At this point, no country in the world will ever again 'make a deal' with the US, because while pretending to negotiate with you they try to ram a knife into your back.
USA, bombing for peace since bombs were invented.
I really do not even want to understand the mental gymnastics which one has to undertake to justify the actions of the US and Israel in recent years.
Nor do I even know how to begin to grasp the enablement displayed by Europe as a whole. People constantly cite China’s “human rights abuses” (which seem to pale in comparison to all this) and rightly so, but continue to enable this blood thirsty and power hungry tag team to indulge in flagrant abuses of international law and general morality.
This is a sad day for level headed and empathetic humans across the globe. At which point do we accept that WW3 began quite a while ago? Because it sure as shit did.
Edit: fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion but it’s my truth.
I think everyone should stop being so nervous. How many times have the U.S. and Israel hit Iran over the past two years? And people still aren’t used to it? On Monday, the market might not even drop. In fact, a lot of people may want to buy the dip. Everyone hypes up the fear, the big players wait to scoop up bargains, and then what happens? Not only does it not fall, it rebounds instead. How many times have we seen this script already?
And Iran? Every single time it’s just performance art. I’m already sick of watching it.
Besides, Iran has been heavily sanctioned and blocked by the U.S. and Israel for so many years that its impact on the global economy is basically zero. So what the hell is there to dump over?
Oil prices? Venezuela’s situation has already been dealt with. The U.S. can produce its own oil, Canada still has plenty of oil, and Russia is still selling at bargain-bin prices. Iran and the surrounding major oil-producing countries are barely even moving in sync, and there’s basically no real incentive for anything major to happen to oil. So why the hell would the market drop?
As for all this fearmongering, I’d say go harder. Seriously, make it as apocalyptic as possible, so my gold can moon, I can pick up cheap Taiwan stocks, and short crypto, so I can completely clean out all the people panicking in fear.
Saving private Epstein has a nice ring to it
A mere 8 months ago, Trump and his cronies were saying that Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” every chance they got.
Not the first time Trump has wagged the dog.
Another mid east war entirely on Israel’s behalf, another war Americans will pay tax for, die for- just so Israel can keep grabbing few parcels of lands from Palestine.
Iran has marvelous cities, sim of the greatest humanity archeological treasures.
It hurts my heart to see Americans destroying them (and the thousands of lifes).
Interesting times intensifies. It's only February.
There are always unanticipated consequences in war. Argentina never thought in a million years that an attack on the practically undefended Falklands would result in the loss of the General Belgrano.
Iranians are celebrating, btw. This is what they have been dreaming of. This is their chance to finally take their country back, and I think they'll do it.
I can't think of a better use of US military power in the world than to take out this terrible regime and let the Iranians do the rest. This isn't Iraq or Venezuela. People saying that we can't bomb our way into regime change apparently didn't follow the protests and massacres very closely a couple months ago. Iranians were begging for help so that they could topple the regime.
The whole Anthropic DoW tiff was related to this, and folks were downvoting me even minutes before the first strike for making the connection:
Are all our foreign policy decisions now made in Tel Aviv to suit Israel?
[T]he War Department will not be distracted by democracy building interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building.
- Pete Hegseth, December 6, 2025[1]
[1]: https://www.war.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/4354431/rem...My theory was they were waiting for the finale of Tehran on Apple TV
The president of peace btw.
I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.
And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.
I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
Apropos of nothing in particular, back in the previous millennium, UNIX (and Linux) had the `fortune` command. It would spew out a "cookie" - a pithy one-/two-liner, usually funny, often thought-provoking, and sometimes offensive (when invoked with `fortune -o`)
I had added it to my `motd`; it would give me a chuckle every time I logged in.
One of the cookies I recall:
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. [1]
And that's what I think of when I see this absurd new war.
special operation
we sure dodged a bullet in 2024 elections and elected the right people to stop all these senseless wars that were one of the cornerstones of the election campaign
I've long suspected DJT is on a rampage of radical, ragebait news worthy actions to take the news away from the Epstein files. I hate that it's working and many people have to suffer because of it.
Crypto going down while Gold going up (on XAUt) suggests the market thinks this war is not going to go necessarily to the US/Israel advantage.
They have chosen the weekend not to disturb the stock markets. They may pull that off when they get inside support as the corruption of the regime has made it unpopular with business class and the middle class. Trump may achieve another 'Venezuela' short war.
My previous comment:
The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
"This war like the next war, is the war to end all wars"
- David LLoyd George, c.1916
The first wars were fought between tribes and then later between kingddoms for power/minor differences and trying to increase influence and alliances. Religion and race and many other discriminating factors are used for both sides to get support of the people, the people who are actually gonna carry the rifle and risk their lives and lose it, this drives the next war to redeem the losses of the first one, to take revenge.
This then creates a community which dislikes the other community and now we are here.
We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. … If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy. The supreme example of this kind of political thought was the Treaty of Versailles. Yet most people are only seeking some new scapegoat to replace the Germans.
- Bertrand Russel in Skeptical Essays.
Humanity has had a history written with bloodshed but the problem right now seems to me that we don't know how to write future, we lack a vision for other prospects, it seems to me that we jump into the newest Hype on the block and its all so wishy-washy. Contrary to people saying its a western issue, I think its an whole world issue, its just that the west is particularly impacted by it.
Has there been a desensitization in things in recent years?
I know of atleast one leader (King Kaniska) who fought for land (Modern day Orrisa) and won and then saw the bloodshed and screams on the ground and decided to not repeat it and I think he spent later of his life trying to promote peace.
I am sure that there must be other leaders in the history of past as well but perhaps its the problem of history as well which can sometimes glorify wars.
I think the biggest problem right now is being noise. We have created machines so large that humans have lost dignity and are treated unfairly at scale in terms of Renting places at scale owned by shell companies who'd rather have it empty than give you affordable housing. Prices seem to be increasing and I don't think modern social media helps in giving people dignity quite the opposite at times and it's very likely someone is reading this who may have contributed to making the machine.
With this being a political thread, I see comments from both sides[0], I don't think I have too much to add politically to the discussion but perhaps I just wanted to treat out that its best we treat each other with dignity in this thread and in general because I do believe that's the only thing we can do which can bring change. It's gonna be extremely hard for people to treat others with dignity while taking sides which talk about wars killing people, but I don't know what else to say. Iranian censorship for its people but I am not sure if the current idea of America brings me thinking of liberation. One can wish for pure democracies in such regions but its gonna be extremely hard and even grass-roots movements of these can be shut down by intrusive forces whether foreign or govt itself and given that the region is extremely shaky relying on oil which can be extracted from ground leading to a less dependence on people themselves for Iranian govt.s being the reason why they can be so censoring. They have shown enough power to fight massive protests but as I said earlier, the current picture of America don't exactly give me the idea of bringing pure democracy in the region either.
My prayers to the Iranian people who are stuck between a rock and tough spot.
(there are no sides, its a circle, a circle of people who start wars and the people who fight wars)
Are there any accurate sources on how many Iranian citizens the Iran regime has killed in the past couple of months? (some sources suggest tens of thousands, but I wonder if it could be a 'WMDs' situation [lie to get support for a war]).
Trump said in the State of the Union [0]:
> in just over the past couple of months with the protests they've killed at least 32000 protestors
And just moments ago Trump says 'tens of thousands' [1]
Is this confirmed or conjecture?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-iErpskb8&t=1h21m20s
[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/2027651077865157033
All I can do is sit here and sigh.
The thing is, as sudden as this seems to the general public, this is something that takes months of planning. Having served in the Navy for eight years, I know that this kind of thing doesn't necessarily happen overnight. That doesn't mean it _couldn't_. The US military certainly does have the ability to plan a strike very quickly.
But, most likely, this was planned behind closed doors. Based on the reports, I bet this was probably planned shortly after Trump took office. It just so happens that it's a good distraction from the Epstein files.
I hate the direction this country's government is taking. It sucks. I just want to leave at some point. I don't want my family to grow up here anymore.
Why is no one calling it the Epstein War?
Ever since the ICE stuff I've been desperate to find a way to not pay my taxes - even if it means donating 2, 3x, hell 4x my tax bill to somewhere else. Obviously it's basically impossible to do this (especially if your income is all self employment income) outside of just spending every penny you earn on something that could be viably considered a business expense. So I'm wondering if I should just straight up stop working until I can relinquish my USA citizenship.
Spend down my savings and assets till I have almost nothing to exit tax, exit, and then start working again.
I don't want to fund the bombing of strangers I have no quarrel with.
Un-redact the Epstein files.
what's going on in the epstein files that he's bombing iran
Iran is a lesson to all: as soon as Israel or the US take a disliking to you you have to rush for nuclear weapons.
Iran has been the grown up in the room for well over a decade at this stage and it didn't matter one bit. You cannot appease Israel or the US because that don't want to be appeased, they want to bomb Iran into a lawless wasteland. They could have switched to a secular liberal democracy and it'd make no difference.
USA can't stop engaging in wars no? Now food prices are gonna go up because gas prices will go up. Or all prices will go up.
Not a single person who claim Trump is a peace president will admit they are wrong.
this global escalation will be the reason elections are cancelled.
This is why we can't have nice things.
I take this as a confirmation that more "nuclear bomb material" i.e. unpublished Epstein files still exist.
If Americans would like to better understand what it is that they actually did last year: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/killing-for-content/
They’re calling it Operation Epstein Fury
Peace and profit.
I hate that we apparently have to take sides when commenting ..
I can't help but think that all this shit is because Netanyahu really wants to put off more court hearings on his lame ass corruption charges. I really can't wait for him and his cronies (in Israel, and the West) to be brought to justice.
Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.
How did the US justify this?