And here I was thinking that it takes one side to start a war but two to stop it. The US seems to be in a no win scenario. Either they just call it a day while publicly claiming victory, which in practice results in an Iranian victory, or they commit to a ground campaign, which is Afghanistan all over again but much bigger in scope.
Oh Boy. A keyboard warrior who tries to compensate for a lack of courage with a wall of text. Have a great life. I hope you come up with something good to do during the rest of it.
That’s a very sad point, if true. I’m old enough to remember coverage of that event on the evening news. How can a clear and obvious case of ethnic cleansing be downplayed?
I was in Afghanistan, first serving with the Dutch armed forces and later working for a company that built clinics and schools. After that I worked in eastern Africa for a rural electrification programme. While parts of these efforts may have been fruitless in hindsight, I still stand by these choices.
What have you done? I feel like I was (and am) willing to work towards putting an end to atrocities, at least within my limited influence. I am willing. Therefore I expect a similar level of caring for the lives of others from others.
It’s so frustrating that we are living through an active genocide (again) and doing absolutely nothing (again). In my youth, when there wasn’t yet a 24 hour news cycle and I learned about the genocide in Rwanda as a teenager, it was my naive belief at the time that a lack of knowledge was the main reason for the general indifference in “the West”. A year later the genocide in Bosnia, especially the massacre at Srebrenica, was headline news in my home country of the Netherlands and yet people seemed to collectively just shrug that off just as quickly as it happened. Now, many years later, I’ve become much more cynical. If you want people to care about unjustified murder you should either make sure to have your country located really really close to “the West”, but even that is just of limited use to Ukraine, or make sure that the killing happens to take place at the hands of mostly Jewish people, although most Palestinians can attest to the fact that while media attention is good, action is still lacking.
She must be lying. After all, she’s talking.
Yes, the IOC, along with FIFA and other major organised crime syndicates with sports as a cover story, is fine with authoritarianism, often even openly supportive.
I misread Program as Pogrom for second and wasn’t even all that baffled.
The United States have nothing more than a controlled opposition. This is part of the problem with the political system there and will not change unless there is root and branch reform, so basically never.
I’d rather interpret that as the rational actors trying to increase cooperation among each other in order to reduce the risk from and exposure to an increasingly irrational actor.
Yeah, the regular election cycle is apparently coming up in a few months.
Thanks for the insights!
Won’t they have the same issues though? It’s inherently difficult for large organisations (such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, …) to change processes to comply with regulations at very short notice. With de minimis exceptions stopped, that should affect all parcels coming into the United States no matter which company carries it.
Can someone who actually has the misfortune of living or having lived in Russia recently explain how widespread the use of this messenger is? I was under the impression that Telegram, despite also being a deeply problematic service, was the most popular chat tool there, even if the regime has been trying to discourage it recently. Can anyone give a first hand account?
My parents, who are now in their seventies, got life long multiple entry visas for the US back in the 1980. They were traveling through the Pacific and had a few beers with some people they met and mentioned that they needed to stop over in American Samoa. As it turns out one of these guys was the American ambassador to this minor Pacific nation, who granted them life long multiple entry visas. They haven’t been to the United States ever since but I guess these visas are now likely to be up for review…
What the fox? Great picture by the way!
As a Dutch person living abroad (even though only in neighbouring Germany) it’s true that our directness is sometimes seen as impoliteness. Most Dutch people I know mean absolutely no offence and just say out loud what they are thinking. Somehow many other countries prefer to skirt around uncomfortable direct communication.
I even understand much better why Germany fell prey to fascism at the time. Germans had gone through two million KIA, major territorial losses, a once in a century pandemic, hyperinflation, crippling economic war reparations and a once in a century economic depression in the span of less than twenty years and yet only a third of them voted for the fascist in the last free election. Keep in mind that democratic tradition was not firmly established in Germany by that point. Meanwhile US citizens have gone through a major economic crisis in 2008/9, a major pandemic and and increase in egg prices and suddenly more than half of voters there chose the fascist.
So we’re now at the stage where people risk being arrested without a charge by goons unwilling to properly identify themselves and then being killed because of that?
The current situation in the United States is eerily similar to 1930s Germany in my opinion. We’re probably just a few months away from political opponents being picked up on made up charges or even disappeared straight up.
It’s quite obvious that Iran (or at least its current regime) is fighting a war of survival. If the current regime stays in power and gains the ability to open and close Hormuz at will, that should be a win for Iran. If the US cannot guarantee safe shipping through Hormuz, that is a loss for them. In my book that seems pretty straightforward.