Israel has submarines capable of carrying nuclear missiles AFAIK
Alright, Naked Capitalism has a piece on the Israeli attack last night. I mean, "attack" almost seems too strong a word, but I can't think of a better one.
Here's my summary of it:
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Still remarkably little clarity about precisely what happened, with various actors either purposefully not talking about it (or perhaps they just don't have much to say). Some US sources claimed that the attack was from Israel, and that Israel told the US that this attack would happen but the US had nothing to do with it.
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The attack was on Isfahan, in central Iran. Iran claims that there were a few (probably less than 10, possibly literally 3) drones and all were shot down, which visually seems to have been what occurred - no dramatic explosions beyond that of interceptions. Some anonymous US officials claimed that there were ballistic missiles involved, but there is no evidence of this at all - which is odd if it did occur, as the missile would have had to fly over a few countries at least.
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Iran briefly shut down its airports, did not close its airspace, and planes were still in the air above Iran, although some airlines redirected flights as news came in. Iran's response in general so far has been pretty muted, in stark contrast to their "Oh boy, if those Israelis even THINK about responding...!" rhetoric days and hours before the attack occurred. The official line is that this was an infiltration, not an external attack from Israel. This is a strange thing for Iran to do, and is naturally generating all sorts of theories about whether Iran has done some behind-the-scenes negotiating to allow a small Israeli attack despite officially denying it. I can't say I personally believe them but I'm also having trouble finding alternative explanations for the massive difference between rhetoric and action.
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The idea is that this was a diminished response from Israel in exchange for the US greenlighting an Israeli campaign into Rafah, which I'm sure will go well for them with the remaining tatters of whatever they're calling an "army" nowadays.
akin to boarding a rowboat to get to the "safe haven" of the Titanic
this is exactly what I expected to happen. Israel was never going to respond with some grand bombing campaign, they were gonna try and find the seams and launch a counterattack which makes Iran hesitate about whether responding is justified or worth it, or if Israel even did it. it seems Israel has successfully found that seam.
Iran: "oh no, see, these were drones of unspecified origin, they could have come from anywhere" yeah bro okay
that's always the problem with making statements like "if you do ANYTHING then we'll respond with massive force." really? ANYTHING? if Israel fires a few tiny drones over your border then that proceed to destroy nothing, you're responding? things so far suggest that no, as a matter of fact, Iran will not respond to "ANYTHING". it's a material victory for Iran - they got to hit major targets and gain valuable intel about the structure and timing of Western defense systems, whereas Israel gets to fly a few paper airplanes into Iran - but a propaganda victory for Israel. the former is obviously infinitely more meaningful than the latter, and it doesn't change my opinion of who's winning the war by one iota, but I am reminded of the less... admirable days of the Ukraine War for Russia, where they would make statements and claims and threats and then they simply weren't true, or weren't that serious
they're pushing it amongst themselves (e.g. Russia-China trade is mostly dedollarized I think) but not to the wider world, which I'm unhappy about but I can't exactly blame them for it given how enormously complicated doing something like "getting the dollars out of the world trade of like 150 non-Western countries inside a global system traditionally managed by western institutions while also governing your own country which is under sanctions pressure, climate pressure, military pressure, and dozens of other pressures" truly will be. it's a good first step and hopefully they learn lessons from their own experiences to help other countries.
wresting control of the Middle East is also a critical part of the dedollarization drive, so all these crises and wars are interconnected
In general this is something I notice among the western left. They call themselves communists, but actually hate and disagree with the social and economic policies that every single AES country led by a communist or socialist party has tried to implement or actually implemented. I notice it a bit on hexbear too.
The theory of communism that I've constructed in my very special, unique, pure, leftist brain that is free of propaganda is superior to whatever hard work actual people out in the actual world are doing to construct a better world. /s
The hurdle that I had to jump over when I progressed from socialism to communism was this exact one. Around 2019-2020ish, I had gifted kid brainworms, heightened by my university degree, that were still writhing around in there about how I was the smartest and specialest politics and geopolitics understander the world had ever seen.
Only once I purged those brainworms and realized that I am actually an online Westerner who doesn't really know shit about fuck; once I realized I was full of assumptions about what socialism and communism and anti-imperialism and democracy should be, rather than how they actually manifest in the real world; once I realized that I have been poisoned by individualism at a fundamental level since I was born into society and needed to accept that my opinions really just aren't that important, especially to those doing the work of anti-imperialism like Hamas or Cuba or the DPRK; once I accepted that I should learn and listen to what people on the ground were saying and not just sit in a hermetically sealed online treatbubble, could I fully say I was a communist
I love it when I, a communist who actively does not (or at least should not) subscribe to liberalism and its thought-terminating cliches, gives a speech which is 90% undiscernable from a United States government statement on Cuba
I genuinely don't think I can take a single person who unironically uses the term "Stalinism" seriously at this point. Maybe there's some extremely specific usage revolving around the leadership of the Josef Stalin (and not every single slightly "authoritarian" leader) where it could still have some value, but I doubt it. For non-leftists, it's just another thought-terminating word that liberals fling around to refer to anybody they don't like, like "tankie". For people who purport to be leftists, it's a way of preserving anti-communist brainworms in situations where Stalin is viewed positively - sure, Stalin might have been a generally good, even great, figure, but Stalinism implicitly invokes the American propaganda about gulags and clapping for hours during his speeches and execution for saying even the slightest thing wrong.
If I got to visit the actual fucking leader of Cuba then I would be there early and probably listen for the vast majority of the time; berating or asking sectarian questions would be almost at the bottom of my list. They're the people who have succeeded while we have failed, we have to listen to them
I really hate succdems
they might as well just start dropping images where the Palestinians are the soyjak and the Israelis are the chads.
after Israel falls, it'll be noted in the history books for the rest of time that at the end of their existence, they all became terminally online redditors/tiktokers because their sheer incompetence means they are unable to win a war despite having quite literally every resource that a world-spanning empire can give them. one really wonders what the German Nazis would have been posting in 1945 had the internet been around back then
dastardly plot by some rapscallion to impersonate me (check their account)
I uphold TC69 thought
I'm flattered, but I don't want any evil imposter twins making posts with my exact name and profile picture, lmao. Impersonating a mod is bannable, even if you're doing it because you like the mod.
Anyway: here's an article I found on Germany's industrial woes vis-a-vis China:
SCMP: Germany’s China shock: as Scholz leaves Beijing, others raise alarm about waning economic honeymoon
[hexatlas tags: Germany, China]
The article starts by describing how Germany has benefited from a relationship with China even as America began suffering, and then moves on to recent years:
A growing number of economists believe the prolonged Sino-German honeymoon period is over. Tales like Webasto’s struggle with Chinese competition will become the rule rather than the exception in the relationship as the complementary nature that enriched both sides over the past quarter of a century wanes.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited China this week amid an intensifying debate about how Berlin should engage with Beijing in the future. On one side, some big companies are doubling down on their investments in China, typified by Volkswagen’s announcement last week it would spend US$2.68 billion expanding production and research facilities in Hefei in Anhui province in southeastern China.
From this side, any disruption to Sino-German trade is troublesome. Senior German automotive lobbyist Andreas Rade accused the European Union investigation into Chinese electric vehicle subsidies of having “no consensus” among member states, and being “not a good signal”.
But many businesses on the front lines disagree. As China has moved up the value chain and its manufacturers have become more sophisticated, suppliers and customers of German industry have become fierce competitors. The German automotive industry’s sluggish embrace of new electric vehicles, along with China’s stunning rise in this sector, presents a whole new raft of challenges.
Germany dodged a “China shock” when China joined the WTO a generation ago. Research estimates, however, that the trend claimed more than half a million American manufacturing jobs, leading to frustrations that helped usher in the political tumult of Donald Trump. Now, with the German economy ailing, some predict its China shock has arrived.
Chemicals giant BASF announced 2,600 job losses in Germany last year, even as it expanded its investments in China – a trend labour unions said was “not acceptable”. Engineering giant Bosch cut several thousand automotive jobs in Germany this year and last, while pumping several billion euros into research and development and production centres in China. The labour union IG Metall described it as “a fatal signal for Germany as an industrial hub”, according to the Rhodium report published in February. Similar trends were noted for automotive giants Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and ZF Friedrichshafen.
At the same time, German exports to China have been plunging. In 2023, they fell 4.2 per cent from the previous year. The trend worsened into 2024, Chinese customs statistics show, with a 16.6 per cent slump over the first quarter.
“I think it’s absolutely fair to say that China is moving into the kind of space that Germany used to occupy quite prominently in the world economy, especially if you look at export numbers,” he said, pointing to China’s “high and rising share of not only automobiles, but also machinery”.
Russian gas stops flowing into Germany thanks to the US blowing up Nordstream and this raises energy prices, while China increasingly occupies Germany's manufacturing niche. They haven't been slammed from both sides this hard since 1945.
Surely, however, Germany is ready to take on the challenge of China by increasing competitiveness via intelligent economic planning? I don't even really know why I bothered to jokingly ask; they obviously aren't:
Euractiv: Germans must work more to boost weak economy, BDA, Deutsche Bank say
The long-term growth potential of the German economy has declined from 2.5% in the 1970s to just 0.5% today, according to data from the German Council of Economic Experts. On top of that, the energy crisis of the last two years has compounded problems for country’s manufacturing-heavy economy, resulting in particularly adverse growth expectations for 2024.
According to fresh figures released by the IMF on Tuesday, Germany is performing the worst among all major global economies – with economic growth estimated at 0.2% projected this year.
This, the head of BDA Rainer Dulger said, was also due to a shift in mindset in the workforce. “Apparently, the concept of work-life balance has somehow been overdone. At least that’s my impression,” Dulger said at an event organised by the liberal FDP party.
While the number of people employed has increased from slightly below 40 million in the 1990s to 45.9 million in 2023 – praised by the current coalition government as ‘record employment’ – the overall amount of hours worked has remained the same, due to reduced working hours, Dulger said.
“I’ve always enjoyed working,” Dulger continued. “And I would love to see more young people in this country getting up in the morning and actually enjoying what they do. Work must be valued more by the state, but also by society” he said, calling for “more respect for work and for those who create it.”
Dulger’s views were echoed by Christian Sewing, CEO of Germany’s biggest lender Deutsche Bank, who said that foreign investors were ready to invest in Germany, but only if they saw high motivation among workers.
Criticising proposals by, among others, Germany’s biggest trade union IG Metall, for introducing a four-day work week in certain sectors, Sewing cited OECD data showing that an average worker in Germany at present works 25.8 hours per week – the lowest among all OECD countries.
The opinions voiced by the two business leaders on Tuesday align with the stance of FDP party leader Lindner, who has recently circulated the idea of exempting paid overtime from taxes to motivate employees to work extra hours. “If you want to be at the top in terms of living standards, if you want to be at the top in terms of social security and if you want to represent top ecological and moral standards, you must also be prepared to show top performance again,” Lindner said at the same event.
Were you "representing top moral standards" when you defended Israel from accusations of genocide while thousands of Palestinian children and babies lie dead?
quirked up white zionist with a little bit of explosives busts it down drone style.. is he goated with the sauce?