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Northern Ireland26470 Posts
On March 25 2026 22:47 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 19:25 Broetchenholer wrote:On March 25 2026 11:16 baal wrote:On March 25 2026 02:53 Broetchenholer wrote:
A party that gets in power can then censor things that are dear to you? Yeah, but if a party willing to censor stuf we consider to be free speech, the issue is not precedent. Like does anybody believe Trump would have destroyed the fabric of democratic soeciety in the US by now if only he were allowed to censor diversity in federal....oh wait, he just did.
False equivalency. The German government made it a crime for citizens to deny the holocaust, it is not a crime for American citizens to talk about DEI. No, you just get fired from your job because the trump administration does not like diversity in federal employees or even companies from abroad that have contracts with the American federal government. And in Germany you can also still talk about the Holocaust, but you cannot deny it. The US in this regard is retaliating way more against free speech compared to the German government and that is without any censorship. The point stands, if a government is willing to cross the territory into making something that is normal and dear to the population a censored topic, that government is already in a position where the rights of people has been trampled. The idea that if the government can censor the denying if the government it can also censor talking about kittens is just wrong. Harmful ideas need to stop spreading. I have questions about the German holocaust denial laws and I was wondering if you or any German could chime in, because I really do not know anything about how it works in practice, just that it is illegal to do so. I'll use some examples from here and if possible could you let me know if the person posting these would have any issues? In the case of videos is it only the making or is posting it a problem? And then if TL was a German company would they have any liability? And do they have like a time period to deal with it? Or how that works. First example is pretty straight forward, it is posting just straight forward holocaust denial (I really don't want to watch them again, the specific one is Osama Bin Laden talking about how the holocaust never happened): + Show Spoiler +Less blatant antisemitic video still a crime?: [spoiler] https://tl.net/forum/closed-threads/643725-youtube-video#1[spoiler] Is open antisemitism against the law? What are the consequences? (for TL related question, he was temp banned but for Martyring himself, he has never been actioned specifically for holocaust denial or antisemitism) + Show Spoiler +On November 10 2025 09:45 XenOsky wrote:i dont give 3 fks about antisemitism or racism or anything like that, a fking state has been killing and bombarding people for years now and you fucks are trying to make it look like they are right... fuck you NEVER FORGET ASSHOLES https://media.gettyimages.com/id/2225506239/es/foto/gaza-city-gaza-muhammad-zakariya-ayyoub-al-matouq-a-1-5-year-old-child-in-gaza-city-gaza-faces.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=gi&k=20&c=hhCiex1i3ETjqd2P_pfT9Wfy-RXxRczHAC5WqCK1Ixg=im done with this shit, you fascist mother fuckers have too much freedom to talk and lie .. fuck you sionist mother fuckers i dont give a shit if i get banned of this fucking internet forum, you are a bunch of pigs for supporting genocide your fucking country is a lie, your religion is a lie, your world view is a fucking lie, not a single hebew text, not a single historical text about your so called society of kings, not a single builiding found, and you are using this fucking lie to support a genocide... FUCK YOUR STOLEN COUNTRY FUCK YOUR FAKE HISTORY FUCK YOUR MONEY FUCK YOUR RELIGION OF HATE FUCK YOUR GOD FUCK YOUR PROMISED LAND PALESTINA LIBRE HIJOS DE LA PERRA User was temp banned for the martyring component of his post. How about probably antisemitism? And does the combination matter or are they all looked at individually? + Show Spoiler +On March 22 2026 13:25 XenOsky wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2026 13:18 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 09:44 KwarK wrote:
I think you’re overlooking the pogroms like Kristallnacht. baal’s argument is actually the exact inverse of true. baal is arguing that we can extrapolate what they knew from whether they fled and they didn’t flee and therefore they didn’t know. But the majority of Jews living in Germany in 1933 did flee by 1939, despite facing considerable restrictions and being forced to forfeit all their property to the state. Therefore, per baal’s argument, we can conclude that they did know they would be killed. Wrong. that many emigrated doesnt mean they knew they were going to get killed, everybody knew it was going to get bad for jews but not to what extent. However the fact that many remained does prove that they didn't know they were going to get killed. Right up until the war started we had German Jewish parents putting their young children on trains and sending them out of Germany. The parents had no plans for reunification, no knowledge of where the children would end up, whether siblings would be kept together, whether they would be abused, allowed to keep their faith etc. They just put children on the train and trusted that someone would meet them at the station and attempt to connect them with foster parents of some sort.
As a parent I can imagine at least some of what it took to do that. To abandon a six year old knowing that you'd almost certainly never see them again but that by putting them on a train and sending them away they might survive what was coming. They knew. Not long ago there was a sad pic of a kid dead on the beach trying to reach Europe, parents take these risks in pursuit of better futures, a shit load of mexicans kids are smuggled with far relatives or even strangers into the US, you don't need such a threat to emigrate. Also as I said in my post which you should read again, I'm sure many jews knew how it was gong to end and those were the ones that fled, but many others didn't and that's the whole point of Nazis never explicitly mentioning killing. The Jews who stayed probably stayed due to a lack of resources, not a lack of will. It's always the working class that pays the price and puts the dead... The problem is never religious or ethnic; it's always a class problem. racism and religion are excuses of the oligarchy to carry out their strategy... The Jewish bourgeoisie cared little for the fate of their "comrades"... they were only interested in protecting their class privileges. Some more humanitarian probably wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper or something symbolic, the rest continued living happily in the United States or South America while complaining about Nazism, having tea and eating cookies with their friends on the Sabbath + Show Spoiler + (or whatever it is that Jews do on the Sabbath) ... think about it, the Jews cared so little about what happened to the rest that they had to wait for the harshest repression to begin to defend themselves among themselves and take up arms. Armed resistance and direct action began to occur when the entire Jewish bourgeoisie had already left Europe like the cowards they are In fact, their commitment to human life was so little that one of them ended up making the genocide of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possible ROFLMAO I'm trying to a feel for how "harsh" (not the right word but best I can think of) this law is, and who all is impacted by it. Again any Germans whoa re familiar, your input would be appreciated.
I’d also be interested to hear on this.
Can you, for example say you thought the Holocaust was a good thing, but if you’re not denying it is that ok?
I’m ok with that capacity existing myself, it’s so obviously repugnant a position. I think a lot of the genuinely harmful stuff stems from the conspiracies themselves, whatever they may be.
For me misinformation or disinformation is the big problem. I don’t really care if some cunt is pontificating on how much they hate Muslims.
But in the UK context we had a bunch of massively disruptive riots (basically race riots) over a killing because the perp was tagged as a Muslim extremist on social media, when they were not.
It sounds counter intuitive but I think Holocaust denial is considerably worse than cheering it.
In the latter most think you’re a hateful cunt, the former opens a lot of doors to wider anti-Semitism
There’s a reason even overt Neo-Nazis tend to deny the Holocaust after all, it’s too repugnant to sell to all but the most deranged racists, so they have to make out it didn’t happen as is generally and correctly understood
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Northern Ireland26470 Posts
On March 25 2026 22:58 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 22:31 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 22:05 KwarK wrote:On March 25 2026 21:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On March 25 2026 21:46 KwarK wrote:
there was no snow this winter so the flowers and the bees are gone. great points! the # of polar bears in British Columbia in increasing and because that contradicts the global warming narrative so the researcher discovering this was fired  "People say the Titanic is sinking but my end of the ship just suddenly rose 300 foot into the air. I've never been further from the water. #fakenews" Actually laughed out loud there, kudos to you, or alternatively who you nicked that line off I stole it from a webcomic but yeah, it’s good. It correctly captures that suddenly moving erratically in the other direction is also not a good sign for a system that depends on stability.
Your secret is safe with me
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On March 25 2026 23:07 WombaT wrote:
I’d also be interested to hear on this.
"Incitement to hatred" §130StGB
Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace:
incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population, shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.
People get indicted and judged for that from speaking publicly or even online comments mostly ending in fines and/or probation. "Up to" is pretty relative in German law. The more dire consequences are for serial repeat offenders, actions actually resulting in violence or threats towards public figures, mostly politicians.
There's a special clause in that law, that probably counts for most offenses being indicted which makes it a criminal offense to publicly approve of, deny, or downplay Nazi genocide and crimes against humanity "in a manner that disturbs public peace."
It's complicated...
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Could you guess on the examples provided, or too much nuance?
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On March 25 2026 09:27 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 08:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 07:38 WombaT wrote:I’m still unsure what the point of this tangent is overall. + Show Spoiler +
That the Dems are bad for going ‘hm, we hope x is our opponent in the election because we think they’re a great matchup for us’ and getting that wrong? Something basically every political party does, if not publicly then certainly in private?
I think it would be a different kettle of fish if the Dem machine was sneakily funding Trump’s rise or something like that, then yeah they’re not guilty merely of misjudging things, but actively culpable.
But as far as I’m aware that isn’t the case
Basically just Jankisa and Light spinning up a strawman in response to this: On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK wrote:On March 24 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it? Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes? What would any of that look like? Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw. + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. They fixated on misunderstanding the parenthetical at the expense of the point. If they misunderstood the parenthetical what did you actually mean by it?
I'd rather not make the same mistake with you, so let's try again without it.
I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office.
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United States43758 Posts
How it started vs how it's goingOn September 30 2024 23:03 oBlade wrote:
Just there's no soldiers, because recruitment has plummeted because nobody wants to sign up to an incompetent military whose goals are diversity and inclusion instead of defense and invasion.
On September 26 2024 US Army Official Press Release:
“The U.S. Army’s recruiting force achieved our 55,000 accessions goal more than a month ahead of schedule, and we are on track to have more than 11,000 in our delayed entry program by the end of the month. This is more than double the goal we set for our delayed entry program and will allow our recruiting efforts for next year to start strong right out of the gate,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth.
On April 23 2025 Hesgeth said:
We've said goodbye to the harmful effects of woke culture and so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We're removing DEI content, eliminating quotas, ensuring recruitment, retention and promotions are based on performance, not immutable characteristics. DEI is dead at DOD.
On March 20 2026:
An expedited revision to Army Regulation 601-210, the regulation governing the Army's enlistment program, was published on 20 March 2026 and takes effect on 20 April. The update raises the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 across the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve, while simultaneously removing the waiver requirement for applicants with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia.
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Implying that more people would join the military if their goal was explicitly "invasion" is insane.
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On March 26 2026 01:07 LightSpectra wrote:
Implying that more people would join the military if their goal was explicitly "invasion" is insane. Not wanting to die for Netanyahu's ambitions is un-American.
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Northern Ireland26470 Posts
On March 26 2026 00:46 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 09:27 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 08:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 07:38 WombaT wrote:I’m still unsure what the point of this tangent is overall. + Show Spoiler +
That the Dems are bad for going ‘hm, we hope x is our opponent in the election because we think they’re a great matchup for us’ and getting that wrong? Something basically every political party does, if not publicly then certainly in private?
I think it would be a different kettle of fish if the Dem machine was sneakily funding Trump’s rise or something like that, then yeah they’re not guilty merely of misjudging things, but actively culpable.
But as far as I’m aware that isn’t the case
Basically just Jankisa and Light spinning up a strawman in response to this: On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK wrote:On March 24 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it? Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes? What would any of that look like? Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw. + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. They fixated on misunderstanding the parenthetical at the expense of the point. If they misunderstood the parenthetical what did you actually mean by it? I'd rather not make the same mistake with you, so let's try again without it. I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office.
What did you mean by saying ‘elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place’ then?
You seem to delight in saying things and then getting indignant when people ‘straw man’ you by interrogating what you yourself say.
And so the merry dance goes another round…
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Should be a pretty one-sided conflict unless other countries get involved.
Just unclear what the actual point is. Maybe market manipulation among other things? The oil spike did a hit on gold.
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On March 26 2026 00:29 Billyboy wrote:
Could you guess on the examples provided, or too much nuance?
Difficult. Enforcement of that law is about context and intent. A griefing woman or a little kid in the midle east are bad examples, sorry.
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On March 26 2026 01:01 KwarK wrote:How it started vs how it's going Show nested quote +On September 30 2024 23:03 oBlade wrote:
Just there's no soldiers, because recruitment has plummeted because nobody wants to sign up to an incompetent military whose goals are diversity and inclusion instead of defense and invasion. Show nested quote +On September 26 2024 US Army Official Press Release:
“The U.S. Army’s recruiting force achieved our 55,000 accessions goal more than a month ahead of schedule, and we are on track to have more than 11,000 in our delayed entry program by the end of the month. This is more than double the goal we set for our delayed entry program and will allow our recruiting efforts for next year to start strong right out of the gate,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. Show nested quote +On April 23 2025 Hesgeth said:
We've said goodbye to the harmful effects of woke culture and so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We're removing DEI content, eliminating quotas, ensuring recruitment, retention and promotions are based on performance, not immutable characteristics. DEI is dead at DOD. Show nested quote +On March 20 2026:
An expedited revision to Army Regulation 601-210, the regulation governing the Army's enlistment program, was published on 20 March 2026 and takes effect on 20 April. The update raises the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 across the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve, while simultaneously removing the waiver requirement for applicants with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia.
They reached their 2024 goal quickly by lowering it compared to their 2023 goal.
2025 recruitment readily outpaced both. Meaning, in short, the age update is not the equivalent of Hitler being short on bodies and drafting the Volkssturm or whatever you think your implication of your quote assortment was supposed to be.
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On March 26 2026 01:09 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 01:07 LightSpectra wrote:
Implying that more people would join the military if their goal was explicitly "invasion" is insane. Not wanting to die for Netanyahu's ambitions is un-American.
You guys joke, but that was actually happening in ~2001-2003
Mr. Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “The prime minister, as you will recall, was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush, and we all know what happened with that decision.”
Video of Mr. Netanyahu’s 2002 remarks — in which he said “I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice” — reveals that he linked his strong support for a United States invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein with the possibility of inspiring the implosion of the ruling theocracy in neighboring Iran.
“It’s not a question of whether Iraq’s regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it’s not a question of whether you’d like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it,” Mr. Netanyahu said six months before the Bush administration began the “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad.
”If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Mr. Netanyahu said then. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/middleeast/kerry-reminds-congress-netanyahu-advised-us-to-invade-iraq.html
And, in part, because a bipartisan majority thought Saddam was linked to 9/11, opposing invading Iraq (particularly before it started) was frequently called (many not so pleasant) variations of un-American.
US would just need a "Gulf of Tonkin"/"Operation Northwoods"/"USS Liberty" type event and we could get back there faster than we'd like to imagine.
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On March 26 2026 01:36 r00ty wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 00:29 Billyboy wrote:
Could you guess on the examples provided, or too much nuance? Difficult. Enforcement of that law is about context and intent. A griefing woman or a little kid in the midle east are bad examples, sorry.
The video I specifically mentioned was the one of osama bin laden denies the holocaust. I think he calls it brave Saudi man or something
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United States43758 Posts
On March 26 2026 01:46 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 01:01 KwarK wrote:How it started vs how it's going On September 30 2024 23:03 oBlade wrote:
Just there's no soldiers, because recruitment has plummeted because nobody wants to sign up to an incompetent military whose goals are diversity and inclusion instead of defense and invasion. On September 26 2024 US Army Official Press Release:
“The U.S. Army’s recruiting force achieved our 55,000 accessions goal more than a month ahead of schedule, and we are on track to have more than 11,000 in our delayed entry program by the end of the month. This is more than double the goal we set for our delayed entry program and will allow our recruiting efforts for next year to start strong right out of the gate,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. On April 23 2025 Hesgeth said:
We've said goodbye to the harmful effects of woke culture and so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We're removing DEI content, eliminating quotas, ensuring recruitment, retention and promotions are based on performance, not immutable characteristics. DEI is dead at DOD. On March 20 2026:
An expedited revision to Army Regulation 601-210, the regulation governing the Army's enlistment program, was published on 20 March 2026 and takes effect on 20 April. The update raises the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 across the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve, while simultaneously removing the waiver requirement for applicants with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia. They reached their 2024 goal quickly by lowering it compared to their 2023 goal. 2025 recruitment readily outpaced both. Meaning, in short, the age update is not the equivalent of Hitler being short on bodies and drafting the Volkssturm or whatever you think your implication of your quote assortment was supposed to be.
The quote literally says that not only did they hit 2024 target, they had 11,000 extra in hand signed but deferred to the next year. No shit they hit the 2025 target.
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On March 26 2026 01:53 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 01:46 oBlade wrote:On March 26 2026 01:01 KwarK wrote:How it started vs how it's going On September 30 2024 23:03 oBlade wrote:
Just there's no soldiers, because recruitment has plummeted because nobody wants to sign up to an incompetent military whose goals are diversity and inclusion instead of defense and invasion. On September 26 2024 US Army Official Press Release:
“The U.S. Army’s recruiting force achieved our 55,000 accessions goal more than a month ahead of schedule, and we are on track to have more than 11,000 in our delayed entry program by the end of the month. This is more than double the goal we set for our delayed entry program and will allow our recruiting efforts for next year to start strong right out of the gate,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. On April 23 2025 Hesgeth said:
We've said goodbye to the harmful effects of woke culture and so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We're removing DEI content, eliminating quotas, ensuring recruitment, retention and promotions are based on performance, not immutable characteristics. DEI is dead at DOD. On March 20 2026:
An expedited revision to Army Regulation 601-210, the regulation governing the Army's enlistment program, was published on 20 March 2026 and takes effect on 20 April. The update raises the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 across the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve, while simultaneously removing the waiver requirement for applicants with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia. They reached their 2024 goal quickly by lowering it compared to their 2023 goal. 2025 recruitment readily outpaced both. Meaning, in short, the age update is not the equivalent of Hitler being short on bodies and drafting the Volkssturm or whatever you think your implication of your quote assortment was supposed to be. The quote literally says that not only did they hit 2024 target, they had 11,000 extra in hand signed but deferred to the next year. No shit they hit the 2025 target.
Rest well knowing there is no shortage of people willing to protect the country.
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United States43758 Posts
On March 26 2026 02:20 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 01:53 KwarK wrote:On March 26 2026 01:46 oBlade wrote:On March 26 2026 01:01 KwarK wrote:How it started vs how it's going On September 30 2024 23:03 oBlade wrote:
Just there's no soldiers, because recruitment has plummeted because nobody wants to sign up to an incompetent military whose goals are diversity and inclusion instead of defense and invasion. On September 26 2024 US Army Official Press Release:
“The U.S. Army’s recruiting force achieved our 55,000 accessions goal more than a month ahead of schedule, and we are on track to have more than 11,000 in our delayed entry program by the end of the month. This is more than double the goal we set for our delayed entry program and will allow our recruiting efforts for next year to start strong right out of the gate,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. On April 23 2025 Hesgeth said:
We've said goodbye to the harmful effects of woke culture and so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs. We're removing DEI content, eliminating quotas, ensuring recruitment, retention and promotions are based on performance, not immutable characteristics. DEI is dead at DOD. On March 20 2026:
An expedited revision to Army Regulation 601-210, the regulation governing the Army's enlistment program, was published on 20 March 2026 and takes effect on 20 April. The update raises the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 across the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve, while simultaneously removing the waiver requirement for applicants with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia. They reached their 2024 goal quickly by lowering it compared to their 2023 goal. 2025 recruitment readily outpaced both. Meaning, in short, the age update is not the equivalent of Hitler being short on bodies and drafting the Volkssturm or whatever you think your implication of your quote assortment was supposed to be. The quote literally says that not only did they hit 2024 target, they had 11,000 extra in hand signed but deferred to the next year. No shit they hit the 2025 target. Rest well knowing there is no shortage of people willing to protect the country.
Because of the recruitment surplus overflow from the year where you were saying "recruitment has plummeted because nobody wants to sign up to an incompetent military whose goals are diversity and inclusion" 3 days after the Army announced how well recruitment was going.
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On March 26 2026 01:49 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 01:09 Gorsameth wrote:On March 26 2026 01:07 LightSpectra wrote:
Implying that more people would join the military if their goal was explicitly "invasion" is insane. Not wanting to die for Netanyahu's ambitions is un-American. You guys joke, but that was actually happening in ~2001-2003 Show nested quote +Mr. Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “The prime minister, as you will recall, was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush, and we all know what happened with that decision.”
Video of Mr. Netanyahu’s 2002 remarks — in which he said “I think the choice of Iraq is a good choice, it’s the right choice” — reveals that he linked his strong support for a United States invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein with the possibility of inspiring the implosion of the ruling theocracy in neighboring Iran.
“It’s not a question of whether Iraq’s regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it’s not a question of whether you’d like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it,” Mr. Netanyahu said six months before the Bush administration began the “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad.
”If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Mr. Netanyahu said then. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/middleeast/kerry-reminds-congress-netanyahu-advised-us-to-invade-iraq.htmlAnd, in part, because a bipartisan majority thought Saddam was linked to 9/11, opposing invading Iraq (particularly before it started) was frequently called (many not so pleasant) variations of un-American. US would just need a "Gulf of Tonkin"/"Operation Northwoods"/"USS Liberty" type event and we could get back there faster than we'd like to imagine.
It's fascinating that everybody needs a common moral to kick off a war.
The nazis faked an attack on the "Sender Gleiwitz" to rush to poland, The US made up all "reasons" to go to war so they can act like "defending" themselves.
Those people know what most people think would be wrong or evil.. they just lie and do the evil thing.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/03/PP_2023.03.14_iraq-war_00-03.png?resize=420,500)
