Stylistillusional [none/use name]

Yes, Putin is popular because he is a crucial part of the state. After the shitshow that was the 90s, his name is synonymous with stability. You quite literally have to be an extremist to want to put that stability on the line. Even if you’re not fond of him, you have to recognise there’s no safe, viable alternative. There’s no way that the people most invested in the Russian state would let anyone else take the presidency without Putin’s consent.

In that sense the elections are fake: they’re not letting anyone else near the Kremlin no matter what. As opposed to the US where you’ll have two fake options.

Personally I think it’s weird to reject electoralism in the US/West and then to start defending Russian election results as ‘real’ because Putin is popular. You’re still playing the liberal game of electoralism.

I’d guess this is a corruption thing and not offical policy. Not paying your mercenaries when you’re already having manpower issues seems like a bad idea.

Yeah, as much as we sometimes wish for something to happen right now, Ansar Allah just inviting an all-out war doesn’t give them any direct benefit. It’s not going to stop the genocide of Gaza tomorrow.

Or at least there is no extra benefit to shooting every ship in range as opposed to small-scale attacks consistently enough to disrupt shipping in the area and place stress on Western economies. They know for sure that they can withstand another bombing campaign better than the West can withstand losing their treats.

It’s going to be wild if a NATO ship gets downed by a bunch of cheap drones and missiles. For now it seems like Yemen has been sure not to overwhelm US defences with drones. But it’s going to be interesting to see what their gameplan is.

Even just sinking one navy ship would be such a tremendous blow to the US that the response would have to be huge. They would have to pull back their ships if they don’t want to risk losing more. That would look so fucking bad.

So then the response would have to come through Saudi Arabia in the form of a massive bombing campaign. But give how much of a disaster the Saudi intervention has been in the past, they would have to do more than just bomb Yemen if they want to secure sea routes again. There’s no way that this doesn’t turn into a massive headache unless Ansar Allah backs off.

But if they’re not even entertaining talking to the US, that seems far off. Either way, the ability of the Yemeni peoples to take suffering commands deep respect. Damaging directly those countries that have facilitated one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history could motivate them to take a lot more damage.

China has gone woke, now they will go broke. The Chinese economy is going to collapse from this.

They can sorta do it by just destroying NATO from within. The US doesn’t have to unilaterally withdraw, it just has to create doubts about its actual commitment.

I keep going back and forth over whether Western governments actually understand what type of government and society they are dealing with in Israel.

Not that I expect them to do anything good but the West sees Israel as part of their group. It’s like they expect Isreal to have the same taste and class as the rest of the Western elites. But why should Israel care whether Biden gets elected or care about international support when the US has reiterated time and time again that their material support is unconditional.

It’s definitely all cynical, but are they cynical enough to understand the huge liability that is Isreal?

Wait, is that my boy Prigozhin?

In the Netherlands, if the right-wing parties can get their act together and form a coalition government, they will have 88 seats in parliament.👁️

Can’t stop thinking about the mad lads in Yemen and how much respect I have for them.

Obama could never.

Everybody is sincere posting about people enjoying stuff. But nobody’s talking about how you could possibly feel satisfied after eating a whole bag of candy, instead of feeling like dogshit.

Those small bags of crisps they have in Asia > disgusting Western 300 grams Lays.

Critical support in that case.

Oops, wrong thread but close enough.

Generally I’ve been able to compartmentalise my insanity when reading mainstream sources pretty well. But with Gaza I just can’t take it. Even though Isreal is openly run by genocidal far-right ghouls, the idea that maybe their intention is to do ethnic cleansing doesn’t even get entertained. Eventhough they mostly agree that taking Hamas out militarily can’t be done. Do they think the Isrealis are stupid and don’t know this?

I’ll here people go on about how dangerous and crazy the Iranians and their ‘proxies’ are because they are fundamentalists. Motherfucker, that’s Isreal, that’s the US too. Israelis are literally using genocidal bible quotes to justify their actions. Maybe, just fucking maybe they want to do ethnic cleansing.

People that used to go on about how horrible the Russians were for bombing civilians will now call Isreal’s actions ‘impressive’. Fucking imperialist pigs.

I swear to God, this place is the only one I can stomach to visit for updates without it cometely ruining my day.

If anything big was going to be announced we’d probably already have heard rumours. If Hezbollah is going to make move, they wouldn’t announce it first.

A lot of these settlements have either contracters or the IDF directly providing security. So the idea that Hamas could have broken out of Gaza and just found all the soldiers neatly in their bases seems unbelievable. The IDF is an occupying force, not a European military where it’s just some dudes with their thumbs up their asses in a barracks near some nature reserve.

Ultimately we can’t know how Hamas leadership told their soldiers to behave. But they do have a clear incentives not to condone the killing of civilians: they want to capture hostages and use them as leverage. They need to create the expectation that these hostages are treated fairly and can be returned safely so that it is entirely up to Israel whether it wants those civilians to die.

Tragically, civilians always die in wars. Both sides always propagandise this to claim that it is the other side that is just killing civilians as policy. The facts however, are abundantly clear when it comes to the question of which side shows the greater disregard for civilian casualties.

I think this ignores the fact that Israel has nukes. Them actually using nukes would be disastrous for all sides of course. But it does create a situation where it is unlikely that Israel will back down due to threats of invasion by arab countries.

At this point I am becoming more skeptical of the idea that other countries will get involved directly. Hezbollah is the most likely candidate to act, but their relationships with Syria and Iran would force those countries into the conflict. I don’t think either of those countries want to be in a situation where they are dragged in rather than make the active choice to (not) intervene. Likely there is pressure back and forth between those parties to be very careful in how they respond.

The fact that Israel has nukes all but insures that the US will be forced to act no matter what. If Israel would look to be anywhere near collapse, the US would want to prevent at any cost a scenario where Israeli nukes fall into the ‘wrong hands’.

One funny wrinkle to recent events in Isreal that I haven’t seen mentionied much is that back at the G20 meeting the India-Middle-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), meant to counter China’s BRI, was inaugurated. The idea being to facilitate the constructing of things like rail networks and hydrogen pipelines. This initiative finds its origins in the I2U2 group, consisting of India, Isreal, UAE and the US. Notably, Israel proposed the idea of increased interconnectivity through rail.

The inevitable reliance on risk-averse private companies makes the financing of such projects hard for the West under normal circumstances. But with Isreal’s genocidal policies flaring up tensions in the whole region, it seems dead in the water.

This whole thing is such a massive strategic failure for the US. They wanted to pivot to East Asia, pull back from West Asia, improve relations in Africa, focus on containing China. But instead they are overextending themselves with Ukraine and Isreal. Their focus completely opposite of where they wanted it it be.

I’ll have you know that the ‘Two Megathreads One Community’-policy has been recognised by almost the entire world.