https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/27/yemen-houthis-sentence-m...
“In addition to death sentences that include crucifixion and stoning, the Houthi court sentenced 23 men to prison for periods of up to 10 years. Three of them were also sentenced to public flogging”
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/saudi-arab...
Slightly harder to design and build. Much cheaper to run. Excellent for power. Bad for bombs.
And, yes, just to get ahead of your next question: the US (and Europe and Russia and China) have offered to help Iran create these. Explaining it to them. Send people and engineers who have done it. Just get them from us. Or for free. We have tried everything. Iran has systematically refused everything, yet insist their program is for peaceful purposes only.
I'm not saying Saudi Arabia is perfect, far from it. But they are not looking to destroy the world or the region, and yes, sorry to say, but Iran is.
IMO this is kind of bad framing because it suggests that they're the minority in Yemen, when in reality they basically are the government of 70-80% population of Yemen and absorbed 60+ percent of the Yemeni regular army.
They are basically at this point the de-facto Yemeni government
sure, they took this by force while killing those who disagree. Its part of Sunni vs Shia confrontation, and Yemen is majority Sunni.
The Syrian President and current Western/Israeli "good boy" - belongs to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham which has committed warcrimes which make the Houthis look like choir boys. He was former Al-Qaeda too with a multi-million dollar bounty. Done an utterly ridiculous number of beheadings, chaining & rape of women, torture, the whole galore of works carried out by a popular ruthless terrorist in a long career.
Now he is fully supported by the US AND the EU.
So, any time, any citizen of a Western nation complains about "war crimes" and wants "regime change", I call them deeply disgusting, sanctimonious hyprocrites. You fellows have lost any and all moral standing to talk about "war crimes".
Just trying to see how the compare to the US and Israeli militaries when it comes to war crimes.
We’re not talking about Israel’s war crimes, or America’s war crimes, or Japan’s war crimes, or China’s war crimes, or Cambodia’s war crimes, or Germany’s war crimes, or Britain’s, or Armenia’s, or North Korea’s, South Korea’s, Italy’s, or actually any other country’s.
So why do you think we shouldn’t condemn the Houthis?
Edit: Downvote me as much you want doesn't change the facts. the front line fighters for Yemen government is Al Qaeda. It was same thing as Syria which is why we have an Al Qaeda leader as their president.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/02/middleeast/yemen-los...
Yet MAGA supporters were saying early in the war that they are "plan trusters" as prior US admins sucked at regime change because it is a "skills issue" and none of the prior admins had the triple digits IQ of Hegseth, Trump and Bessent.
His message to the room was essentially that giving $1 billion to his campaign was a low-cost investment that would guarantee massive financial returns for their companies
Reflection Eternal | Ballad of the Black Gold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryFMKYNJeTM
This is the ballad of the black gold
They call it Texas tea
But it's bigger than a cowboy with a lasso
It's deeper than a black hole
Create monopolies
Except they collect your fee when you pass Go
Crisis international
The government de facto
We got no control of this fiasco
Darker than the back roads
Bubble hotter than Tabasco
More than what you bargained for or asked forIf they were going to try this it needed to be done months earlier when the protests were raging. Instead the brain trust fumbled the initiative and let the Iranian leadership kill and scourge their local allies into compliance. Then fumbling the decapitation strike coupled with the decades of preparation for a decapitation strike (via redundancy of command) the genius brigade seemed to be unaware of because they fired all the experts, and the total repression of the protesting populace, led to an unusually strong system in Iran. They also almost certainly let racism play a big role in underestimating the Iranians, who are a very technically sophisticated society and have been preparing for this scenario since day one of the revolution.
Everything that’s happened was predictable and predicted, which is why other administrations who were more than happy to topple foreign governments when it suited them to not do so in Iran. MAGA feels like the junior dev that blames the compiler for their own syntax errors.
I believe this war started with a tomahawk missle murdering a school full of children and then the US denying involvement. I very clearly remember it. US attacks Iran unprovoked. First act, murder their children in school. If you wanted to solidify opposition to the US in Iran, I don't think they could have done a more effective job.
Some Iranian-Americans are very pro-Shah, particularly the many kicked out during the revolution. They were celebrating the war like it'd bring back the Shah, but frustrated that the US govt and even Western media as a whole ignored the exiled royal family... because that's not the point of the war.
Obviously this war has been the US' latest great failure, and at the beckoning of a foreign power which makes it especially catastrophic. If people could focus on this, rather than trying to divide things into teams and then sling mud, they'd have vastly better outcomes come November (and on) than just using it for divisive mudslinging which does nothing but ensure that all elections, regardless of how bad the decisions of a incumbent, or how awful a challenger, will remain these sort of 50/50 coinflips.
that seems like a moronic reason to support a moronic war.
Holding people like Hegseth (who literally insider traded defense equities right before the start of the war) and Trump accountable (who practically made a gazillion insider trading each mad meme he posted while the world burnt) is not "dividing people into teams"
One digit each.
They are simply reporting what sources have said:
Houthis 'take control' of Perim Island - government source published at 09:00
Houthi rebels have "taken control" of Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to a source. Earlier, we were reporting that the group had reached the key island.
The AFP news agency also says Houthis have "taken over" Perim Island, also referred to as Mayyun, according to eyewitnesses and a local government official.
"Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it yesterday," the official tells AFP.
Activists decry police murder of protester
Activists decry police "murder" of protester
The first implies that the police murdering the protestor is an established fact. The second makes it clear that it is the activists who used the term "murder" rather than it being a non-contentious fact.
Mayor denounces "radical activists" rioting and damaging city property in response to an officer-involved incident that resulted in one fatal kinetic altercation with a "loud and provocatively dressed" man.
tl;dr: two countries, divided by a common language.
It is not about the quotes being verified or unverified. It is about something said by somebody, that you are reporting.
If you’re reporting that “Government sources say Houthis have ‘taken control’ of an island” then the fact that government sources used the words ‘taken control’ is itself interesting.
The headlines “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Zelensky”, “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Putin”, and “Russia ‘will be defeated’ in Ukraine says Taylor Swift” all tell of vastly different news events.
That single quoted phrase was set in the context of other words, and that context defined its meaning. We know this to an extent that almost no one could have imagined since LLMs have become a huge part of the world.
My favorite example of this is how no article in Britain during Corbyn's leadership of the labor party would ever quote an entire sentence that he had said. Thousands of articles, and the quotes were all fragmentary phrases and lone words framed in editorial.
edit: Brits and the BBC especially do this more than most, likely because of their bizarre libel laws (that were once even worse than they are now.)
> actually verifying the truth
That's the job of the reader, not the journalist. Unless you're living under oppression. So you have misunderstood the purpose of reporting.
Power is taken, and regardless of the ideals of the takers, enough power grants legitimacy.
The reason people accept, and even defend, all of this is solely because they find "the other side" detestable, and people like our GP here play exactly into this by making themselves completely detestable to anybody that's already not as far out, and in the same direction, on the partisan horseshoe of stupidity as they are.
Reporting discourse is different from reporting fact, and I do not know the BBC for reporting unverified discourse or facts.
Ah, the past exonerative tense. https://archive.is/wPVdy
Read McSweeney's guide to ambiguous grammar, where they lead you step by step from the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to the ultimate say-nothing sentence speed was involved in a jumping-related incident while a fox was brown, and the punchline is you can then translate "the St Louis County Police Department was involved in an officer-involved shooting after officers came under heavy gunfire" to "a police officer shot a black person" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown)
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-...
But no, that's the language issued by police departments covering their asses. Journalists are a little bit covering their asses in making clear what is a quote and what isn't, but they're still responsible for what they choose to quote, and to be clear on whether they have verified the claims they're quoting.
Ideally, unverified claims shouldn't even be in an article. But when there _has_ been some kind of stramash, they just don't know who did what, the need to rush out an article to get clicks means they'll just quote both sides and try to give them equal prominence until they can do more verification.
oh like this article that says a child was hit by a "LAPD bullet" as though wild bullets roam the streets of LA looking for children instead of being fired from a gun by a person who made a decision.
It's generally police officials that use that terminology.
I am very much against black and white thinking. But the typical US and even EU liberal citizen is mired in such thinking when it comes to talk about "war crimes and "regime change". If you don't know who in the EU govt decided to back this Syrian President, then I can only facepalm since even as a poor, "low-IQ" third-worlder (according to MAGA folks), I am educated on the same. Please look at Ursula von der Leyen and her €620 million support package.
Yes, I will hold you folks responsible. This is not some "abstract idea" - it is basic, common knowledge and you fellows always, always fall to your media propaganda.
You’re certainly free to hold whoever you want responsible, but I’d argue it’s not a realistic position. And keep in mind that it’s hard for someone living here to have an accurate view of what the average American believes, even harder for someone living outside the country - dominant opinions vary widely between regions of the US. I’m sorry that our government supports war criminals of varying degrees on our behalf, though, would certainly be nice if our leaders were more principled on that front.
Your comment reeks of western superiority and exceptionalism.
Its not black and white thinking. It just hypocrisy at the highest level.
The EU does not spend a single day without going around telling anyone and everyone that human rights are very important and that we should do absolutely everything to keep things that way but then turns around and welcomes the head of a (former) terrorist group in Europe.
Even Macron welcomed the guy in Paris even though ISIS killed hundreds of French citizens.
Can anyone then reasonably blame China or India when they continue doing business with Russia? If so why the double standards?
The US and the EU love to criticize other nations but don't mind supporting war criminals and dictators when its suits them and even give them money and/or sell them weapons.
After the Ukraine war ends, I'll bet you you'll see Putin or his successor being invited to cocktail parties in Frankfurt or London, no question about it.
It's funny to see the evolution of language. Quotation marks indicated that something was a direct quote. Then people started to use them as a sarcasm indicator. Now we're to the point where people can't even recognize them as indicating a direct quote.
Israel invades Lebanon due to risk of Hezbollah attacks
rather than:
Israel says "risk of Hezbollah attacks" reason for invasion
“40 beheaded babies” and mass/systematic rape propaganda accepted with zero verification (journalism 101) and, once debunked, zero retractions were made
Hamas-run, but not Likud-run
Condemnation of atrocities by Israel and the US that comes from Israeli and Western voices is given significantly more weight than the same claims coming from Palestinian or Arab voices. After all, the native lacks the capacity to be objective.
Israeli gov statements are taken as undeniable fact, while Palestinian (Gaza or West Bank) gov spokespeople or even Palestinian people in general are barely even platformed
Over-representation of Zionists in editorial teams of every major newspaper and news channel across all Western countries, which (naturally) led to coordinated suppression of any Palestinian voice internally and externally (started to change only relatively recently).
And the list goes on.
I think this was just a stylistic choice and that this whole thread is a weird tangent.
I believe BBC and other outlets with journalistic standards use quotes when reporting what officials say and only drop the quotes when they have independent verification, like eyewitness reports from one of their own journalists.
The BBC's main sin in relation to Trump is sane-washing, treating his bizarre outbursts as if they were reasonable things for a US president to say. Eg. were he to say "I have a solid gold prostate!" they'd have an Anthony Zurcher piece entitled "Is Trump's prostate really made of gold?" with a quote from a doctor saying "while it seems unlikely and would probably be uncomfortable, having a gold prostate would be unlikely to cause any noticeable side effects as the metal is inert" and a discussion of the benefits of replacing a cancer-prone organ with a noble metal.
It is more likely they want to get the same level of safety countries with nukes get, e.g. North Korea's leadership is at no risen of getting a "democratizing" invasion.
Then again, who knows what the next leader will do.
The IRGC has constantly used every weapon they have, and by that I mean firing it, not as a means of defense, but as a means of attack. That too, is something they're still doing, before and after the US-Iran escalation.
Allowing this particular bunch of assholes get a nuclear weapon is a level of stupidity that is barely describable. If they want such a weapon for safety, that'll be the first time in their history.
And yes, I get it, a lot of people really hate Israel. There is even some justification for that. But do you believe for even one second this government will stop after bombing Israel?
And then maybe look at the number of nuclear bombs used against other nations.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/13/a-timeline-of-crise...
It doesn't look like foreign conquest is part of their MO.
I’m just pointing out that we’re oh so happy to give people who murder gay people weapons and very advanced technology. Because they’re the bad people we like who give us cheap oil.
It’s all just used as a narrative to justify war. Like when we go invade somewhere to promote ‘democracy’ but still give money and power to all the little kingdoms with zero Democracy.
Trump literally said a day or two ago that if Iran had nukes, he'd treat them a lot nicer and would cozy up to them like with China, Russia, and North Korea. Given that what government wouldn't serious consider obtaining nukes if only as a matter of survival?
Then why did Iran discontinue their other WMD programs, like much cheaper and easier to manage chemical weapons programs?
Why is Iran holding back and not targeting Israel's water infrastructure? If they just want to kill everyone they have options right now that they aren't taking.
Why does Iran hold back if they would use a nuke as soon as they get one because they just want to destroy the region?
Iran objectively wants to build a nuke, and has willingly sacrificed everything to do it, but it wouldn't have taken becoming a rogue state and trillions of dollars of GDP to kill Israel to their liking. Other than a nuke, Israel's retaliation options are fairly limited.
Saying Iran is looking destroy the world as a final statement misses the fact that most Western oligarchs are passively OKAY destroying the world, if it means more money and "security" for them today.
Not reporting on Trump is not an option because his words and actions have huge ramifications for the world.
I think in general the press has gotten much better at just straight up saying that Trump is lying or wrong, as opposed to previous policy of only reporting counter claims from other parties.
The Epstein stuff is extremely disappointing of course, but his analysis is still quite sober and valid.
But generally, yes, I think cynicism has run amok among the very-online.
### Translation / Meaning of the Statement
The statement:
> "This is a stunning amount of credulity after 'looted vs found' and '[https://x.com/i/status/1322999903753220099'-style](https://w... memes."
...translates in plain English to:
> "It is shocking how gullible people are being, especially given how we've already been through internet memes poking fun at biased media framing—like the 'looted vs. found' double standard and satirical posts mocking how Western media patronizingly covers foreign nations."
---
### Detailed Explanation of the References
To fully understand the comment, you need to break down the two cultural references it relies on:
1. *"Looted vs. Found"*
* *The Origin:* This refers to a famous media controversy following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Two different wire-service photographs showed people wading through floodwaters carrying food and goods from grocery stores.
* *The Bias:* The photo featuring a young Black man was captioned by the news agency as "a young man *looting* a grocery store," while the photo featuring a white couple was captioned as "two residents *finding* bread and soda from a local grocery store."
* *The Meme:* Over time, "looted vs. found" became a shorthand internet meme/trope used to mock systemic racial or cultural double standards in journalism, where identical actions are described using criminal or sympathetic language depending on who is doing them.
2. *The Twitter/X Link (`[https://x.com/gathara/status/1322999903753220099](https://x.com/gathara/status/1322999903753220099)`)*
* *The Origin:* This link points to a famous satirical post by Kenyan political cartoonist and journalist Patrick Gathara.
* *The Meme/Satire:* Gathara rewrote breaking news about a U.S. election or political crisis using the patronizing, exoticizing, and condescending tone that Western mainstream media outlets typically reserve for reporting on African or developing nations (e.g., framing routine political tensions as "tribal friction," warning of impending "warlords," or questioning if "democracy can take root" in a volatile Western state).
* *The Meme Style:* These types of memes invert the gaze to highlight the absurd bias, ethnocentrism, and unearned authority of Western news reporting.
### How It Connects to the Hacker News Context
In the Hacker News thread (discussing whether people should blindly trust or swallow a particular news framing/headline), the commenter is exasperated. They are arguing that *users should know better than to blindly swallow official media narratives ("a stunning amount of credulity")* because internet culture has spent years highlighting—through memes like looted vs. found and Gathara’s media-parody posts—just how frequently mainstream news framing is biased, manipulative, or absurd.
https://cfmm.org.uk/resource/bbc-on-gaza-israel-one-story-do...
On the BBC specifically, try reading through their articles, especially from early on, and tell me what the editorial slant is. Yes, most of the content is neatly wrapped in quotation marks, but what picture were they trying to paint?
On UK media in general: https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-...
My point is that both UK and Western media immediately jumped on and recirculated the claim in the first few days without confirmation. This was just enough to sear the image of beheaded babies into the minds of viewers & readers in the West, helping to justify Israel’s campaign to starve out the “human animals” and raze Gaza (a least in the mind of the avg citizen).
sigh this is aljazeera ... They don't mention what Iran did in the Iran-Iraq war (Iraq gave up after ~1 year, and Iran tried to conquer Iraq for 7 years. Oh and you might want to Google "plastic keys to heaven". You see, according to the IRGC allah provides cheap demining equipment in the form of minority children. And before you say they've now stopped you might want to look at the pictures they're spreading TODAY about the Houthi's "success". There's a ~10 year old boy on those pictures ...)
If what you say is remotely true, what is the intention behind Hezbollah, the Houthi's, Iraq's religious parties, and Iran's participation in Syria's civil war (delivering the soldiers).
Please note that if you give an explanation, and you say it's "to feel safe", note that Iran helped kill 600,000 Syrians (they brought the soldiers to kill everyone). Houthi's in Yemen killed tens of thousands and starved hundreds of thousands ... to death, with Iran's help.
I mean this is what they do to feel safe, and you are trying to give an argument that they should have nukes so they'll be safe?
I'll make a guess, now you're going to "compare" it to some US actions, or perhaps Israel? And we won't be discussing that Iran's IRGC probably killed more of their own people "only to feel safe" in 3 days of January protests than Israel did in 3 years of war in Gaza.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#Dispute_...
(but generally start reading from the Stalemate onwards)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_key_to_paradise
"The high death rate for children is indicated by Brigadier General Mohammad-Saleh Jokar, the head the Students Basij, who stated that 36,000 schoolchildren were killed while only 2,853 were injured during the war."
(note: such numbers are only realistic if Iran killed their own wounded children. Let's hope this is not actually true)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_intervention_in_the_Sy...
Iran fighting, for years and years, executing massacres, on the side of Bashar Al Assad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah%E2%80%93Iran_relatio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Iranian_prot...
Note the constant reduction in the death toll (and read the talk page for why the numbers were reduced, along with attempted removals of references to Reza Pahlavi. You see the death toll are western disinformation campaigns, and if you check the people, claimed by people who got warnings for being pro-Russian unfair edits ...)
And they're still adding to the death toll:
Iran says Strait of Hormuz is 'open' but tracking shows few ships moving - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwydexp39ddo
I see how it would read as bias if one interprets them as scare quotes, but it really does just mean "this is verbatim" when used here.
Apparently, this helped the Houthis advance quickly as the opposition forces were in disarray.
You’d lose a lot of money always waiting for news through officials channels.
Who knows how slow Yemini military channels are.
You’d bet your life on it?
Where in the battlefield decision making process are they listening to social media recordings to make combat decisions?
Sauds, on the other hand . . .
Even in the Russia/Ukraine conflict they use Telegram for basic operations. All chat applications are dual-use.
I don't want to live in interesting times anymore.
https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/e50be2e51e7695dc4b1366a37a245a...
with the press of a USB key or other device into/onto what you’re using.
This can be used to verify consistent identities for the cost of an AirTag or less - but without mandating it as a government-involved thing, which is most of the holdup.
We should stop everybody else from developing AI, except for both of them which are the most appropriate stewards for this technology.
Do they have a chain of command? Are people in charge?
I don't think native Yemeni are motivated enough to fight for unification. That's why all the fighters are mercenaries hired by the UAE or Yemen
Those conditions seem to be changing.
I thought the remaining issues were a dispute related to the timing requirements in the War Powers Resolution, plus unsettled Constitutional law.
The 2001 AUMF hasn't been repealed. It was used as recently as 2025 to justify attacks on Venezuelan ships.
It wasn't a war we could win. We fought it anyway. Now we're stuck trying to lose in a tolerable way. Which requires more fighting.
At some point the balance will tip and China will take over patronage of the right selection of powers to push us out, which will disentangle western involvement (and make it their problem, of course). But at this stage there really is no hope for genuine stability.
Women, gays and infidels are pubished by Houthi police.
The EU & US don't have ANY issues supporting and financing governments that punish gays and infidels. Hint: New Syrian government, Saudi government (which is also famous for publicly beheading gays)
So why not accept the Houthis too ? Otherwise, my apologies, your stance just sounds like the usual disgusting Western sanctimonious hypocrisy.
I think you're right that strategic / economic interests have outweighed cultural issues / human rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarkha
> "God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam"
The mainstream media has made it sound like the fall of Mocha was at least somewhat surprising, but I don't think that's accurate. It was pretty clear the Houthis would reach the port as late as last week.
As I type this I feel somewhat vindicated by the update to the page, "Iran does not dictate every Houthi decision - but they appear increasingly aligned", which I think does a good job of clarifying the relationship. It does, however, say "Iran has publicly backed the Houthis during the latest fighting. The geography helps explain why", which is useful factual evidence (since Iranian officials have indeed made public statements in support of the Houthis) but the use of "backed" in this sentence is bad style since that word has been used in exactly this context to have a much deeper meaning than Iran saying "we've got your back bro"
The next question should be: who benefits?
I think people read things like "Iran-backed" and immediately frame it in terms of US/Iran conflicts, but GCC/Iran conflicts are the more salient geopolitical frame, at least until like last year.
Will MbS place a phone call to Pakistan National Command if his oil shipments get distilled for too long?
This would be the wrong conclusion to take from it. Trump is incredibly unpopular domestically and the war is dumb and pointless and was sprung on the US population by surprise and planned and executed with complete and utter incompetence, and the negative economic consequences are way out of proportion to any conceivable benefit we will get out of it. It's not a lack of resolve, it's a rational reaction to incompetent leadership.
"The West's enemies" have to be careful not to give the US an excuse to commit to a real war, rather than fight it with basically pocket change the way we are now while we look for a way out.
idealogical fighters fight to the death. & in almost every case besides the nazi's etc they always win. whether the ideology is right or wrong that's a conversation for a different day.
I suspect the Chinese won’t be happy with the pipeline and refinery attacks on Saudi Arabia but i also assume that there will still be plenty of Chinese bound oil for the foreseeable future.
Not that they are doing it for this reason, but they have done a lot to shield trump from the consequences of his stupid war. But those supplies can only hold for so long; things can get much worse for the world economy in the near future.
Even with that, global strategic petroleum reserves are quickly draining. Last I looked, the US was down to ~290M. There is a legal limit of 250M (though laws don’t matter anymore). The structural floor is also estimated to be somewhere north of 200M.
The world is about to not be able to meet all oil demand for any price.
Which if correct is a crazy display of flexibility in the economy
[9%] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-fa...
Donald Trump can end this at any time if he wants. It would have been better to not have started it, thou. Less killing of innocent people, less spending on weapons, better mental health for USA soldiers...
And why is China suddenly at fault for America's actions?
OTOH midterm generic ballots are much more stable than top line presidential horse race polling. So it might only matter at the margins.
I see this over and over again with the Canada stuff. Or Greenland stuff. Not taking it seriously because "oh that's just Trump deflecting cuz of [Epstein|Midterms|etc]." Meanwhile the actual blast radius here is far far far outside of the domestic arena.
When will people just take this guy at his word? He says he wants to conquer or do X Y and Z. That's it. He said those things. Believe him. Stop trying to make it about yourself. (And also he wants to make personal money off manipulating the stock market and oil prices.)
It's not a good look, esp to the victims of Trump outside the US who have no power to vote in American elections and yet are victims of American power.
Luckily, we reversed that policy and have been using as much oil as possible.
All hail the great barrel of goo.
source: https://www.raffaellocortina.it/scheda-libro/piergiorgio-odi...
I don't have the book here with me so I cannot check the exact amount of years but it's ridiculously small.
- make sure fuel prices increase globally
- The US economy is relatively well-shielded from the fallout by its own fossil fuel sources, local and in colonies like Venezuela.
- export more US fossil fuels, especially to Europe, at inflated prices. US insiders reap the profits.
- further kneecap European competitiveness in energy intensive sectors, steal market share. Oh well, small gift to China here too, but still a net win for the US.
When Iran hit some of Exxon's oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, their stock actually shot up. Because they have an even greater investment in LNG in Texas which are now incredibly valuable
The truth is probably much more multi-headed - though hard to see how the US would have gone to war without some assessment of their own energy situation.
That can't end well?
A rise in crude prices might pay off for a small country that lives almost exclusively off it (say, Saudi Arabia, in the hyphotetical case that it could keep exporting as normal) but for the US? I don't think it does. Surely, Europe is more exposed than the US and will suffer even more, but this is not a zero-sum game.
So I don't think it's an elaborate plan, it's just Trump being reckless as usual.
When all is said and done it will be he, not AOC or Bernie or any "Green New Deal" folks, that will be remembered by history as the president who did more to get people off fossil fuels than any other.
The Venezuela comment is extremely weird. You know Venezuela has negligible production, right, and that it would take 100s of billions of investments, over decades, to get reasonable production that would make a difference. That's ignoring that currently there is a laughably illegitimate puppet government -- literally just Madero's government minus him, as they did the coup with the US -- that has a 100% chance of a violent overthrow in the future. Which is exactly why all of the oil companies are shrugging and saying no thanks.
Venezuela is a farce -- much like $5000 "dividend" for a government literally on the precipice of bankruptcy, as Bessent runs around, near tears, trying to convince everyone that they're the house and he's the big dog German Shepherd instead of the face of a failing empire having its last pathetic gasp, to laughter all around -- that Trump thinks gives him leverage against Canada. It is unbelievably pathetic business, like renaming a 400+ year old name on a lake like a little bitch.
There is zero scenario where this has benefitted the US, but a drunkard incompetent secdef (sorry "secwar") convinced a foolish demented rapist, who already had Israel whispering in his ear, how easy and painless this foolish debacle will be.
ROFL.
oil spiked and then crashed during the gulf war & the iraq war in 03.
the gulf war probably because of western price control methods kicking in, the iraq war because of an increase in confidence that the region would produce oil after western 'securing' of oil fields allowing further volume investment from the UAE and friends.
I guess it really just depends on what the definition of 'regional disruption' is.
Instability is instability. Oil is fungible.
There’s no reason to think someone else won’t escalate this further disrupting supplies even more. That will push prices up.
Even if they don’t, if oil can’t get through this straight it will have to go somewhere else, which will increase shipping traffic and demand for “your oil” right? And wouldn’t that also push up prices?
GCC will have to talk to Iran now, there is no reasonable way out of this quagmire other than a regional accommodation with Iran. Talk about a regression but here we are.
And against, not with, Western Europe?
So being prices down where, in eastern Europe?
I suspect they would sooner curtail production rather then sell at a discount due to route restrictions.
It doesn't matter if in Texas wells are producing it at a penny for barrel, if the global prices are high that oil is going to be sold to Philippinos, Japanese, Italians or South Africans.
So, at the same time, it doesn't matter if some new routes open or close, it doesn't particularly favor one or the other buyer, it's still sold globally on a bid.
This hurts Europe more than Asia.
The UK, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, and others are similarly opposed to the Houthis having conducted airstrikes on the Houthis (eg. 2025) as well as helping target them directly or indirectly.
And a large portion of global shipping is owned by Greek conglomerates - a country that is a close ally of Israel.
Most GCC states also have some form of defense agreement with the UK or France. If those turn out to be meaningless, it reduces their incentive to cut preferential deals with European states.
Additionally, this further enhances Turkiye and Pakistan's hand, as Saudi Arabia has signed defense pacts with both and Pakistan has threatened action against Iran yesterday if further incidents threaten Saudi Arabia. If they were able to dislodge the Houthis without direct European intervention, then it is a massive black stain on the EU's power projection capacity and it's claim that it should be treated as a great power. It also gives Turkiye additional leverage against the EU.
Finally, the Houthis struck the East-West Pipeline [0]. Much of the KSA's oil is in Eastern Saudi Arabia around Dhahran. Most large Asian states like China, India, Japan, and South Korea have continued operations in Iran that allowed them continued passage. European states lack access to GCC oil as a result of Perim island being controlled by the Houthis.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yemens-houthis-rea...
Be it the Ukranian conflict, the ME crisis, the NA wars and instabilities, etc. The EU is the one that geopolitically speaking lost the most.
Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests, I simply do not understand how they could leave foreign actors to dictate policies that affect thier own territory and enterprises without any sort of critical thought.
But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
1.How do they pay Iran considering the sanctions? 2.Do you think EU shouldn't sanction Iran even though they violated NNPT and their terrible record on human rights because Iran can threaten them with a sufficient price?
> a country that is a close ally of Israel
Are they? They never sent a single weapon or soldier to help israel, they have no formal or informal mutual defense agreement. Israel buy no military equipment from Greece. You mistake mutual interest because of a common enemy - Turkey to close alliance.
The Iranian-backed Houthis also struck the Saudi East-West oil pipeline [0], pumping stations and refining capability. Reductions in export output initially estimated around 700,000 barrels per day now missing from the market.
[0] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Oil...
Brazil isn't risk-free. There are environmental, political and logistical risks, but its oil production is geographically removed from the principal Middle Eastern conflict zones and its exports can help diversify global supply.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinese-refiner-sino...
https://www.reuters.com/commentary/reuters-open-interest/why...
https://www.thetimes.com/business/energy/article/hormuz-cris...
(That said, the 2001 AUMF hasn't been invoked against Iran.)
But Trump found a smokescreen to hide behind. And Congress is too spineless to impeach him for unauthorized use of military force. And here we are.
No! Money down!
He says a lot of things he doesn't do though. Beleiving him is a bad heuristic and so is disbeleiving him.
Plenty to consider there
The US refines heavy oil that's harder to refine and hence more profitable to import since it has few buyers.
I don't expect a war to happen, but Iran will double down support for Afghanistan as well as lay the red carpet for India to continue operating in the country.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan_cro...
[1] - https://quwa.org/pakistan-defence-news/pakistan-iran-mediati...
I often wonder about the world we would live in if the Brooks Brothers Riot had not succeeded. That appears to have been the turning point for the fall of the USA, and even more sadly, humanity.
The fun part about this is that it shows what people actually care about.
What happens if petroleum prices go up? People use less. It's the entire premise of a carbon tax. Fuel costs more so people buy a hybrid or electric vehicle, power utilities find renewables or nuclear more attractive relative to natural gas, etc. In a market economy this is the primary way to get people to switch from something to alternatives -- which is pretty important if you think climate change is a problem.
This is obviously not why Trump is doing it, but it's the consequence of it anyway. So now we get to see what people care about. Do you like higher oil prices because it speeds up the transition away from fossil fuels, or dislike them because of who it is that caused it this time?
The military units are not very well organized, they don't have clear and stringent command, control and communications.
They understood a regional commander to be fleeing, units fell back.
This is kind of stuff is absolutely as old as time, and it's #1 rule in conflict aka deception.
The parallel would be reproducing a General's order to withdraw - meaning the command would have legitimacy among troops and junior officers, believing their own commanders were just out of the loop.
And yes - their command structure will be de facto organized along social lines, but it's more descriptive.
I've only very recently become interested in ancient history, so I'm still very ignorant about this.
Are there any particular examples of this tactic you'd suggest studying?
"18. All warfare is based on deception. "
AoW is one of the most important historical treatises, it's not just 'something that was written in history', maybe the oldest true 'textbooks' of objective knowledge, and also realpolitik. Also there's hints of metaphysics in there, in a way. It absolutely stands up today.
The very first work of the Western Cannon: Trojan Horse.
Information / espionage and deception has made most of history; Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander etc.
A fun exercise would be to look at battles of history from the lens of information warfare and deception, and contemplate the outcome without it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/12/truth-social...
it's actually amazing to type that out and notice it's not a joke
2. I agree. I'm just being prosaic as to why European states are in the pickle they are today.
3. They are closely entwined via logistics, but Cyprus would be an even closer Israel-Cyprus ties. The reality is, the Saudi-Turkiye-Kuwait-Pakistan alliance is a direct reaction to the Israel-Greece-Cyprus-UAE-India cooperation or the now signed Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral.
In any case, bad idea if other retaliate with their exports.
Also, US cannot really use the oil it produces, because it can refine very little of it.
Any export ban would require massive investments.
Yes, our current President also does stupid things, and our military forces shouldn't be using his incoherent ramblings on Twitter to make snap judgements on the battlefield without checking with their chain of command either.
You mean the chain of command that has been purged of experienced professionals?
This is why it succeeded: lizard brain decisions overcame training in the armed forces.
I'm not really sure that's true. The US is no longer a credible negotiator. I'm not sure negotiating a peace would necessarily end the situation immediately.
The US isn't even negotiating. Fairly sure they don't have a full negotiating team and they're doing it via 1-2 Trump flunkeys and Pakistan intermediating.
What they did was aggressively reduce demand by accelerating the switch to EV's and firing up a few more coal powerstations.
In terms of influencing the midterms - I suspect China isn't anywhere near the front of the queue in hoping Trump get's a beating given the chaos he is causing.
Complaining about foreign interference is ironically straight from the Hillary playbook.
How much of their strategy is to change elections vs other concerns I don't know.
> In April 2016, during UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait, Houthi representatives gave the United States a "sincere apology" for the "Death to America" slogan, claiming that the slogan was used for "domestic consumption as a means to attract support in the streets and create a common cause between their supporters to keep them united."
> During the Red Sea crisis, Houthi supporters waved the flag of Palestine every Friday during anti-Gaza genocide and anti-western attacks on Yemen demonstrations, alongside the slogan and flag of Yemen. A new Houthi slogan appeared after the group's re-designation as a terrorist organisation: "America is the mother of terrorism" set on a red background.
Well, they're not wrong.
I'm case it's helpful to anyone, here's one review of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vxts5/comme...
Seems like a tough area of history to be certain about.
Most European countries know this feeling. :)
You don't even need to try because it's not happening.
People need to keep in mind tactical versus strategic success. For Iran, the military operation was a complete tactical success, it's just that the strategic goals — assuming there were any to begin with, which seems to be an unanswered question — were not, and it was questionable whether military operations were a useful tool to achieve them at all.
“War is the continuation of policy with other means.” — Carl von Clausewitz
'What is one's stated policy / goal, and is war a useful tool for achieve it', is a question that needs to be asked by civilian leadership. Sometimes (often?) the answer is "no".
It's not a perfect book, but it illustrates a lot of military failures that haven't really been encountered much in the West in the last 80 years.
But leaks of those messages onto twitter are probably the most valuable info source for what the enemy is doing.
I have no idea, but Im certain that twitter recordings do not put frontline forces in disarray.
> use Telegram for basic operations
an encrypted private communication channel is very different than public social media
I dont know that its a matter of professionalism. Everyone in the world has known that AI can generate video and audio that is imperceptibly fake, for years. And thats to say nothing of man-made forgeries in the years prior.
I have a hard time seeing people on the front line throwing down arms and running away because of an unsourced twitter clip.
> I have no idea, but Im certain that twitter recordings do not put frontline forces in disarray.
And yet as a counterexample: reality.
We dont have to imagine this. We kind of see both variants in the open.
> https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/iran-war-warn...
We had a retard in the Oval Office 2017-2021 surrounded by "the deep state" (i.e. career managers of the ultra-complex organization called "the government"), and politically constrained by Congress.
Now we have that same retard, but supported by vast purges of aforementioned managers, and politically unconstrained by the cultists and cowards (the two forms of GOP representative) in Congress.
Of course we should have gone for renewable energy more forcefully, but that wouldn't have resolved the issue. That change will take time, and you can't arbitrarily accelerate it.
https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...
Nuclear is cheapest, then lignite, then hard coal, and then gas. Germany phased out the cheapest option first, now continues with the second, and is expanding the most expensive.
The obvious choice would have been to do what China and India are doing - phase out gas power first and focus on electrification. But Europe did the opposite.
Sure, the environment, etc but Europe hasn't invested strategically in that, either. China has.
EU opposes the Houthis because they are a horrifying slave state that distributes children as sex slaves to their troops.
EU opposes Russia because it is a horrifying fascist dictatorship that has repeatedly invaded it's neighbors, and constantly talks about it's historical claims to EU territory.
In the NA conflicts it's harder to draw such a clear line, because the conflicts typically have about 15 sides each, but the basic algorithm you can use is generally that EU tries very hard to pick sides based on morality, not geopolitical interests.
The EU is like the US, it does business with vile and despicable people if it is in its own interest.
The European parliament has been bought 10 times over by the lobbies.
See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...
"By some estimates, they influence 75% of legislation"
> But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
Even if the lobbying was not reason for all the bad decisions of the EU, the EU parliament has no way to actually propose any laws on its own. All the laws emanate from the commission which is also bought and paid for by you guessed it, the lobbies.
When the UK left the EU and France+Italy were in the midst of their economic doldrums due to the Eurozone crisis, this left the hard power states within the EU comparatively weakened.
But the collapse of Minsk II and the ongoing war in the Middle East led to a cascading crisis for a unified Europe.
It's business and by now it should be clear to anyone that there's no morality involved in this space.
There's nothing wrong with Russia as energy partner, as long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot by blowing up the alternatives. South of EU had proper energy supplies from ME/NA. For example crisis in ME was mitigated by Russian energy or NA energy (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, etc).
The new hegemons like Turkey, Israel, etc came only later, yet we can't say they're Saints can we? Also to appease the US administration line a lot of green energy projects were put on hold, and were only restarted this year after the Hormuz situation.
The only real explanation is shortsightness for personal interests (but even then you'd have to have all your capitals abroad), or being a tool for foreign interests.
It's an open secret that Russian money is deep, deep in European politics.
If you take this all the way back to ancient history, nobody will be happy with the examples we drum up.
Iranians were rioting against the regime, Israel intelligence handed the US a report that the collective "Head" of the Iranian regime will be all together at one place, at one time.
Cut off the head, and the rioters riding high on the win will topple the rest. Coming off of the swift clean victory in Venezuela, and Trumps incredible desire to put feathers in his cap, it was an irresistible proposition.
So he decided to cut off the head, which was successful. The miscalculation however was that the rioters got scared/apathetic rather than motivated. The power vacuum was filled by the same people who were there before. I'm sure Mossad and the CIA were probably on the ground trying to ground swell support, but evidently it didn't happen.
Killing a few heads of Iran was known to not be an effective strategy, because the power is in the hands of the IRGC as an institution and large group, not the figureheads. This is especially hilarious when the Trump admin was so freaking stupid, they couldn't figure this out even after it didn't work the first time. They continued trying to kill random figureheads as if that plan would have had more success if you killed people nobody had previously heard of.
None of this is "miscalculation" or bad luck or taking a reasonable gamble. It's stupidity. There was not evidence to believe this plan had a strong chance. There was no organized resistance. Claims of supporting the Kurds, a group the Trump admin has fucked over more than once (nit: Other Kurds, they aren't a single group), happened only after the war was already going tits up and involved absurd tweets about "dropping them weapons" as if that's just a thing you can do on a whim and as if the Kurds themselves were willing, ready and able to resist the Iran regime.
We did not "Cut off the head" in Venezuela. We conspired with insiders to replace one figurehead with another. It was not a victory except for extremely weird people who think abducting a foreign head of state is somehow a good thing.
The Pentagon was actively telling the admin all of this, which is why some of them were fired.
What happened was even dumber than this absurd post-hoc rationalization: Israel was fucking pissed after Oct 7th, which is reasonable, and decided that "Mowing the grass" was done, and they were going to Finally fix this. They planned to attack Iran. Their strikes over the next year were done to enable this. Shortly before their planned attacks were to start, Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first, as Iran would probably attack US bases in retaliation anyway, and may end up pulled in regardless. IE, there's a chance Kamala would also have gotten sucked into this quagmire in some fashion, depending on how Iran had reacted to just Israel's strikes. Nobody was in a strong position to tell Israel "No, don't start this war, that's stupid, it's stupid, you've already neutered all the proxy groups, just take your victory and go home"
This is Israel's war. They don't mind the straight being screwed up. They don't mind the world economy falling down.
Negative externalities:
- loss of trust
- loss of evidence based policy
- loss of long-term planning
- loss of talent
- financial loss for almost all except the rare insiders
George Friedman, The Next Decade
Seems to be in contradiction.
"But I don't see it helping us, it's just helping our enemies get closer to parity ."
"Precisely. How else are we going to justify the budget?"
Obviously, it's happening with all decent models.
China is playing long, most of the ~unchanging things are in their favor and the US already proved that they're unreliable. People won't forget that soon even if Trump is gone.
My bet would be that China doesn't care much either way, they win regardless.
- NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,
- tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):
https://wjno.iheart.com/content/2025-03-17-qa-how-many-count...
The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
> - NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,
NATO consists of a lot of countries, why would they only work for USA shipping? And where do you think that shipping comes from?
> - tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):
Of course they do. But they're not usually idiots about it.
> The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)
You advocate for tariffs but don't understand how tariffs work...
As usual, none of you spotted the error and, of course, several misinterpreted my scribbling to best suit their own malicious intents, much to my chagrin (though no surprise).
I offer this rather late correction and apology: I so rarely make a mistake that I do not usually revisit a post but, in this case the piling on was merely too much to ignore. I shall try again:
It is a good thing that the USA no longer intends to pay for:
- NATO - Leaving NATO (STILL not done) would save the USA money! The USA pays approximately 16% of NATO's total budget and the USA is the largest spender on defense within the alliance, accounting for about 60% of NATO's total defense spending.
- Security on the high seas was primarily the task of the US navy. That will no longer be so.
- tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades).
https://wjno.iheart.com/content/2025-03-17-qa-how-many-count...
The USA can use the money saved from the above for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!).
How is that going? Any progress there? Are US citizens richer than they were before?
The End of Germany as a Modern Economy - Peter Zeihan
Some of them certainly are richer, specifically people with the last name Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/trump-presid...
I was feeling miserable reading this thread until I saw this, thanks for cheering me up.
The ICE recruits are raising the bar.
Oh and now the FBI can consider those with a background in bestiality, so lots of fresh talent there
Fortunately I'm from Wobegon and I'm above average: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_...
And then recognize that the normies you talk to are VASTLY MORE internet-savvy than the illiterate child soldiers on the front lines in Yemen. You have no concept of the info environment they live in. It is all magic electronic soup.
I prefer the version where Bibi quietly threatens Trump with videos/etc from his island vacations.
So your point is moot: tariffs are a tax on your own population, ostensibly to stimulate local manufacturing but in practice it is just another tax. Protectionists will immediately reach for this mechanism because they believe - in spite of all the evidence - that this time around it will work. It never does.
Manufacturing is so intertwined now that all tariffs do is to reduce the buying power for those at the bottom of the totempole, whereas those higher up hardly feel any concrete effect. Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come.
"Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come."
I said nothing of the kind. You are injecting that statement here yourself.
---------------------------------------------
Returning to the topic of interest:
Tariffs do work: they protect certain industries and keep them onshore.
For instance the manufacture of nuclear warheads by the USA is an onshore industry and will remain so. I am certain that Japan or North Korea could eventually make a cheaper and probably even a better nuke but b/c I don't want to be forced to do periodic quality control tests and checks. The USA chooses to keep the industry here.
But as far as I am concerned, I'd also like to keep hand tools as a protected onshore industry.
In my view the worst that can happen for China is that Trump gets limited by anything. He's hurting US relations more than he's hurting China short or long-term. Relations take longer to build than trade
"Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"
Yeah, that's the obvious answer, but I suspect there's a point where if the US fucks things up too quickly and too messily, there's fewer customers for China's crap and/or the random throws of monkey shit drag China into messes they don't feel like dealing with.
Slow erosion of the US's global power is likely better for them than an implosion that might cause collatoral damage.
The situation you're imagining is one of a global all encompassing depression caused by a single government.
Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
The point of regulation is to kill competitors and prevent private individuals from having unfettered access.
This is the most "I get both sides" issue in my mind these days. I am still not sure where I fall, or if there is even a correct position with which to agree. It really seems like there are no good options.
On the one hand, if all knowledge work ended up in two dude's hands, that is really bad. On the other hand, if every surviving child victim of war (US, RU, IL, CN, whatever) has access to the knowledge to make custom viruses for a few grand, that is also really bad.
Doesn't even have to go that far (though it pretty easily can, the US is a big enough market). If the US causes a refugee crisis that affects one of China's allies, or fucks with the global oil supply enough or a thousand other things, that stuff is still annoying to China even if it's usually relatively better for them than it is for the US.
> Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?
The people in the US choosing do not care if the rest of America feels it or not.