well, somebody's alive then, which implies it wasn't a giant fiery crash
I fail to see what Israel gains from it. Sure, they talk a lot of shit about going to war against Hezbollah for example, but their military actions against them have been remarkably limited. Unless Israel has some top-secret knowledge that somehow a more West-friendly President could be thrust into power, I don't think they'd benefit from a war.
That being said, I do 100% agree that only one of the helicopters going down is hella sus even with the weather. If it is a Mossad op, perhaps they just assumed that killing the President and Foreign Minister would majorly disrupt Iran and cause them to... idk, fall apart? Become scared of Israel? Neither seem that likely to me, but perhaps they thought it was worth the small chance given the dire straits Israel is in. I just don't see the next steps of the plan right now. If the plan was "maximum chaos, kill Raisi and then immediately start firing missiles at Iran in the confusion" then that window of opportunity has come and gone now that we're a couple hours into this.
It's gonna be another case of the imploding Ukrainian dam that occured days before the 2023 counteroffensive, where there are conceivable ways for it both to be an accident or done intentionally. I'm gonna wait to see how things develop before I start writing any essays on anything, though. Things are still pretty unclear.
not sure if he's confirmed 100% dead but the language coming out of the media is getting increasingly dire so I think I'm erring on the side of it.
obviously uh, Not Good, but I don't think this dramatically affects Israel/Palestine at least. Qassam Soleimani being killed was a tragedy for example but his life's work was still put in motion
generally I don't think it's possible to wipe out even a couple very important people and have the trajectory of the country meaningfully changed, and the Resistance seems, to me at least, to have created institutions and chains of commands that are insulated against assassinations, so Iran is... probably still coming out of this conflict quite well? Khamenei's still alive, at least. all we have to hope for is that this doesn't let the reformists gain a foothold.
and to be honest I think the same is true for Israel. if Netanyahu had a similar accident then it might be slightly different due to the fragmenting parties and his current unpopularity but the war and genocide wouldn't stop just because a couple important Israels had a helicopter crash
If Israel is at the point where they think assassinating the Iranian president is a good idea, we're basically at the end times and the Samson Option is imminent, so that's, uh, great
critical support for these guys for wasting resources on laser technology that is physically infeasible if not entirely impossible
still, never get in a helicopter, even if you're not somebody who might attract assassins. Kim Jong Un has the right idea by travelling via train
As a result of a series of attacks in the Lviv region in western Ukraine, the second largest gas compressor station in Europe, Bilche-Volitsa, was destroyed. Information about significant damage to the facility was received from local authorities and confirmed by independent sources.
The Bilche-Volitsa gas compressor station played a key role in ensuring gas supply not only to Ukraine, but also to other European countries. Its capacity made it possible to transport significant volumes of natural gas, which made it a strategically important facility in the region’s energy infrastructure.
The attack on the station took place at night. The damage was significant, and restoring the station will require significant time and financial costs.
All main buildings, main control room (management), SERB (operation and equipment), administrative building, entrance (security alarm), gas pumping unit (very significant damage) were destroyed. Worn-out gas pipelines remain in stock.
us Putin-paid anti-Ukraine tankie bots don't want every Ukrainian male to be violently slaughtered by Russian artillery and aircraft and to take an extremely reasonable peace deal that they've been offered for the last 10 years to end a war that could and should have ended two months after it began. we take direct marching and posting orders from the Kremlin
this does seem to be the single largest problem with American propaganda over the last century: it's too effective. It's most efficient for the longevity of any empire when you have the people at the top living in reality as much as possible while the rubes in the 99% chant and repeat all their state-given lines. If the people at the top also start making decisions based on that propaganda, the whole system enters a death spiral
there is a fair amount of state purchasing of private industry going on and Russian workers are, relative to the 1990s and also to Europeans in manufacturing losing their jobs right now, doing fairly well for themselves. this doesn't, of course, mean that any socialism is happening but it is two interesting trends.
my personal prediction for the next few decades of Russian history is something along the lines of:
- Russia wins war relatively soon, possibly not this year depending on how exactly things shake out but very probably by 2025-2026
- the break with neoliberal policy, such that it is (there's still plenty of neoliberalism going on) also ends and there's a return to the almighty god-given authority of the Central Bank
- this necessarily means that Russian workers, who were previously in an alright spot, start suffering as neoliberals enact austerity to beat down the working class again so they don't start getting any ideas
- this austerity goes through without much organized resistance, but Russian workers are able to draw the conclusion that when the state was more involved, things were good, and when the state retreated, things got bad. Putin is probably dead by this point due to his age which further complicates things
- who even knows what happens after that, it's way too underdetermined and the decline of the US empire will have had even more impacts by then that make analysis and predictions not very helpful, but drawing on the couple years after WW1 in Italy and England (which Mattei's The Capital Order nicely analyzes), we either get a new USSR rising, a successful beatdown of the working class without too much violence like what happened in England, or we get Italian-style fascism in retaliation for socialist revolutionaries trying and failing to take power. though how fascism would even work in a multipolar context is kinda fuzzy to me, especially as China would, hopefully, act as a counterbalancing force ideologically for that kind of thing.
"radioactive" really is just one of those Scary Words that derail discussions about nuclear energy
imagine if every time the media mentioned "lithium", it also included "which has a violent reaction with water"
leads to some real harebrained shit like shutting down NPPs in exchange for fossil fuel plants. meanwhile a coal power plant delivers 100 times more radioactivity to its surroundings via fly ash compared to the average radioactivity released by an NPP
Lessons I've Learned From The Last 24 Hours: