The US-Iran War Has Begun

[Noodles]

My problem with this is that we normally listen when Black people complain something is racist, and treat with suspicion those who dismiss what they have to say as "playing the racism card." I don't see why some people on the left tend to apply a double standard when the complaint is about antisemitism.

I think some of it is just context though.

Like if someone made some comments about, I dunno, something in the Sudan conflict, people probably aren't going to dismiss them because its "racist". There is actual fighting and conflict.

There is way too much defending of Israel because "its antisemetic to not let them do anything they want."

Maybe a better comparison would be saying like, "we can't arrest any black people for any crime because it would be racist." Except the actual racism is assuming every black person is a criminal, which is not true, but that not being true also does not mean there are not black criminals.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I think some of it is just context though.

Like if someone made some comments about, I dunno, something in the Sudan conflict, people probably aren't going to dismiss them because its "racist". There is actual fighting and conflict.

There is way too much defending of Israel because "its antisemetic to not let them do anything they want."

Maybe a better comparison would be saying like, "we can't arrest any black people for any crime because it would be racist." Except the actual racism is assuming every black person is a criminal, which is not true, but that not being true also does not mean there are not black criminals.

I'm not so sure. Donald Trump's comments on the civil war in Somalia and on Somalis in general are pretty racist, are they not?
ETA
My objection to what I regard as over-simplistic analyses like AIPAC control Congress is that they ignore what I see as the actual drivers of US policy in the ME (control of oil and gas supplies, shipping routes, geopolitical interests etc) and blame a particular group for using its wealth to advance the interests of a foreign power, whose interests they put before those of the US and their fellow citizens.

The antisemitic basis of such an analysis is obvious when it comes from people like Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Green but people on the left are not always immune to it either.

 

[Free]

Meanwhile.

Iran targets busiest international airport as top UN body demands halt to attacks on Gulf neighbors

Iran targeted the world’s busiest international airport Wednesday and attacked commercial ships as U.S. and Israeli strikes rocked Tehran, while the United Nations’ most powerful body demanded a halt to the Islamic Republic’s strikes on its Gulf neighbors that threaten global oil supplies.

apnews.com

Iran targeted the world’s busiest international airport Wednesday and attacked commercial ships as U.S. and Israeli strikes rocked Tehran, while the United Nations’ most powerful body demanded a halt to the Islamic Republic’s strikes on its Gulf neighbors that threaten global oil supplies.

The latest attacks marked an escalation in Iran’s campaign aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the United States and Israel to end the war that started 12 days ago. But there were no signs that the conflict was subsiding.

On Thursday, an Iranian attack sparked a major fire on Bahrain’s Muharraq Island, home to the island kingdom’s international airport. Authorities urged people to stay indoors and close windows to avoid smoke. The airport has jet fuel tanks, and other tanks in the area serve the kingdom’s oil industry.

So the war is very complete, huh?

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Meanwhile.

Iran targets busiest international airport as top UN body demands halt to attacks on Gulf neighbors

Iran targeted the world’s busiest international airport Wednesday and attacked commercial ships as U.S. and Israeli strikes rocked Tehran, while the United Nations’ most powerful body demanded a halt to the Islamic Republic’s strikes on its Gulf neighbors that threaten global oil supplies.

apnews.com

So the war is very complete, huh?

The Trump administration has realized that Trump bit off way more than he can chew, and has been urging him to declare the war ended with us the victors. Essentially, TACO Trump is chickening out.

 

[Casey Pelous]

The Trump administration has realized that Trump bit off way more than he can chew, and has been urging him to declare the war ended with us the victors. Essentially, TACO Trump is chickening out.

Good trick. Never reveal the objective, then just declare that it was achieved.

Sadly, that line of horse crap will still fly with about 30% of the electorate.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I'm not so sure. Donald Trump's comments on the civil war in Somalia and on Somalis in general are pretty racist, are they not?
ETA
My objection to what I regard as over-simplistic analyses like AIPAC control Congress is that they ignore what I see as the actual drivers of US policy in the ME (control of oil and gas supplies, shipping routes, geopolitical interests etc) and blame a particular group for using its wealth to advance the interests of a foreign power, whose interests they put before those of the US and their fellow citizens.

Well Jason Hickel IMHO nicely summarised that:

Why does the Biden administration support the Israeli genocide and war crimes even in the face of virtually universal condemnation, at massive expense, and to the point of totally debasing the rules-based international order? Why do it?

People fall back on narratives about the power of AIPAC in US elections etc, which is real but also doesn't capture the whole story. The truth is that US capitalism depends on it, and the US ruling class broadly understands this fact.

The key thing to understand is that capitalist growth and accumulation in the imperial core (the US, Britain, Germany etc) relies heavily on the appropriation of cheap inputs and resources from the periphery and semi-periphery of the world economy (broadly, the global South). They need the South remain a subordinated supplier within global commodity chains.

In order to maintain this arrangement, it is imperative for them to suppress sovereign economic development in the South. Because the "problem" with development is it means Southerners begin to produce for themselves and consume their own resources. This makes resources and inputs more expensive for the core, which constrains consumption and profits. Economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core. To avoid this, the core states constantly intervene to prevent or crush any movement or government in the periphery that seeks national liberation and economic sovereignty.

However how KSA on the rise and UAE fit into that train of thought is way beyond me. China of course was never supposed to happen then. Anyway while Saudi Arabia is also a key ally of the USA, it is less reliable than Israel because it is home to the holy sites of Islam.

What we also most of the time do not consider is the divide between sunni and shiites. Arabs are mostly sunnites, while Iran is the only country with shiites majority and reigned by shiites. KSA and many others are reigned by a sunni minority, while the population is of shiit majority.

So KSA and other actors always tried to contain Iran's influence. They want to prevent a big shiit block from coming together, which many consider one of the long term goals of Iran.

This is probably also why Israel is invading Lebanon again.

Attacking Iran however is not only about regime change, it is also from side of America about denial, namely denying China access to Iran's oil.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Synagogue in Michigan was targeted by an active shooter, who drove a car into the building.

Michigan synagogue attack was 'hate, plain and simple,' says governor - follow live

A suspect rammed a vehicle rammed into Temple Israel in an incident being investigated as a targeted attack on the Jewish community.

www.bbc.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

However how KSA on the rise and UAE fit into that train of thought is way beyond me. China of course was never supposed to happen then. Anyway while Saudi Arabia is also a key ally of the USA, it is less reliable than Israel because it is home to the holy sites of Islam.

I'd suggest it's because he's applying an outdated and mechanistic view of colonialism.

In the global economy, there are no longer national empires in which national companies, registered in the metropole and supported by its military (or their own military in the case of the East India Company) extracts raw materials from the colonies, ship them back to domestic factories for processing and then sell them on the domestic and international markets. Instead, capital moves around international stock exchanges, investing in companies, commodities and manufacturers all over the world, for the benefit of multinational businesses and investors.

The KSA and UAE are major financial centres and very major international investors, through their sovereign wealth funds, in their own right, just as much as New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo. Geographically they may be in "the global south" but that's irrelevant.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

It occurs to me that the last 3 Republican Presidents have wrecked the economy and started bullshit wars in the middle east

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

Well sounds like a plan Iran could come up with, yes. But: it would not make much sense for the Iranian government, because this would give America enough justification to invade Iran on ground. And also create enough support for such a step within America.

And that's something neither Iran nor Trump wants to see happen, I suppose.

I think Iran does want us to invade. The terrain there is such that it would be as stupid as invading Russia in the winter.

 

[Casey Pelous]

It occurs to me that the last 3 Republican Presidents have wrecked the economy and started bullshit wars in the middle east

And blamed Clinton, Obama, and Biden.

 

[Cristiano]

 

[Casey Pelous]

View attachment 964

I ran some numbers. It would take about 15,000 trucks per day. That's a line of trucks 300 miles long if they're tailgating each other like maniacs. If there was a perfectly straight road from Point A to Point B --- there isn't -- it would basically be completely filled with trucks. I guess we could speed things up by buying another 15,000 trucks to fill the return road so it is a continuous loop. (I'm leaving the problem of instantaneously loading and off-loading 15,000 trucks a day at facilities that do not exist as an exercise for the reader.)

 

[Free]

That's a line of trucks 500 miles long

Corrected the distance (if they drive in nearly a straight line).

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Road rules are loose when their are no roads. We could use triple trailers to reduce overall length.

 

[Free]

Road rules are loose when their are no roads.

There's actually more than a few roads there. In fact, if our fantasy convoy began with their drop off point in a Saudi Arabian port, about half the drive could take place on just one: Abu Hadriyah Highway (Highway 95), before they hit Oman.

 

[detrius]

They want to prevent a big shiit block from coming together [...]

Have they tried prune juice?

 

[Casey Pelous]

Corrected the distance (if they drive in nearly a straight line).

Now you have me seriously looking up stuff and figuring on this idiotic idea. Truck+trailer is about 75 feet long, since the max length tank trailer is 53 feet. Crude weighs about 7.2 pounds per gallon, and the very tip-top limit fo truck plus trailer plus cargo before stuff starts very seriously breaking is about 120,000 pounds. The truck alone is about 25,000, the trailer is at least another 15,000, so that leaves 80,000 pounds of crude or roughly 11,000 gallons. That will require that 53-foot trailer, so 75 ft is the total length of each unit. 2,000,000 barrels is 84,000,000 gallons, so we'll need about 7600 trucks. If we restrict them to 200 feet of following distance, that's 275 ft x 7600 trucks = 2,090,000 ft = 395 miles of truck. If we want a continuous stream, though, we need another 395 miles of empties heading back to the loading depot. Without that, we pretty much can only unload during the day while the trucks go back to pick up more. All this presumes some system of instantly loading and unloading the trailers. You can sort of do that by dropping the full trailer and picking up an empty, but without a really fast system of emptying, all that will be accomplished is creating a big "tank" of oil at the depot rather than on a ship. How do you make crude flow out of a trailer quickly? GIANT MICROWAVE TO HEAT THE OIL IN THE TRAILER!

Sounds like a plan only a Trump Reich could come up with.

 

[Free]

Now you have me seriously looking up stuff and figuring on this idiotic idea.

Sorry. I'm always troubled when I cause math to happen.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I'd suggest it's because he's applying an outdated and mechanistic view of colonialism.

In the global economy, there are no longer national empires in which national companies, registered in the metropole and supported by its military (or their own military in the case of the East India Company) extracts raw materials from the colonies, ship them back to domestic factories for processing and then sell them on the domestic and international markets. Instead, capital moves around international stock exchanges, investing in companies, commodities and manufacturers all over the world, for the benefit of multinational businesses and investors.

The KSA and UAE are major financial centres and very major international investors, through their sovereign wealth funds, in their own right, just as much as New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo. Geographically they may be in "the global south" but that's irrelevant.

The thing is that Trump thinks so. This is why he's putting so many tariffs into place, because he wants to force manufacturing plants coming back to America. Trump is clearly against free trade - which by the way never existed on purpose, because the West always protected enough own parts of its workforce, like farmers - and globalisation.

Furthermore another valid point is the amount of ressources available on the planet. If many countries want to reach the same lifestyle like in America or Europe there are simply not enough ressources for all on this planet.

So by denying economic development to big parts of the world this cements our way of life, because it throttles demand. Otherwise wars about access to ressources will inevitable happen more often.

Rare-earth metals for example are playing nowadays a key role in that type of dilemma, another one is cobalt which only can be found in meaningful amounts in Congo, but big parts of our modern tech industry is depending on it.

So while the premise might have shifted a little bit, in the end it's about ressources and keeping our way of life.