• 1 Post
  • 34 Comments
Joined 13 days ago
cake
Cake day: September 21st, 2024

help-circle

  • BMTea@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldWar never changes
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    17 hours ago

    Great question. See, a farmer can’t stay behind and command the state because he is a farmer. The heads of state and the elite cannot all perish in trenches because then all that would remain are farmers. Established heirarchy for organizational power was invented probably by whatever primates we evolved from, and is observed among even some other species of primate.



  • Iran blowing up Nevatim airbase (where US shipments of bombs mostly came in) is a moral victory regardless of their reasons. Better use of their power than helping Assad treat his own citizens in a slightly-less monstrous way than what’s been done to Gaza. Reminds me a bit of when Trump struck Syrian airbases actually.

    Also a show-y, escalatory move from a morally dubious power but nevertheless was appreciated by us who actually live in this region and know people slaughtered in merciless airstrikes.




  • I don’t get why you guys view it this way. They, as Russians, are being utilized by the state and expended in a war of conquest that was initiated by an autocratic leader. The nation has paid a steep economic cost for it. That’s hard fact.

    But it’s also hard fact that their Russian nation is gaining territory. It is true that their country doesn’t control its strategic environment, their historic rivals in America and Western Europe. It is true that the last time they let these rivals lead them somewhere, it was to national decline and humilation.

    So yes, it is a tragedy, but the same one that characterizes the history of nations, and there is a rational element to the ideology that so many Russians now follow. The danger is the irrational element which turns this nationalist war into a racial or religious crusade, which are present but in my view not dominant.






  • “Limited operation.”

    “Well they have to stay to prevent threats from reconstituting.”

    “The settlers are just unfortunate extremists.”

    “Today, I recognize the Litani as sovereign Israeli territory…”

    “Learn your lesson: if you attack Israel it will get bigger. FAFO.”

    “Lebanon is attacking innocent defenseless Jews in Israel’s Litani region! What revanchism! They’re stuck in the past! We must prevent the Holocaust!”

    “Limited operation.”





  • The thread really is amazing. The average American (and Westerner’s) understanding of and utilization if the term “terrorist” is probably the greatest feats of social engineering, legal warfare and propaganda in the 21st century. It’s an essential rhetorical tool to legitimize monstrous violence against civilians by one side, and delegitimize all “violence” (decontextualized of course) by the other.

    Commit a genocide in Gaza? Counter-terrorism.

    Attack Israel with the demand that it stops the genocide? Terrorism.

    It’s gotten to the point where Americans refer to the Beirut barracks bombings as “terrorism.” Here’s a logical exercise: who gets stationed in barracks, civilians or on-duty soldiers?