we are this close to the chud reformation

its 'your' party but its the 'royal you'

But that's the thing, West Asian Oil was already American Oil. The Gulf States are part of the continuum, US colonial control of Iraq's economy was more or less uncontested. With US sweet crude flatlining for years, US gas and shale-gas at capacity since the Ukraine War began, Canada and Mexico being, in essense, annexes of the US economy this entire misadventure is a net loss to US control of the oil markets.

They didn't go into Iran as part of a grand strategy. They went into Iran because Netanyahu and others assured Trump it was gonna be easy pickings. Now Iranian Oil might make a come back like never before.

to be fair this sounds pretty threatening too

the meme was made by a bajoran prophet, which is a form of alien life that exists outside of time and whose actual experience of DS9 is, arguably, backwards

maybe the joke is that dukat did eventually sell out his people to the Bigger Fascist Empire, ensuring Cardassia's destruction

if i've learned anything from the mearsheimer expanded universe, that makes her alt right

i am shocked that the emoji came from something meant to be flattering to hillary

"regime change for competitive elections" what does this even mean?

apparently it means the iraqis kept electing people who told the US to leave and the US said no

I agree with the sentiment, the way I like to phrase it is that Evangelical Americanism was harnessed to sustain the tenets of the American Empire. Sure, historically this took the form of the CIA funding and politically supporting Neopentecostal groups, but it would be naive to imagine that certain segments of the Catholic Church cannot be used in a similar fashion. Roman Catholicism may have certain limits in its 'superstructure' when compared to outright 'God Loves you if you're Rich' Gospel, sure. However, the Catholic Church is not and has never been a monolith. For every 1,000 believers in something akin to Liberation Theology you have one Bishop who's very powerful and very elitist and who'd lobby against the right to divorce if it was possible to, politically. See Argentina.

Plus, Church Doctrine is downstream from culture. If a bunch of extremely reactionary americans convert to Catholicism, they get to define what 'tradcath' means. Not the other way around.

The unfortunate thing is that the sheer scale of Empire ends up dwarfing the very real pain and abuse that, say, native schools in Canada or pedophiles priests in Ireland produce. It's not that Catholics or online communities don't think about this stuff. It's just that if one lives in the American Empire, that life is dominated by the discourse and concerns of fundamentalist evangelicals.

This reminds me of the debates surrounding Chicago Pope's election. People were asking if the the next pope was going to be BASED REDPILLED or WOKE LIBERAL. Truth is the Catholic Church is a Monarchy and is therefore conservative in a primordial sense of the word. Just as Francis wasn't that much of a reformer, whoever followed Francis wasn't about to go full iconoclasm on Francis. As far as the new pope is concerned the last pope can't have been, as online tradcaths believe, chosen by the devil.

tradcaths are the sort who say 'look i don't care about the killings in the catholic church of gaza i joined the church for its abortion policy'. its like an entire demographic composed of what would be the most annoying people in a historically catholic/evangelical/lutheran/whatever town.

here's the question: why 'trad' cath and not just cath? the caths are already socially regressive in many of the ways that matter politically in the united states. the trad thing is all about rejecting vatican ii and is quite telling. israel could bomb the pope, jd vance would condemn deep dish pontifex for being hamas.

the most important individual in starfleet history

1. simply win the war
2. take tehranograd instead of just bombing it

the washington post is truly where great minds meet

Anti-imperialist? Not likely. But the underlying assumption of the current government in Damascus seems to be that they have to hedge their bets. They rely on their former sponsors in Turkey but do not want to become dependent on them. They play nice with Europe if for no other reason than to seek political legitimacy. And they pledged support for the US and Israel if for no other reason than presenting themselves as the real partner to hold onto Syria's agricultural lands and oil (as opposed to the SDF).

This has been their play to hold onto power. The first contradiction to it was almost immediate, because Israel is such a sore winner that they couldn't help but go apeshit all over the country, invade it further more in the south and start supporting separatist groups in Suweyda. So all those pledges of being anti Hezbollah, anti Iran and anti Russia fell on deaf ears. As a result the Russians came back.

I suspect that if Iran achieves their mission the Syrian government isn't going to go to bat for the current order of things, but that won't because they are anti-imperialist.

I think the idea here is that the US tried to undercut the chinese, in a way: 'look, everyone can buy iranian oil now! make sure to bid for it and fuck over the chinese!'. But it's not like everyone is gonna go all in on a trade relationship that as far as they are concerned, the US will just re-sanction a month from now. The economies of Asia might get desperate enough all things considered, but can they out-bid the world's largest economy?

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feliz jueves and el declinio cultural

A lot of the refugees aren't even syrian. They're from afghanistan.

My impression is that backing Sharaa is just there to outflank the opposition. The opposition in Turkey are the nationalist right, they campaign on deporting people and on fighting the PKK. So it's important to create the perception at least that the government is doing something about immigration and Rojava. Backing Jolani was a gamble that worked better than anyone expected.

The other point of contention in Turkey is the same as everywhere else, which is the fact that the government won't go to war with the United States but the population is turning anti-zionist. The fact that Israel immediately went apeshit over Syria and began saying that Turkey and the Syria are the new Iran and must be destroyed next probably helps there too. Erdogan gets to not be a zionist without doing anything.

how's this for an argument: that Iran also started making AI videos just hasn't been news for weeks now. it was probably ok to post about it way back when but we don't have to create a new comment thread about every single video that is made

johnny cornpop, the man biden was trying to stop

china is gonna do geo engineering by accident once the entire country is just a china shaped solar panel