SeventyTwoTrillion

but if the US went into any of these places (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq) with the intention of actually conquering them there would have been very little to stop them.

I understand what you're trying to get at, but I disagree. As in, I don't think what was stopping the United States winning those wars was just "Well, we didn't want to win, actually! We just wanted to make a few bucks!" It's not as if America had a bunch of Real Generals in the back ready to take over from the Profit Generals if they suddenly decided that they needed another state to add to the country. Sure, if the US had a competent, long-term imperial strategy from 1945 onwards then this might well have been true, but they didn't.

Repeated failures are necessary stepping stones towards (hopefully) eventual success. The somewhat nice thing about this particular protest is that even if they totally fail, the main vector of opposition to Israel is still functioning (that is, of course, direct violence against Israel via Hamas and Hezbollah and Ansarallah etc). It would absolutely be helpful to accelerate BDS in the United States and elsewhere, but the issue of Israel is so important to Western imperial strategy that they cannot be allowed to let little things like mass movements and democracy influence it. I think a solid 75% of Israel's existing ties will remain intact right to the very end when Netanyahu and the rest of the Knesset are boarding helicopters to escape into Europe as the Resistance dismantles the country in 2024/2025.

If American protests are ever the singular force exerting opposition to an outcome, that outcome has an almost 100% chance of happening, because of the mixture of totalitarian police state, and most protestors being not especially committed nor ideological and certainly rarely strategic. When ML techniques don't seem to be even considered (and if they are, they don't seem to be implemented), there's only so far that a protest can go. It's not even a numbers problem as BLM demonstrated, just a strategy problem. I believe this problem will eventually be overcome as conditions deteriorate, but it'll probably take intense and widespread suffering and failures to get to that point.

It's interesting that this is coinciding with both that incident with the Russian diplomat(?) giving a stern lecture to the British and French, as well as the shifts in military office like Surovikin and Shoigu. not sure precisely how they're connected but I'd appreciate any and all takes

the hilarity of calling Germany a "land of ideas" given their 20th century history aside, this is like when a country is described as having a "strong culture around food" or something as a way of saying nothing while trying to sound learned.

truly, no other country on the planet could be described as having a lot of ideas in it quite like Germany

it's really an unbearable experience.

before 2022 I was well aware on an intellectual level that the media was bad and misrepresenting things and had strongly ingrained most of the more lib-accepted critiques about how it spreads negativity and panic for views and profit, etc. but nowadays when I'm exposed to it, it's a much more visceral dislike and disgust. not sure if I've just changed and it's been the same the whole time, or if it's also gotten much worse as well, but it feels like they've perfectly triangulated the perfect way to deliver information that is simultaneously devoid of substance, meaning, and accuracy. it's like watching paint dry, but if the paint was in the shape of a swastika

If I make the threads, am I zeroth?

The Country of the Week is Vietnam!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Vietnam.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

• What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
• What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
• Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
• Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
• What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
• Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
• How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
• Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
• If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

From our reading list:

These books focus on general history:

• Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present by Ben Kiernan (2017).

These books focus on the Vietnam War:

• Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall (1966).
• Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience by Gabriel Kolko (1985).
• The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam by Douglas Valentine (1999).
• Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse (2013).

Next thread here.

currently convening a ritual to try and revive Prigozhin so that he can now take the role he so desired; looking for any renown DPRK necromancers

Every single time that you see news stating that the US and Israel are talking about X, or negotiating about Y, or trying to make a deal about Z, it's always been bullshit. At no point in this entire war/genocide have a US and Israeli politician sat down across a table with conflicting views. Instead, I think it's best to think about what the US and Israel want people to imagine is happening. For example:

"Biden urges Israel to do a limited operation in Rafah" = Biden would not lose a second of sleep if Israel dropped nukes directly onto every refugee camp in Gaza ten minutes from now; what Biden wants is to avoid losing further popularity in the Middle East and globally as the decay of those institutions will have dire impacts later on

"US and Israel come to a deal to delay war against Lebanon" = Netanyahu is scared shitless about what a war with Hezbollah would mean (thousands of soldiers killed, military equipment lost in giant numbers; millions of Israel settlers forced to evacuate in the north, and possibly even the annihilation of their settler state), but is unable to be seen backing down, and so asks Biden to ask him to back down and then pretends to grudgingly accept. A stabbed-in-the-back myth is more palatable because it shifts blame to a different person or country, and it's not as if any Israeli anti-American sentiment would ever actually account to anything because Israel could not exist for a month without American help.

"Israel talked down by the US to limit response to failed Iranian strike" = The Iranian strike was successful; too successful, in fact. That is why Israel knew that it could not respond to it without, again, risking their entire country to massive Iranian strikes. The initial reaction of "WE WILL RESPOND WITH MASSIVE FORCE" was necessary to temporarily placate settlers and reassure them that a response was forthcoming. Then, they had to disseminate propaganda that the strikes were unsuccessful in order to make the lack of a response easier to accept.

It's really the same in Ukraine. Not a single time in the last couple years have I been even slightly convinced by the narrative of "The government/CIA/NATO/whatever didn't know that Ukraine was about to do X to Russia. We need Ukraine to tell us these things, and we're very disappointed in them!" The CIA and MI6 and various other Western organizations have known perfectly well what Ukraine is about to do every time they did something stupid. They are so utterly embedded in Ukraine that I doubt much of anything happens without them knowing about it, in fact.

At this point I think it's genuinely unproductive to listen to what the US/Israel is saying. Like, I understand the point-and-laugh nature of it, I understand why you might want to indignantly post about what level of genocidal Naziism that they've climbed to today. But it's all just pretend and make-believe at this point. It's completely disconnected from reality to a point where it's not even entertaining to watch, it's just sorta boring and depressing. Claims about wiping about Hamas and Hezbollah are indistinguishable in my brain from the QAnon claims every three months that the rapture is about to happen or that Trump is about to succeed in his extremely elaborate behind-the-scenes coup that has definitely been happening for the last four years if you've been reading the signs. It was kinda entertaining back in 2019 and 2020 and 2021, but now it's just so devoid of any value that I cannot make my brain even care, let alone take them seriously. It's like going to a monarchist website in the year of our lord 2024 and watching a couple hundred deluded people convince themselves that the Habsburgs are about to rise again. Posting about their claims here isn't even that funny or interesting, it's just "Yeah, I guess some weird people exist in the world with strange views about reality. I'm not sure why you're paying attention to them when there's more important things going on." The only thing separating wilhelminafan556, dakotansfortrump2024, and Genocide Joe is that one happens to be President of the United States; they all have about equal grasp of reality.

#Tradle #797 5/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle

The Cradle: Yemen’s strategic escalation into the Mediterranean

The Yemeni “circle of fire” – its maritime reach – now encompasses the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. On land, Sanaa’s focus is on impacting Israel’s geographic depth, particularly its southern regions which abut the Red Sea. In multiple speeches, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has emphasized Yemen’s staggering advances in military capabilities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. These advancements are made possible by various factors, most notably the real-world testing of their arsenal. Recent broadcasts showcased a distant suicide drone targeting a ship in the Red Sea, equipped with a camera on its nose. Additionally, there has been significant Yemeni progress in the use of winged and ballistic missiles: according to military analysts, for the first time in history, anti-ship ballistic missiles were deployed against seaborne vessels, a qualitative advancement in Ansarallah’s military bag of tricks.

[...] Since early April, various European naval commanders have thrown their hands up in full public view. Jerome Henry, commander of France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace – deployed in the Red Sea for 71 straight days – said on 11 April that his ship had depleted its entire combat arsenal, and while it would head to port to replenish those munitions, would return to face an impossible mission: "We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles."

[...] Yemeni Brigadier-General Shamsan points out that the US defense system failures, and growing risks faced by the anti-Yemen naval coalitions, have “forced it and its allies to withdraw more than 18 ships from the theater of operations, as the number of American ships that left reached 10, while eight ships belonging to European tools left.”

Shamsan says the rapid development of Sanaa’s military capabilities during the ongoing war has positioned Yemen as a pivotal player not only regionally but globally, owing to its strategic position overseeing one of the world’s most crucial maritime passages. As Ansarallah’s phase four operations commence in the Mediterranean Sea, Shamsan declares that Yemen has now effectively implemented a maritime blockade and economic stranglehold on Israel, which heavily relies on sea routes for the vast majority of its imports. This blockade, in turn, represents a significant leverage point against both Tel Aviv and its western allies, which have failed to protect their interests in the Red Sea or counteract Sanaa’s embargo on ships entering the ports of the occupation state.

Far from being a mere political and military backwater, Yemen has demonstrated far-reaching military capabilities and impressive strategic planning that has confounded the world’s greatest naval powers. Sanaa’s formidable maneuvers in West Asian maritime zones have catapulted it to the forefront of the region’s Axis of Resistance as the member most capable of influencing global maritime security and regional stability. As the US and its allies rally around their newly constructed “aid pier” on Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline to, as many suspect, consolidate the area as a future site for US military operations and protect Israel’s oil and gas platforms, Yemen is emerging as a frontline adversary in that far-flung theater.

Western navies are complete paper tigers.