum was filled by the same people who were there before. I'm sure Mossad and the CIA were probably on the ground trying to ground swell support, but evidently it didn't happen.
Has the cut off the head strategy ever worked in any US operation for replacing a leader with someone outside of their existing network?
The only people who ever would have taken any of this as a "Plan" are the moronic current admin.
Killing a few heads of Iran was known to not be an effective strategy, because the power is in the hands of the IRGC as an institution and large group, not the figureheads. This is especially hilarious when the Trump admin was so freaking stupid, they couldn't figure this out even after it didn't work the first time. They continued trying to kill random figureheads as if that plan would have had more success if you killed people nobody had previously heard of.
None of this is "miscalculation" or bad luck or taking a reasonable gamble. It's stupidity. There was not evidence to believe this plan had a strong chance. There was no organized resistance. Claims of supporting the Kurds, a group the Trump admin has fucked over more than once (nit: Other Kurds, they aren't a single group), happened only after the war was already going tits up and involved absurd tweets about "dropping them weapons" as if that's just a thing you can do on a whim and as if the Kurds themselves were willing, ready and able to resist the Iran regime.
We did not "Cut off the head" in Venezuela. We conspired with insiders to replace one figurehead with another. It was not a victory except for extremely weird people who think abducting a foreign head of state is somehow a good thing.
The Pentagon was actively telling the admin all of this, which is why some of them were fired.
What happened was even dumber than this absurd post-hoc rationalization: Israel was fucking pissed after Oct 7th, which is reasonable, and decided that "Mowing the grass" was done, and they were going to Finally fix this. They planned to attack Iran. Their strikes over the next year were done to enable this. Shortly before their planned attacks were to start, Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first, as Iran would probably attack US bases in retaliation anyway, and may end up pulled in regardless. IE, there's a chance Kamala would also have gotten sucked into this quagmire in some fashion, depending on how Iran had reacted to just Israel's strikes. Nobody was in a strong position to tell Israel "No, don't start this war, that's stupid, it's stupid, you've already neutered all the proxy groups, just take your victory and go home"
This is Israel's war. They don't mind the straight being screwed up. They don't mind the world economy falling down.
> Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first,
I prefer the version where Bibi quietly threatens Trump with videos/etc from his island vacations.
I observe mostly short term opportunism. Powerful people deliberately injecting chaos for financial profit.
Negative externalities:
- loss of trust
- loss of evidence based policy
- loss of long-term planning
- loss of talent
- financial loss for almost all except the rare insiders
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?
This administration keeps trying to intimidate the Fed into lowering interest rates, which makes me believe it holds that as important, and they keep claiming there isn't inflation regardless of reality. I don't think they really care about how the economy is doing, but they care about how the summary numbers look.
> But it's harmful for the average American because filling up the tank costs a lot more.
The fun part about this is that it shows what people actually care about.
What happens if petroleum prices go up? People use less. It's the entire premise of a carbon tax. Fuel costs more so people buy a hybrid or electric vehicle, power utilities find renewables or nuclear more attractive relative to natural gas, etc. In a market economy this is the primary way to get people to switch from something to alternatives -- which is pretty important if you think climate change is a problem.
This is obviously not why Trump is doing it, but it's the consequence of it anyway. So now we get to see what people care about. Do you like higher oil prices because it speeds up the transition away from fossil fuels, or dislike them because of who it is that caused it this time?
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.
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?
The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.
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 most 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.
You honestly think the Trump administration is intelligent enough to think all of that through and execute it?
Using that lens then you could view the Iran war is simply a failed ( so far ) attempt to grab Iranian oil revenues, perhaps emboldened by the relatively quick success of the Venezuela adventure.
The truth is probably much more multi-headed - though hard to see how the US would have gone to war without some assessment of their own energy situation.
This is actually a pretty popular take. And it's not just oil. US is gaining dominance in LNG as well. Qatar is now buying US LNG exports. Europe, now cut off from both Russian and Iranian oil, is the most dependent on the US its been since reconstruction.
When Iran hit some of Exxon's oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, their stock actually shot up. Because they have an even greater investment in LNG in Texas which are now incredibly valuable
What about the SPR being in salt caves being pumped out with water?
That can't end well?
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.
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 ?
What's next? Full blown communism?
In any case, bad idea if other retaliate with their exports.
Also, US cannot really use the oil it produces, because it can refine very little of it.
Any export ban would require massive investments.
Yes, the US was a full-blown communist nation until 2015, when Congress repealed the long-standing ban on exports of crude oil.
i don't see why deals can't change. It's just a contract, the IRS could create a tax incentive for US producers to sell to US refineries at a discount. US producers could do it on their own if they so chose as well.
I don't understand how do you think that would work and who would pay the bill.
The US produces light oil that's easier to refine and hence more profitable to export since it has many buyers.
The US refines heavy oil that's harder to refine and hence more profitable to import since it has few buyers.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/james-franco-first-time
> 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.
Aren’t these groups working with, no against, China?
And against, not with, Western Europe?
So being prices down where, in eastern Europe?
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.
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.
Why wouldn’t they go up?
Instability is instability. Oil is fungible.
There’s no reason to think someone else won’t escalate this further disrupting supplies even more. That will push prices up.
Even if they don’t, if oil can’t get through this straight it will have to go somewhere else, which will increase shipping traffic and demand for “your oil” right? And wouldn’t that also push up prices?
Not today.
The Iranian-backed Houthis also struck the Saudi East-West oil pipeline [0], pumping stations and refining capability. Reductions in export output initially estimated around 700,000 barrels per day now missing from the market.
[0] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Oil...
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.
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”
I am saying that adding your tribal bit to your post is just completely self defeating. And yes, the goal is indeed to avoid hurting people's feelings. I don't know why you'd mock that. People are not machines, and when you make somebody angry at you, or otherwise make him feel insulted - he'll happily argue that 2+2=5 just to avoid giving an inch to you.
Bridge building hasnt worked. Hillary's biggest campaign failure was drawing back from her deplorables comment, she should have leaned into it - thats what Trump did, go harder into division, and he's president now. Instead of being milquetoast corporate stooge full of fake politics talk, she might have seemed to actually stand for something. You're bringing 1990s politics into the 2020s and its proven multiple times it doesnt work any more. A small group of fanatics is actually more powerful than a large cohort of half-committed these days.
It's not about bridge building, but rather not bridge burning. When people are antagonistic to 'the other side', it means the last thing in the world they'd ever think of doing is aligning with you. 2028, after Iran, should be a landslide. But watch - it's going to be another coin flip. And people themselves are creating that scenario by acting like half-witted tribal kids on a playground, instead of actual thinking/empathetic adults.
Not even many MAGA supporters were in favor of war with Iran. Bots on Twitter, sure.
Do you realise that the only reason the average US taxpayer keeps getting wrecked into one pointless forever war after the other no matter who is in power is because the elites are never held accountable for their mad self-enriching adventures?
Holding people like Hegseth (who literally insider traded defense equities right before the start of the war) and Trump accountable (who practically made a gazillion insider trading each mad meme he posted while the world burnt) is not "dividing people into teams"
> Do you even realize that one of the only reason anybody still supports this war is precisely because of comments like yours
that seems like a moronic reason to support a moronic war.
It's universal. Politics in the US has become so completely broken. Last presidency was Weekend at Bernie's, now we have one where El Presidente is trying to LARP as General Jack D. Ripper.
The reason people accept, and even defend, all of this is solely because they find "the other side" detestable, and people like our GP here play exactly into this by making themselves completely detestable to anybody that's already not as far out, and in the same direction, on the partisan horseshoe of stupidity as they are.
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.
> 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.
All the Kingdoms in middle east are very fragile. Gulf coast countries economies are crashing due to the blockade. Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. One Arab spring away from a new government and this could be the spark.
The goal wasn't regime change. They didn't even propose a replacement, unlike Venezuela where there was someone to step in. Trump admitted it was Israel's demand, plus there are signs of market manipulation.
Some Iranian-Americans are very pro-Shah, particularly the many kicked out during the revolution. They were celebrating the war like it'd bring back the Shah, but frustrated that the US govt and even Western media as a whole ignored the exiled royal family... because that's not the point of the war.
China has a base in Djibouti. Since our Burger overlords are failing their appointed tasks maybe it's time for Soy to rise.
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.
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"
its a hint to the western audience that they're supposed to be sad about this.
The western audience doesn't need the hint to dislike it - the curse upon the Jews victory to Islam and shooting random vessels and taking crew hostages (very relevant here) are doing the job just fine.
The first question should be: who supplies their military equipment?
The next question should be: who benefits?
Ansar Allah is an operational arm of the IRGC, with devolved autonomy over local matters --- approximately the same relationship an American state has with the federal government. What's your issue with "Iran-backed"? They're explicitly Khomeinist and most definitely are backed by Iran.
I think people read things like "Iran-backed" and immediately frame it in terms of US/Iran conflicts, but GCC/Iran conflicts are the more salient geopolitical frame, at least until like last year.
Why exactly is the USA engaged in warfare there? Didn't Trump claim he will end perpetual warfare - and now he is doing the opposite?
The Century of American Humiliation continues
By your reckoning, what was the starting date?
In other news, Cantor Fitzgerald lost about 150 information-technology workers when the north tower collapsed on this day 25 years ago.
And the Saudis asked the US to strike the Houthis because they don't trust the leadership of their own officers, but the US said "no". MbS is furious with the Trump crime family as a result. (While the Saudis have tons of US equipment but it's mostly a show force because they're unable to employ it effectively.)
I wonder why the US refused. Did MbS's check bounce or is Trump worried about another quagmire before the midterm elections?
Will MbS place a phone call to Pakistan National Command if his oil shipments get distilled for too long?
Maybe they should not bribe Trump in the first place. You give money to a crook to help him prior election, it is only fair for him to cheat on you.
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.
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?
People can pretend whatever they want, but this affects technology heavily too.
Everything you buy has to be shipped. That needs gas. Everything with plastic has oil in it.
Economic downturns/depressions/panics affect investment and the amount of money available for companies to keep running. Plus consumer/business demand. Especially hard on startups who aren’t profitable or don’t even have a product out yet.
Even if you ignore the extremely obvious political stuff, this will directly affect the entire audience here.
As if the endless deluge of AI, Meta Glasses and Flock camera articles are full of friendly banter.
If you have showdead=true, you will see way, way more flagged comments under anything that is political, or even has a Israel connection in it.
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.
There's a far cry between someone showing off some weird contraption they hacked together versus posting about the Houthi's military campaign. If you can't see that, then I'm not sure what else to say.
What you're suggesting is that it's a spectrum and I agree. I don't know what to tell you.
“political” has a meaning, and it’s not “everything”.
Words mean things.
Totally, but I didn't say political means everything I said everything is political, which means anything a human does to any extent, tacitly or otherwise, is embedded in a power structure.
It is also not really appropriate for HN.
Fuel prices is appropriate content for hacker news if EVs are appropriate content for hacker news. Just like electricity price is appropriate content.
What's appropriate for HN is decided by the attention of HN, no matter what you or I personally think or prefer.
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?
Because his supporters have huge trucks and need tons of gas.
His supporters are a minority. There are others who voted for him as they felt it was the least bad option, but they are not supporters (and many of them regret their vote, though they probably would have stayed home, or voted third party). The supporters are a loud and vocal minority though.
The $5,000 dividend he's promised will buy a lot of gas.
The $5,000 dividend IS a lot of gas, and really that's all it is.
Wait for the November
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.
You misunderstood; it was actually "no, more wars!"
Works on commission?
No! Money down!
... and now a low, and continuing to decrease, number of protective missiles.
> the US has no resolve.
This would be the wrong conclusion to take from it. Trump is incredibly unpopular domestically and the war is dumb and pointless and was sprung on the US population by surprise and planned and executed with complete and utter incompetence, and the negative economic consequences are way out of proportion to any conceivable benefit we will get out of it. It's not a lack of resolve, it's a rational reaction to incompetent leadership.
"The West's enemies" have to be careful not to give the US an excuse to commit to a real war, rather than fight it with basically pocket change the way we are now while we look for a way out.
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...
Just so it's clear that you're trying to cause confusion: these are light water reactors that cannot in any way shape or form be used to make bombs.
Slightly harder to design and build. Much cheaper to run. Excellent for power. Bad for bombs.
And, yes, just to get ahead of your next question: the US (and Europe and Russia and China) have offered to help Iran create these. Explaining it to them. Send people and engineers who have done it. Just get them from us. Or for free. We have tried everything. Iran has systematically refused everything, yet insist their program is for peaceful purposes only.
I'm not saying Saudi Arabia is perfect, far from it. But they are not looking to destroy the world or the region, and yes, sorry to say, but Iran is.
I 100% agree Iran wants nukes, but I don't think it's a given they want to "destroy the region".
It is more likely they want to get the same level of safety countries with nukes get, e.g. North Korea's leadership is at no risen of getting a "democratizing" invasion.
Then again, who knows what the next leader will do.
Iran's current government started killing people to maintain power HOURS after they got to power. They have continued killing, constantly, people in their power, for about 55 years now. Including in january, and they're still killing more of their people for the crime of protesting one by one. They torture them first, especially if they're female.
The IRGC has constantly used every weapon they have, and by that I mean firing it, not as a means of defense, but as a means of attack. That too, is something they're still doing, before and after the US-Iran escalation.
Allowing this particular bunch of assholes get a nuclear weapon is a level of stupidity that is barely describable. If they want such a weapon for safety, that'll be the first time in their history.
And yes, I get it, a lot of people really hate Israel. There is even some justification for that. But do you believe for even one second this government will stop after bombing Israel?
It got me curious, so I took a look at what Iran has been up to.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/13/a-timeline-of-crise...
It doesn't look like foreign conquest is part of their MO.
> It doesn't look like foreign conquest is part of their MO.
sigh this is aljazeera ... They don't mention what Iran did in the Iran-Iraq war (Iraq gave up after ~1 year, and Iran tried to conquer Iraq for 7 years. Oh and you might want to Google "plastic keys to heaven". You see, according to the IRGC allah provides cheap demining equipment in the form of minority children. And before you say they've now stopped you might want to look at the pictures they're spreading TODAY about the Houthi's "success". There's a ~10 year old boy on those pictures ...)
If what you say is remotely true, what is the intention behind Hezbollah, the Houthi's, Iraq's religious parties, and Iran's participation in Syria's civil war (delivering the soldiers).
Please note that if you give an explanation, and you say it's "to feel safe", note that Iran helped kill 600,000 Syrians (they brought the soldiers to kill everyone). Houthi's in Yemen killed tens of thousands and starved hundreds of thousands ... to death, with Iran's help.
I mean this is what they do to feel safe, and you are trying to give an argument that they should have nukes so they'll be safe?
I'll make a guess, now you're going to "compare" it to some US actions, or perhaps Israel? And we won't be discussing that Iran's IRGC probably killed more of their own people "only to feel safe" in 3 days of January protests than Israel did in 3 years of war in Gaza.
I think you need to just pause for a moment of reflection and look at the number of countries the USA has invaded vs the number Iran has invaded.
And then maybe look at the number of nuclear bombs used against other nations.
On that second note what about the plant in Bushehr?
>But they are not looking to destroy the world or the region, and yes, sorry to say, but Iran is.
Then why did Iran discontinue their other WMD programs, like much cheaper and easier to manage chemical weapons programs?
Why is Iran holding back and not targeting Israel's water infrastructure? If they just want to kill everyone they have options right now that they aren't taking.
Why does Iran hold back if they would use a nuke as soon as they get one because they just want to destroy the region?
Iran objectively wants to build a nuke, and has willingly sacrificed everything to do it, but it wouldn't have taken becoming a rogue state and trillions of dollars of GDP to kill Israel to their liking. Other than a nuke, Israel's retaliation options are fairly limited.
I didn’t say they’re given them a bomb. I said nuclear technology.
I’m just pointing out that we’re oh so happy to give people who murder gay people weapons and very advanced technology. Because they’re the bad people we like who give us cheap oil.
It’s all just used as a narrative to justify war. Like when we go invade somewhere to promote ‘democracy’ but still give money and power to all the little kingdoms with zero Democracy.
Iran had a pretty strict P5 agreement under Obama that would have prevented Iran getting nukes for sanctions relief and other benefits. For some reason, a president decided to toss it for no apparent benefit.
Trump literally said a day or two ago that if Iran had nukes, he'd treat them a lot nicer and would cozy up to them like with China, Russia, and North Korea. Given that what government wouldn't serious consider obtaining nukes if only as a matter of survival?
>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
Their size - gained by brutal conquest - does not increase their legitimacy, it’s an Islamist group.
I decry the legitimacy of my coffee table, but my toe still hurts when I kick it.
Brutal conquest is a pretty well traveled path to legitimacy.
Power is taken, and regardless of the ideals of the takers, enough power grants legitimacy.
So is taliban, yet they both rule a country.
> when in reality they basically are the government of 70-80% population of Yemen and absorbed 60+ percent of the Yemeni regular army.
sure, they took this by force while killing those who disagree. Its part of Sunni vs Shia confrontation, and Yemen is majority Sunni.
Ansar Allah isn't even close to a majority of the population of Yemen. Yemen is majority-Sunni. Ansar Allah is a militant Zaydi revivalist movement, and what they're attempting to revive is a Zaydi caste system.
>Ansar Allah isn't even close to a majority of the population of Yemen.
I never said that. The areas they control have about 70-80% of Yemen's population though.
Yes, that sounds about right. And it's very, very bad.
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.
I’ll never understand this mentality. The Houthis commit human rights violations. We’re here talking about the Houthis.
We’re not talking about Israel’s war crimes, or America’s war crimes, or Japan’s war crimes, or China’s war crimes, or Cambodia’s war crimes, or Germany’s war crimes, or Britain’s, or Armenia’s, or North Korea’s, South Korea’s, Italy’s, or actually any other country’s.
So why do you think we shouldn’t condemn the Houthis?
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.
Edit: Downvote me as much you want doesn't change the facts. the front line fighters for Yemen government is Al Qaeda. It was same thing as Syria which is why we have an Al Qaeda leader as their president.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/02/middleeast/yemen-los...
Yes, but there is growing cooperation between Sunni and Shia Islamists. Support none, all kill gays, infidels and “misbehaving” women.
Saudi is the exactly same as Iran. Both far right countries. Both execute gays. Both don't support women's rights. Both execute kids. My point is there is no good side so the best option is not to pick a side and get out of the middle east.
Houthis are allied/in the early stages of an alliance with Al-Shabab though
Aren’t they all? I guess it is better that they fight each other.
Hopefully there will be another epic fury operation to clear the situation
As an American, I love that the American right wing immediately point out how Islamist treat gays, as if the American right isn’t still trying to outlaw gay marriage and kill trans people. Get a grip you guys.
> Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group that commits warcrimws ...
The Syrian President and current Western/Israeli "good boy" - belongs to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which has committed warcrimes which make the Houthis look like choir boys. He was former Al-Qaeda too with a multi-million dollar bounty. Done an utterly ridiculous number of beheadings, chaining & rape of women, torture, the whole galore of works carried out by a popular ruthless terrorist in a long career.
Now he is fully supported by the US AND the EU.
So, any time, any citizen of a Western nation complains about "war crimes" and wants "regime change", I call them deeply disgusting, sanctimonious hyprocrites. You fellows have lost any and all moral standing to talk about "war crimes".
Geopolitics is way too complicated for such black and white thinking. Do you know who amongst the governments of those countries decided to back this Syrian president? I certainly don't. What percentage of the (huge) populations that you're damning as "deeply disgusting, sanctimonious hypocrites" do you think know who the current Syrian president is, his history, know who amongst their governments backed him, voted for the people who backed him? Humans just physically can't keep track of everything, especially things so far outside of their daily life and physical experience. You can't reasonably hold them responsible for everything bad that happens in the world that their countries contributed to, especially things that are entirely abstract for them.
> Geopolitics is way too complicated for such black and white thinking. Do you know who amongst the governments of those countries decided to back this Syrian president? I certainly don't.
I am very much against black and white thinking. But the typical US and even EU liberal citizen is mired in such thinking when it comes to talk about "war crimes and "regime change". If you don't know who in the EU govt decided to back this Syrian President, then I can only facepalm since even as a poor, "low-IQ" third-worlder (according to MAGA folks), I am educated on the same. Please look at Ursula von der Leyen and her €620 million support package.
Yes, I will hold you folks responsible. This is not some "abstract idea" - it is basic, common knowledge and you fellows always, always fall to your media propaganda.
Really? You’ve spent the time to learn every member of the EU government that supported them? And you think that’s a good use of everyone’s time? I guarantee you that the average US citizen hasn’t bothered to do that with even their members of congress, many don’t know the name of their representative, let alone those of a foreign government, they’re generally much more concerned with how they’re going to make enough money to pay to live as costs rise. Not to mention the flurry of domestic cultural infighting related concerns.
You’re certainly free to hold whoever you want responsible, but I’d argue it’s not a realistic position. And keep in mind that it’s hard for someone living here to have an accurate view of what the average American believes, even harder for someone living outside the country - dominant opinions vary widely between regions of the US. I’m sorry that our government supports war criminals of varying degrees on our behalf, though, would certainly be nice if our leaders were more principled on that front.
> Geopolitics is way too complicated for such black and white thinking.
Your comment reeks of western superiority and exceptionalism.
Its not black and white thinking. It just hypocrisy at the highest level.
The EU does not spend a single day without going around telling anyone and everyone that human rights are very important and that we should do absolutely everything to keep things that way but then turns around and welcomes the head of a (former) terrorist group in Europe.
Even Macron welcomed the guy in Paris even though ISIS killed hundreds of French citizens.
Can anyone then reasonably blame China or India when they continue doing business with Russia? If so why the double standards?
The US and the EU love to criticize other nations but don't mind supporting war criminals and dictators when its suits them and even give them money and/or sell them weapons.
After the Ukraine war ends, I'll bet you you'll see Putin or his successor being invited to cocktail parties in Frankfurt or London, no question about it.
No, I don't blame China or India for continuing to do business with Russia, it seems completely rational for them to do so. They're powerful enough to ignore the structures the US has built to try to exert leverage internationally. Seems like you're building lots of straw men in your mind of what US/EU citizens actually think, or the propaganda apparatus you're using to keep on top of this stuff has built them for you.
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
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.
They need to start doing this when other "regimes" make wild claims.
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
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 think it's a fair example given how untruthful the US administration has been about whether the strait is "open" or not compared to the practical reality. Both would work with or without quotes, but the Iranian one is quoted. Still doesn't show systematic bias, but it's what I asked for.
I'm pretty sure the Iranian one is quoted because they used the word, whereas the US one is not quoted because the statements that the reporting was pulled from never used the actual word "open."
I see how it would read as bias if one interprets them as scare quotes, but it really does just mean "this is verbatim" when used here.
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.
I am not saying this is necessarily incorrect but is it empirically actually true. Have people compared lots of different articles.
Yes, it's been true for a long time. See the book "Manufacturing Consent" for example, but there's been lots of research since. There are numerous ways that the western media biases news to build support for the objectives of those in power.
It would be nice to see research rather than polemics by far-leftists. Especially when that book is itself written by someone supportive of genocidal dictatorships.
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.
There's a well researched report on this bias:
https://cfmm.org.uk/resource/bbc-on-gaza-israel-one-story-do...
Thanks, haven’t seen this before.
As far as I can find, every mention of beheaded babies in the BBC is explicitly a statement of other people's claims and not a statement of fact.
I was not talking specifically about the BBC.
On the BBC specifically, try reading through their articles, especially from early on, and tell me what the editorial slant is. Yes, most of the content is neatly wrapped in quotation marks, but what picture were they trying to paint?
On UK media in general: https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-...
My point is that both UK and Western media immediately jumped on and recirculated the claim in the first few days without confirmation. This was just enough to sear the image of beheaded babies into the minds of viewers & readers in the West, helping to justify Israel’s campaign to starve out the “human animals” and raze Gaza (a least in the mind of the avg citizen).
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.
There is no way to win that battle.
Not reporting on Trump is not an option because his words and actions have huge ramifications for the world.
I think in general the press has gotten much better at just straight up saying that Trump is lying or wrong, as opposed to previous policy of only reporting counter claims from other parties.
I don't think that's true and would be curious to see evidence otherwise.
I believe BBC and other outlets with journalistic standards use quotes when reporting what officials say and only drop the quotes when they have independent verification, like eyewitness reports from one of their own journalists.
They do.
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.
My point about verification is simply that if the BBC had independently verified it’s true then they wouldn’t use the quote in the headline. They’d just say taken control without quote marks, because it wouldn’t be a quote.
My point is that they always use quotes when quoting even if it is verified by them to be true.
Reporting discourse is different from reporting fact, and I do not know the BBC for reporting unverified discourse or facts.
Presumably to indicate that the parts in quotes are indeed quoted literally from the source that is mentioned in the same sentence?
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!
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.
I understand that ostensibly it is a statement of who is making the claim. But doesn't the media organization have an expectation to research and validate such claims? And so if they didn't, then that must mean that they weren't able to?
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 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.
I don't think reputable US news outlets use quotation marks in the way you say they do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...
The BBC only assumes government sources as truth when it's from the crown or Israeli / US governments
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.
In that case, that seems like a variation of the "past exonerative tense".
Do you consider every trial defendant to be exonerated?
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown)
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.
Do the BBC or other outlets use "officer-involved incident" without quotes?
It's generally police officials that use that terminology.
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".
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.
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.)