Dirt_Possum [she/her, undecided]

I’m not sure about “deserved it” but the USA definitely earned it.

Many of the individuals killed or otherwise hurt in the event didn’t deserve it (I’m sure at least a few did though). But America as a nation, an entity (not to be confused with the entity), or as a superstructure, yes America absolutely deserved 9/11. It deserved a lot worse and still does.

I was going to say America as a state deserved it, but honestly 9/11 was a boon to the American state. It gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted even more so than they already could, both domestically and internationally. So actually no, the American state didnt deserve it because they didn’t deserve anything good to happen to them, let alone such a perfect gift like 9/11, a gift that kept giving and never really stopped.

I agree. But I don’t think that changes the fact that the majority of the population expected to live in security without a threat that they would suffer consequences, they did not expect to suffer the kind of violence they wanted meted out to their enemies. The enemy is both weak and strong, that doesn’t mean they believed they might actually face death by Iranian missile. The IDF would protect them, the impenetrable iron dome would protect them. Their false confidence in their own security is part of their contradictory beliefs. The Nazis didn’t believe they would be beaten back and then destroyed by the inferior Soviets either.

I do not agree with this comment. Israel was promised to be the only place Jews could be safe. All the propaganda around the iron the dome being impenetrable was to make potential settlers feel safe and totally free from the consequences of their fascism. There was always the thug class of settlers who were not only willing to get their hands dirty, but itched to do so, the ones who, not even being IDF, would go and violently expel people from their homes and often murder them, yes. The ones who led pogroms. They know all too well how things really work and they relish it. But most of the settler population, as is often the case with settlers, exist in a bubble away from that (that doesn’t mean they don’t understand it is happening). They just want to reap the benefits of all the robbery and live carefree without fear of repercussion, protected by their torture-murder military heroes. And that was the promise Israel made to them.

Also Oct 7 definitely had a negative impact on Israel. I see u/Wertheimer has some statistics but I also suspect that accurate numbers on this aren’t exactly easy to find for obvious reasons. But settlers were leaving in swathes and the entity greatly feared losing even more settlers which likely played at least some part in the motivation to ramp up the aggression of the genocide to almost cartoonishly grotesque levels, to show off how they were wiping out the “threat.”

All of them were always all on board for genocide, but they saw an opportunity to go mask off, figuring they didn’t need to do it slowly anymore. That doesn’t mean the population isn’t made up of cowards who absolutely do not want to face any sort of violence- that is what their victims are supposed to suffer, but not themselves, they are supposed to get to have raves and concerts next to concentration camps without worry.

I mentioned this thread in the newsmega and you or @MaeBorowski@lemmy.ml may be interested in the resulting discussion that digs into it a bit deeper. It was brought up again in another great comment here too.

I see. Well I’m glad to find out there’s a lot more to it than just US imperialism in this case. Thank you for clarifying. Also, thanks for all the posting coverage you do for central and South American news.

That is good news!

At the same time, he indicated that he would advocate for the lifting of sanctions against the neighboring country so that it could join Mercosur. “The Colombia/Venezuela bilateral meeting has been extremely successful. We will request that the moratorium be lifted so that Venezuela can join Mercosur as a full member

at least they were able to get Venezuela to rejoin Mercosur which was something Maduro and Lula wanted for a long time.

Forgive my ignorance, but if Maduro wanted it to happen, as well as Lula, then the thing that was preventing Venezuela from rejoining it before was entirely the US’s sanctions on Venezuela? So do I understand this correctly? Now that the US illegally violently abducted and holds in captivity the head of the Venezuelan state, they get to flaunt their image of having unobstructed de facto control over everything that happens in LATAM, as a result they have deigned to relieve some of the sanctions, and it is because of that that Venezuela is allowed to join the economic bloc that it and the other members of that bloc had wanted? Or is that an inaccurate, pessimistic misunderstanding of the situation?

Next up, the solaryuan.

There is a thread in c/politics mentioning this and some commenters were saying it was too good to be true, saying that the “US empire wouldn’t allow this to happen.” Their logic was that western European countries would start bombing Iran too, though someone else pointed out this wouldn’t really make a difference and I tend to agree. I’m curious what the newsmega people think. To me it seems like a great move, perfectly rational for Iran to make and is not the extreme escalation some in that thread were making it out to be. Though I do wonder about how Iran would be able to know exactly how the parties are conducting payments in order to enforce it.

Nsfw-tag and CW please, for murdered pig (the innocent kind).

I don’t think he cares all that much about the money either, but I think everyone else who stands to get big chunks of it, like the publishers and his estate do care about ~$100 million+. And I think he cares about what they want, and I also think he ultimately will want people to read whatever he has written of his magnum opus when he finally accepts that it will not ever be complete. And I do still hold some small sliver of hope that he will actually finish Winds, I just won’t be holding my breath for it.

I know he doesn’t want anyone else finishing it, he’s been adamant about that for decades, but I never said anything about another author. I still think one way or another, we will eventually be reading a book called The Winds of Winter even if it is not the complete vision he intended when starting out. But none of that has anything to do with another author working on it. Like, the chapters he released on his not-a-blog along with the ones he read aloud to audiences, those come out to about 200 manuscript pages apparently, and the final book was supposed to be a whopping 1500 manuscript pages… I would bet we will see something that is maybe 1000 manuscript pages that carries the WoW title. We will see it either shortly before or not long after his death, assuming he doesn’t finish the book (which was never intended to be the last one of course) while still alive.

Just to toss out an opinion, I agree that :benefits-package: is a superior name than the other contender, :trump-delivers: and the cropping around the relevant part of the image is much better in this one. But I like that the whole van is showing in FnordPrefect’s version. Anyone seeing the emoji who doesn’t know its origin might have a harder time telling what it is with only the opened backs and caskets showing, and it’s somehow funnier imo to be able to see the whole amazon van shape. Good work either way though, same to u/FnordPrefect.

I think we probably will get WoW in some form. What we will absolutely for sure never get is A Dream of Spring. We will for sure never get a full conclusion to the story. But I’d be surprised if Winds isn’t released in some form at some point.

A lot of it already has been kinda-sorta released such as sample chapters, chapters he has done live readings of, etc. I think it was said to come out to around 200 manuscript pages. And we know theres a ton more written but that he has repeatedly revised it, or so he has said. That’s not a measure of progress, I think he probably is stuck in such a way that he will never be satisfied with what he wanted to release as Winds of Winter (or too content with doing more TV show writing). I’m saying there’s too much there that is worth literally in the hundreds of millions of dollars range for it not to get released even if it’s not the complete book that he intended.

Despite what George insists in interviews, there’s just too much invested in it, by him and others, for what he has written to just sit there as forever untapped wealth. Either he’ll change his mind before he dies and release an incomplete version of Winds, or he’ll die but his estate will get access to his DOS computer and release whatever he did write. (Or maybe he even will truly finish it but never even start on Dream). But I think it will probably be the former - publishing whatever he’s got at some point.

There is some precedent for this with how A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons were released, because those two were originally supposed to be one book, but it got split in two and released years apart. So in other words we’ll get the equivalent of Feast (first half) but not the equivalent of Dance (second half) for what was supposed to be a complete WoW book, but what does get released will still be called Winds of Winter. I know he has said he doesn’t want to do this. But I still think it’s what will end up happening.

I will say it again though, A Dream of Spring will never happen and we will never have a conclusion to ASOIAF.

Iran does have hypersonic missiles, that is what they are called, and that has been the case since long before this war or the 12-day war. There are just different things that can be called hypersonic missiles, the most advanced of which Iran does not have. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/19/iran-unveils-upgraded-hypersonic-missile-as-khamenei-touts-israel-failure

That’s one of those things I learned from this newsmega that I have repeatedly checked back on to be sure of. I have brought it up when arguing with my lib family who did not want to believe me that Iran could possibly have certain weapon tech that the great US did not possess. So I just remember well that it has been talked about here a number of times.

4 days ago
InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]

As for delivery, Iran has hypersonic missiles which could easily serve as a vehicle. No matter how depleted their launchers and rockets get, they can never get all of them. It only takes a couple missiles to credibly threaten the Israelis

1 year ago
coolusername @lemmy.ml

I don’t think so, just standard CIA shit like multiple regime change attempts and funding terrorism against them. Iran has hypersonic missiles and in a non-nuclear war can do a lot of damage.

1 year ago
FunkyStuff [he/him]

It’s a good thing the US is in election season and Iran has hypersonic missiles. But they need to hurry up before the US is confident in some countermeasures and gears up an invasion.

2 years ago
VHS [he/him]

Iran has hypersonic missiles now, they could make even quicker work of US aircraft carriers

?? Scary Movie started in 2000. This scene is what, 2013?

Hope no-one was offended by the, uhm, crass language!

I wasn’t offended, I was lol’ing and it was a good analysis of the situation.

About the Blitzed book and how it is fairly well known now that the Nazis were all railing or slamming meth, really being the first to do so on a large scale, I am reminded of Brace Belden’s theory that the more meth one does (might be stims in general), the more of a Nazi that person becomes. I always wonder if other former meth users tend to agree, because it sure fits my anecdotal experiences. Glad I was only into downers myself.

There are pipelines that open to disaffected and fed up libs, pipelines that appear radical and posture like they’re “speaking truth to power” but that only redirect any real burgeoning radicalism back away from anything effectual, away from communism, leading the people in those pipes right back into liberalism. Chomsky back in the day, vast majority of breadtube, etc. Hasan is likewise one of these pipelines, with one end open to incoming liberals who may not know any better (like many of us were once). But he doesn’t put in the typical U-shaped pipe in the works, the “P-trap” pipe that shepherds radicalism back to liberal democracy, he actually shunts his followers to a place of legitimate criticism of the imperial hegemon and support for AES. He’s not perfect. He’s more lib than most of us here would prefer. But by god he’s one of the few big names in The Discourse that really is actually good for leftism, one of the few who isn’t producing an army of “anti-tankie” leftists, but a following of baby lefties who stand a chance of becoming comrades capable of learning dialectical materialism rather than scoffing at it. Yes, Hasan is good.

Just let nature follow its course, it’s the Jodies that should proliferate in the population.

As everyone else has said, no, we should not. But with that out of the way, I’m surprised the anti-tankie crowd hasn’t adopted it to a much greater degree than the occasional reference. Like some of the other lemmy instances that make being “against tankies” their entire identity I would have thought would love to spam that symbol. Maybe I shouldn’t be giving them ideas if they happen to see this thread.

My first encounter with “3 arrows down” and what it meant was that early (c.2018) breadtuber who used it as his name, or his channel name anyway. I think he turned out to be a piece of shit by almost anyone’s standards (I forget what it was, but wasn’t there some scandal that ended his breadtube career?), and I wonder how much that poisoned the well for other anti-tankie “leftists” to want to use it. May have had nothing to do with it, but if so, highly critical support.