- I don't care about removing oil suppliers from China, I don't know anyone who does. I get most of my stuff from them, seems like a bad idea
- I don't care about Venezuela or lies about them being (drug lords|conquering invaders|bad hombres), they are sovereign, the U.S has no right, justification or excuse to be kidnapping their leaders or fucking with their politics.
- The United States has been spreading extremism and instability globally for 40+ years.
- Oil production in the U.S. is not meaningfully higher than it was under Biden, so "drill baby drill" was just another lie that's been lapped up and is now being spit back out
- A decent deal HAD BEEN MADE under Obama, it was pretty good most would say, then Trump tore it up because of his ego and tiny dick/tiny hands syndrome.
- "mowing the grass" sounds like terrorism first and foremost and crimes against humanity second.
- Just because the U.S. and Israel Administrations want to self select into being world police does not make it just or right.
> - I don't care about removing oil suppliers from China, I don't know anyone who does. I get most of my stuff from them, seems like a bad idea
Is that because you don't know what caused World War 2 and you don't have any family who served in World War 2?
> - I don't care about Venezuela or lies about them being (drug lords|conquering invaders|bad hombres), they are sovereign, the U.S has no right, justification or excuse to be kidnapping their leaders or fucking with their politics.
Maduro was an internationally wanted criminal. He was also going to invade his neighbor, Guyana after the UN rejected his claim against it. You don't cross half your hemisphere to arrest someone on legal grounds if you don't have a case. International law is not useful as a concept to keep the world from descending into chaos unless some kind of enforcement occurs. The reasons he was officially arrested for are not the only reasons he was arrested.
> - The United States has been spreading extremism and instability globally for 40+ years.
That is not a strong argument. The US was isolationist until its ships were getting attacked at sea. Then it was isolationist until the world kept descending into wars we had to join to stop. Then we established more world structure that has proven to reduce the occurrence of war. We've been trying to establish the same kind of stability Europe has, in the Middle East.
> - Oil production in the U.S. is not meaningfully higher than it was under Biden, so "drill baby drill" was just another lie that's been lapped up and is now being spit back out
Crude oil - https://www.arescotx.com/2015-2025-us-field-production-crude... shows an increase in 4mil barrels per day. Even in the first term, the Trump administration was pursuing an energy dominance agenda, but it's not all attributable to their policies.
> - A decent deal HAD BEEN MADE under Obama, it was pretty good most would say, then Trump tore it up because of his ego and tiny dick/tiny hands syndrome.
The US has hundreds of millions of people. Trump is not the only person we have. Iran has been seen as a critical threat to the US, to the region and to the world for many decades. The JCPOA did not stop the threat nor sufficiently monitor it. Iran continued building nuclear sites underground and moved their centrifuges underground, meeting with North Korean nuclear missile scientists, etc. The IAEA also requested access to various sites and were denied or delayed by Iran. The IAEA was only reporting Iran's compliance to its commitments under the JCPOA, which was a bad deal and as such, complying with the JCPOA was insufficient.
Iran had a history of breaking international law which continued after the JCPOA. They have never truly established an essential level of trust that would be required to give them the benefit of the doubt that the JCPOA was being complied with, which the inspection process in place could not guarantee. They were also out of compliance with the JCPOA in developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
> - "mowing the grass" sounds like terrorism first and foremost and crimes against humanity second.
It's just an analogy. The Iranian revolutionaries have dug themselves in to such an extent that going in to change their regime would almost certainly require so much killing that it would practically be genocide. Reducing their military assets and installations is the alternative. This is all a response to terrorism to start with.
> - Just because the U.S. and Israel Administrations want to self select into being world police does not make it just or right.
No, we don't want to. It's simply existential that we do. We would much rather not. I don't care about most of these places halfway around the world. It would be nice if they'd simply live in peace and have their own lives. They do not. History has proven that if we let chaos abroad gain too much momentum, it will eventually lead to some large scale war that we'll get dragged into. Why do we get dragged into them? Why can't we just stay out of the wars? Well, if one country, like Germany, Japan, China or Russia simply continues to expand outward and gain huge power imbalances, they become a threat to freedom. The US had kinds of freedom that even most citizens do not fully appreciate or deeply understand.
Iran, Russia and China deliberately label the US as their enemy. Even Saudi Arabia has effectively referred to Iran as the Nazi Germany of the Middle East. After the communists helped the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries gain power, they killed thousands of communists. Even recently they slaughtered many thousands of their own people. They do not care about human life.
It's very strange to me that you seem to like defending dictators who torture and kill their own people. I guess that's what the globalized internet is these days.
> Is that because you don't know what caused World War 2 and you don't have any family who served in World War 2?
Pretty familiar, also familiar with Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. I can link pictures and articles detailing American Service Members and the women and children they shot, blew up, raped, burned alive, and otherwise mutilated in each of those engagements.
My familiarity with WW2, and it's causes make my deeply uneasy about the idea of going to war with a peer power like China; China who was an ally in WW3, maybe you don't know this and didn't have any family who served in World War 2?
Anyways no idea why you'd bring this up or what point you were trying to make? War is good or something? War can be justified if the orange man on the TV says the (enemy) country is "bigly bad"?
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The amount of delusion here is actually baffling, given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law I'm not going to respond to all of this. I do think it's incredibly entertaining to watch people/bots defend the convicted felons leading the U.S. by saying it's absolutely imperative we stop crime everywhere else!
Most statements you made are fabricated or right wing talking points not based in any type of reality (JCPOA bad not complying [all evidence is against this]; "Iran is an existential threat" - Not to me or anyone I know of have ever met, not a single day of my life has gone by that I felt directly under threat by anyone in Iran).
It's all the same with you people, try and propagandize the rest of us with threats and doom about the death and destruction that will certainly come from these places half way around the world, while completely ignoring the death and destruction that the U.S. exports globally every single day. It's sickening.
There's a difference between soldiers stepping out of line in war versus behaving according to policy. War is never good. It's not really a strong argument to say hey, I've got all these disturbing photos that show the US is bad. Well, you could also show disturbing photos that make any country look bad. The point is the context and how it got to be that way.
China is sometimes referred to as a peer power, but in many ways they remain extremely far behind. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. Weak countries go to extremes. Strong countries who think they are stronger than they are, could potentially go to similar extremes to make up for that perception.
Not all crimes are equivalent, and not all crimes are actual crimes even if people call them crimes.
It's easier to dismiss people than to engage, but then you stop challenging yourself and navigating the differences to understand the world better. Sometimes I'm wrong, but I try to be correct and not purely for emotional satisfaction.
You don't get to call it "stepping out of line" if there are no consequences for doing so. See for example how the My Lai Massacre was handled[1]. The pattern continues when it comes to shooting down an airliner[2], an airstrike on a hospital[3] and many more cases.
If no-one ever gets more than a stern talking to, then clearly there is no line. These actions are as close to adhering to policy as you can get without saying it outright.
#1 looks like a case of poor incentives which were a little too flexible as a result of what they were up against from the guerilla fighters. every army has elements that can get out of control if not kept on a tight leash, the US is no different in that regard. the difference is that we will identify and correct it if we see it.
#2 looks like a legitimate accident. technology wasn't as good as it is now. there were apologies and payments to the Iranian families. it sounds like they tried to follow protocol.
you can look at other countries who have shot down commercial airliners to see that this wasn't unique to the US in any way. the difference is that we tried to communicate and verify first, when many other countries didn't.
#3 just looks like a largely human mistake, which was recognized by multiple people involved privately and publicly. it's possible if they picked coordinates and had a database of protected locations, it could've been flagged, but i don't know if something like that exists. the nature of some of these decisions is that they have to happen fast, but that means your process has to be really good to avoid mistakes.
you also didn't mention the case where we drone striked a vehicle with kids in it and we publicly apologized for it. these things do happen, but considering the extremely large number of strikes the US tends to do, these are relatively rare.
because our society does value truth when it matters, it usually makes it out if there is substance to it. in many other societies, the governments can just perpetually deny and anyone who disagrees will be jailed or killed. that doesn't mean we don't have secrets like anyone else.
I guess the Walton family has a long-term local presence in basically every mid to large town and city in america. Same with Mcdonalds Corp. They have vested interests there (crushing competition, raising prices, lower quality, profit!). And their bigly profits certainly show a more significant vested interest as opposed to just a small property owner or worse a bystander or citizen.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me the wealthy aren't gaming the tax system after all the reporting and leaks over the last ~40 years.
I suspect you are simplifying what's happening quite a bit, not sure if it's intentional or otherwise. But wouldn't the more likely scenario be that you borrow 100m with a 10 year draw at x% interest and then at the end of the 10 years you do a stock sale (some taxes paid), pay the interest (interest is generally non-taxable) and then take out a new loan for 500m based on your much larger portfolio, and finally claim significant losses against some other asset (regain your actual stock sale taxes losses "oh no my art lost value!")? Repeat ad nauseam until you're dead.
>You're going to have a hard time convincing me the wealthy aren't gaming the tax system after all the reporting and leaks over the last ~40 years.
Obviously every person tries to avoid taxes - you don’t have to be rich do do that - but the idea that there are magic banks that loan money and don’t mind waiting decades to get their money back is some kind of weird propaganda.
>...I suspect you are simplifying what's happening quite a bit
People keep saying “buy, borrow, die” as if it is really that simple - like it is that one simple trick that banks and the IRS hate.
>...But wouldn't the more likely scenario be that you borrow 100m with a 10 year draw at x% interest and then at the end of the 10 years you do a stock sale (some taxes paid), pay the interest (interest is generally non-taxable) ...
Your scenario is not “buy, borrow, die” as a core concept of that meme is you take advantage of the stepped-up basis upon death and the estate pays the interest. With your scenario the person imght have an interest payment of 50 million + the original 100 million, so now they have to sell enough stock to pay the 150 million and the 23-36% taxes on the gain (depending on the state they are located in - obviously different for countries other than the USA). That isn’t estate planning, that is hoping your stocks really go up and that the loan doesn’t come due in a downturn like 2008.
>"oh no my art lost value!"
That trick where for example, where someone would donate some painting to a museum and pay someone to say the donation is with N million, might have worked at some point in time, but that kind of thing is pretty much guaranteed to get an audit these days from what I have read and I would be very careful trying to do that.
A variant of the "buy, borrow, die" which some claim is done is basically that a bank essentially becomes a minority shareholder of the estate for giving the money. Though I recall one CPA who dealt in this area replying that none of the family offices he knew would likely be interested in this approach - people like Goldman Sachs are not your friends.
What is the demographics breakdown on those statistics? How much is old vs new wealth vs generational wealth?
A lot has changed in the U.S. in the last 20-40 years.
Also I'm not really convinced that the existence of individuals with over a billion dollars in wealth is a net positive for society or really anyone except that individual.
No snark: Why not? Unless you're saying that it doesn't exist or has been destroyed because the orange man or one of the alcoholics on the tiktok/foxnews proclaimed it to be true hundreds of times over the last two months?
Until they exercise it I suspect we can't truly know. They have demonstrated that have reliable drone manufacturing and ballistic capabilities. Whether those include submersibles or munitions that can strike submerged targets is unclear.
In terms of raw capabilities and ability to actually damage these cables as an entity. Yes they have them today, they don't need special naval craft for such an endeavor, you can drag a hook behind any vessel large enough for the conditions and damage the cables repeatedly. This has been happening in other parts of the globe for some time, with Russia using cargo ships, I believe. Other parties could try and prevent this, possibly with some success but it would either involve sinking those vessels at a distance (hope they're right about what those vessels are doing), or putting your own assets in danger of missile or drone strikes.
> What prevents them from pooling together the funds for 2 decades of relentless cyberattacks on Iran, unless twice the same fee is payed in reverse to compensate for just the threat?
I thought it was clear to everyone that this is _exactly_ what the U.S. and Israel have been doing to Iran for literally 20+ years [0] [1]. In addition to economic warfare, other types of espionage, and acts of terrorism - e.g. blowing up a bunch of people's mobile devices and pagers (in before someone accuse the children and civilians harmed in the attack of being terrorists themselves).
Bad actors have been extracting all kinds of concessions and actions out of Iran for many decades now under all kinds of threats, tactics, and attacks.
This war was literally started by the U.S. and Israel blowing up peace talks in Iran.
> I thought it was clear to everyone that this is _exactly_ what the U.S. and Israel have been doing to Iran for literally 20+ years [0] [1].
You changed my proposition to a different one by equating
US & Israeli cyber warfare, with
US & Israeli & worldwide telecom sector cyber warfare.
I ask why risk that step? worldwide telecom sector is highly networked (by profession obviously) and is probably already picking up phones and coordinating a common response, together they stand, divided they fall, none of them look forward to potential normalization of nation states charging fees unilaterally.
Its an error to confuse big problems with even bigger ones than they already face.
Telecom sector might collectively demand public payment of twice the threatened fee (however small the actual demanded fee is) plus a public statement by Iran that they publically repeal the threat just to make clear this type of precedent won't be tolerated.
this makes no sense, you're saying that if some cable operator in some distant nation agrees to chip in to prevent such normalization worldwide, that Iran will come over to that nation to physically overpower the cable operator who doesn't have an army?
5 more months until midterms is plenty of time to do what exactly? Tell us that he won the war on Iran twice a day every, just like he has been doing for the last 2 months? The economic impact of this is just starting to be felt and will get increasingly painful for at least the remainder of the calendar year (depending on how much longer the straight stays closed). There is no mechanism for him to just sweep this under the rug. Perhaps you believe him every time he says he won, I think most us don't believe it and never will not matter how many times he repeats the lie.
"never get blocked again" just like when it was claimed by the U.S. it wouldn't be blocked in the first place, or that it would only be a few days...sure sure. I'm sure the IRGC is about to call the European and U.S. leaders and tell them how bigly they are and how scared of more bombing they are.
Is it illegal to pay kidnappers in the united states? I've never heard of this and I can't seem to find anything that says any such law has actually been passed.
It's technically not illegal, but often is. You can't pay terrorist organizations or specially sanctioned orgs. See https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov
Probably should consult an attorney before paying a ransom (whether for kidnapping or other purposes).
- I don't care about removing oil suppliers from China, I don't know anyone who does. I get most of my stuff from them, seems like a bad idea
- I don't care about Venezuela or lies about them being (drug lords|conquering invaders|bad hombres), they are sovereign, the U.S has no right, justification or excuse to be kidnapping their leaders or fucking with their politics.
- The United States has been spreading extremism and instability globally for 40+ years.
- Oil production in the U.S. is not meaningfully higher than it was under Biden, so "drill baby drill" was just another lie that's been lapped up and is now being spit back out
- A decent deal HAD BEEN MADE under Obama, it was pretty good most would say, then Trump tore it up because of his ego and tiny dick/tiny hands syndrome.
- "mowing the grass" sounds like terrorism first and foremost and crimes against humanity second.
- Just because the U.S. and Israel Administrations want to self select into being world police does not make it just or right.
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