Not just human life. Other sentient biological organisms suffer and die. I don't want any living thing to suffer and die. I want all living things to be forever happy. — Truth Seeker

I'm going to be honest, beyond some abstract comparisons, this seems to me an unachievable goal.

Also debatable if the natural cycle of life is a bad thing. If life has beauty and value then so too the predation, pain and death that is a natural apart of life.

And if not a bad thing, the alternative point of view is that pain is not suffering in itself, but comes from moral wrongs carried out by people that has nothing to do with a lion eating a gazelle.

For example, when Martin Luther King, Jr. stated "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends," the underlying moral framework is that the lack of action by people who claim to be friends, causes more suffering (the wrong will be remembered) than the actions of outright enemies. For, an outright enemy is closer to a natural process of fighting a lion, but being abandoned by one's community, in which there are stronger moral bonds, causes a deeper moral rift and thus more suffering.

To push the example to the extreme, imagine showing up on an island with an uncontacted tribe and taking a poison arrow to the chest that causes incredible pain but you survive. Although definitely an unpleasant experience, it would be unlikely to cause extreme psychological trauma because there's not really any moral problem. Maybe you were trying to do good by going to the island for some reason, tribe is just doing what it normally does and you completely expected they may do, so there's no betrayal in any moral sense.

There is no such thing as the afterlife. If you can prove there is an afterlife, please do. — Truth Seeker

There is no way to really prove anything.

However, I do believe there are good reasons to believe there is an afterlife. I elaborate the argument in this essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

The main problem the essay tries to solve (if we take a shortcut and ignore problems such as needing an ethic to begin with in order to have problems, so there is no ethically neutral position in which the problem of what is the true ethic can be addressed, as an ethically neutral position would have no problems at all; dilemmas the essay seeks to solve), is to harmonize the search for truth and the love of humanity and life and acting in the interests of all life rather than oneself.

What we may call "pretty usual ethics" values truth, life, fairness and justice, empathy and compassion for others, and does indeed call upon people to make the ultimate sacrifice to save others (such as fire-people saving children in a burning building; if not "binding" certainly a good and heroic thing to do and not considered stupid and foolish). And, indeed, more can be added to the list of "usual ethics" shared by nearly all cultures.

As we have already discussed, it's not possible to optimize for different things and when there are different things under consideration such as learning the truth, protecting others and all life, seeking justice, and so on, either they are in conflict with one another or then harmonized and in fact represent merely different facets of a single value.

For, it can be argued on the surface that if I am searching for truth and I am reading one of my books, if you were to come to me dying of thirst I would be wise to not give it to you and so let you die as I search for truth and my reading is more important.

The value of truth seeking is a fairly easy ethic to arrive at, as I suspect you may agree @Truth Seeker, but a great many important truths are much harder.

It is easy to see that what our culture, and indeed most cultures, proposes as good moral principles are those very principles necessary for the culture's survival and perpetuation into the future (cooperation, fairness, sacrifice for other when necessary to ensure the groups survival), but seeing this explanation for where ideas come from does not actually resolve if those ideas are correct. The question remains of whether it is good for society to survive or indeed oneself.

To really get to the bottom of these things is a long journey and the structure and nature of all existence becomes necessary to posit at a context to resolve these sorts of questions. For there are alternative hypothesis available, such as caring only for oneself and having no appreciation for whatever is done by others, both present and in the past, for your benefit without payment and feeling no obligations in turn; that the fate of society, humanity, all life is of no concern to oneself and those that do concern themselves are fools that cause themselves trouble.

This is awesome! Thank you very much for sharing. I look forward to exploring them. — Truth Seeker

I am very appreciative, don't hesitate to ask any questions as they occur to you.

That's unfortunate. Did the money laundering stop, or is it still going on? — Truth Seeker

The coverup, at super high levels including the prosecutor general of Finland and also the President and PM, continues to this day: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SXU6VkygIWM14S4O-IQQUhlz41qYBjFH?usp=share_link

I'm under investigation for "defamation to the auditor" which is not even a legally possible crime (why "proper channels" exist: total immunity from defamation). You could commit fraud in what you communicate to an auditor, but defamation is not legally possible. Why police just keep me under investigation for 4 years now to harass me and also pretend like the case could potentially be defamation, instead of overwhelming evidence of money laundering; evidence they explicitly refuse to collect, but in a trial I can just submit the evidence myself. So, police can't charge me or then the evidence appears in trial, but can't drop the case without admitting the only possible way to drop a defamation case concerning accusations of African diamond money laundering would be that the accusations are supported by evidence and reasonable to make. Why Finnish police are helping to launder money is because they are involved in human trafficking and narcotics smuggling. This was literally the first thing the chair of Transparency International told me (that my case of police refusing to investigate obvious evidence is similar to an existing case of theirs where police refuse to investigate an obvious case of human trafficking and child abuse; and the explanation for that is that police are involved in human trafficking and child abuse); the chair could not get approval from her board to do anything for an entire year and then was replaced by a person from Brussels (for sure 100% organized crime representative from Brussels).

But yes, the money laundering is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected doing business in Africa. What was unexpected is all other board members and executives who did not originally participate in the money laundering, helped to cover it up and send me endless threats and bribes including I'll "be destroyed" and also 1 million Euros to drop all "claims and pursuit", even after they agreed there is significant money laundering!

I foolishly believed that people I thought were genuinely concerned for alleviating poverty in Africa and empowering people with a source of energy they could build and control themselves would not tolerate our work being used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of African diamond money for Isabel Dos Santos.

That I was alone in my disposition, made me very alone indeed.

Like...?
Even if there were we would still need to define those words to understand what each other means and to avoid talking past each other. — Harry Hindu

You interject into an ongoing conversation where people clearly seem to understand the meaning of anarchism in a way that makes sense in this context. If you really "didn't know" you could do 1 minute of internet research ... which you do, skipping over dictionaries and wikipedia and other entries to "just so happen to find" a dictionary that does not include the definition of anarchism as a political-philosophy.

In addition, the basic principle that dictionary definitions are required to exist in one, or even several dictionaries, for the meaning to exist is absurd. Dictionaries do their best to record common and current uses of a word, but are not exhaustive nor authoritative. For example, if you ask google for the definition of "christian", it provides a definition "a person who has received Christian baptism or is a believer in Christianity," which would not settle the debate of whether baptism is required, and if so what kind it meant by the dictionary, is the "true christianity".

Which is exactly what I did. I'm asking for definitions of not only anarchy but of marxism/socialism in a thread named, "Differences/similarities between marxism and anarchism?" — Harry Hindu

This is false. You interject by asserting your dictionary definition of anarchism as the only definition and went on to elaborate a theory that if a meaning does not exist in the dictionary then it is therefore purely a private language that is not useful to communicate with anyone.

It's just not possible to view doing so as good faith debate.

But if I am mistaken and you have something more to contribute to the conversation than your dictionary lookup, feel free to do so.

Life on Earth, as it has been and currently is, comprises much suffering, injustice, and death. — Truth Seeker

Certainly human life as we know it, but in terms of healthy ecosystems generally speaking, predation and a struggle for survival agains the elements is apart of life.

The energy beings would not need to consume any sunlight or heat either. They would be eternally self-sustaining. I imagine them to be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. I am all too aware that these beings don't exist outside my imagination. — Truth Seeker

Well maybe there is such a place to aspire to in the afterlife.

For the time being, however, I would propose we have this life and the life on the planet to tend to.

How can we implement widespread use of solar power for generating electricity and heat? — Truth Seeker

I've been working on this for 20 years, and I've collected some of the old open source material in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16eIpgNP7vvBcm_P6nfFzywqjcHuTV9qD?usp=share_link

These two videos are also useful:

https://youtu.be/CXJgAmft2jI
https://youtu.be/q3WeRU8geSs

There's also a lot of material on lytefire.com, a company I founded to prove the economic viability of the technology (as it was only possible to raise the funds needed as a company; not even other non-profits trust non-profits to deliver technology), but then certain management differences emerged, around staying true to the original open source strategy (idea was to raise funds, develop tech, then open source once proven commercially), but mostly on whether it was a good idea or to to help launder African diamond money. I was against it, but turned out a minority opinion.

It is not just a question of technological development, but then on reaching critical mass of capacity and skill in real locations on the planet, in addition to integration with complementary technology. Small wind, PV and hydro are excellent technologies for relatively small amounts of off-grid electricity; where solar thermal competes in making electricity is if there's an economic need for a lot heat, such as green houses or in textile / paper making, and so an inexpensive steam engine can produce some electricity and the exhaust steam power these other processes.

The critical part for developing the needed suite of technologies as well as integrating with other technologies to optimize actual solutions for real people, is the software simulation.

What's in the folder above is the termination point of the open source software. So it's this software (or more precisely developing something from scratch that does the same thing and more; as this was early days in my programming career) that is the key, as without software simulation building solar thermal technology is hugely expensive trial and error.

For, even if you have the capacity to build the technology, without software simulation it's just guesswork not only what to build but if there is even any deployment of the technology, even solar thermal technology in general, that solves the problem economically in real world conditions. With software you can get close enough in terms of the required performance to make fabrication a reasonable risk to take.

There's not only technical and environmental elements to simulate, but also things such as a reasonable work day. A lot of renewable energy projects fail because things are just not thought through (not because the engineers don't know thinking things through would be reasonable, but because executive can go tot the government and present ideal or laboratory conditions that "prove" things will be economically viable). For example, a baker needs to get to work and start baking, and baking quite a lot of bread, so a device that can get to the temperature and thermal-momentum required to bake one loaf of bread at high-noon on a absolutely clear day, is of no use to a baker. A solar oven that heats in the morning when the baker gets to work (so sun is low), and heats a commercial scale oven with high power and thermal-momentum to bake professionally to run an actual business, is what is required with enough extra capacity to deal with some haze and some clouds to bake most days.

So the software is essential to make plausibly reasonable simulations of an actual business case.

As important, software simulation is absolutely critical to develop any new application, as many applications cannot be adapted from equipment that runs on gas or electricity, and needs to be developed specifically to integrate with a specific solar thermal device. So software is critical and making software available open source to engineers with expertise in those application domains (pasteurization, desalination, absorption fridge, ceramics, paper, metals, textiles etc.) allows them to build up the simulation of the application and run various total optimizations and economic simulations, enough to be confident enough to build a prototype.

The more applications that exist the more valuable the technology becomes (and by technology I mean solar thermal technology generally speaking if there are superior designs for a given context; ideally the software would model all available designs and provide comparisons), in the same way that the more appellations for a mobile ecosystem are available the more valuable the mobile device (and also that a critical mass of key applications are required to drive exponential growth).

One caveat I may not have emphasized, but focusing on solar thermal is both a core component of a global viable strategy for the humanist-ecological movement, but also something amenable to my skillset of numerical analysis and prototyping.

Such a strategic analysis does not imply there's not other things to do, such as direct poverty alleviation, stopping genocides, governance, organic farming and a myriad of other things. Just so happens that solar thermal is particularly underserved by the larger community of do-gooders and I suited to try to increase the realization of its potential.

However, where it is fundamental compared to other clearly also-good things is that energy sources structure and condition society, so a viable strategy to address everything must start with energy. Food obviously is also an energy source but we've inherited plenty of sustainable food growing practices, so have a good starting point from our inheritance in terms of food. Exosomatic energy (energy we use outside our metabolism) on the other hand we've never been sustainable above a relatively low population density (in which burning trees is not an issue), and so it's solving this exosomatic energy problem that is the limiting factor (in the sense we don't have existing traditions that offer solutions) for true sustainable and peaceful living (as there is no "need" to steal another's sunlight).

So I while I would argue it is critically important, that does not imply it's the only good thing worth doing. Still important a long list of things and people with skills and circumstances amenable to those things should do them, but the movement as a whole also needs a feasible vision of how to ultimately solve these long list of problems. With solar thermal energy a technically feasible social organization and as important a feasible scaling pathway can be rigorously proven.

Therefore, I would propose the development of local solar thermal based economies, in particular in the global south, as the key element required to attain your objectives by the whole community of people striving for a peaceful and sustainable world without poverty and slavery.

Why wouldn't energy beings who don't need to consume air, water and food to live be better than the autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites we currently have? — Truth Seeker

I view life as we know it a good thing, so the diversity and predation and so on goes along with life as we know it.

Now in some sort of super abstract discussion, it's certainly a compelling argument that being some sort of autonomous demi-god is better than being a mortal human.

However, such an argument would not exclude life as we know it still being a good thing. Energy beings of one sort of another can presumably co-exist with life on earth (for example by living on the surface of the sun).

So such "what if" considerations, don't reduce the value of life on the planet as it is today and our responsibility towards earth life.

↪boethius Thank you very much for pointing out how other renewable energy sources compare to solar power. I agree that solar is the best option. — Truth Seeker

There's lots of nuance, but the main part is the amazing abundance of solar energy available everywhere.

The problem is that local solar energy doesn't "plug in" to the grid and powering cities very well. Solar heat does not really transport directly at all over any considerable distance, and to do so one would need to convert the heat to electricity and then transport the electric energy over a grid.

So if you just imagine in your mind a solar device 100km away making heat to make steam to turn a turbine to turn a generator to then make electricity that flows through a long series of electronic wires and devices, to boil some water to cook rice, and then imagine just using the suns energy where you are to cook the rice, it's easy to appreciate the economic difference.

The obstacle is that cooking the rice where you are with the sun requires a different social organization than what we have now. Building up such a solar economy where people currently are mostly still rural and don't have a grid requires a foundational capacity and skills building.

However, once a critical mass of technology and skills is achieved in a local economy and it's clearly simply a better way of life (creating income, conserving trees, providing all sorts of comforts that low cost energy enables), then it can spread exponentially throughout the planet. Solar thermal technology requires only mirror (glass and a silver or aluminium layer), steel and aluminium (also wood and bamboo are possible for structure), so has no resource bottleneck for exponential growth.

Doesn't mean other technologies aren't useful in specific niches or where available, nor does it mean a grid isn't adding value where population density is high enough. The cost of the grid scales with capacity after a relatively small one-time investment to layout the basic structure, and also scales with storage capacity needed to use primarily intermittent renewables. So simply lowering the capacity needed due to most energy bering captured and used on location (in particular heat energy) solves a lot of grid problems; likewise simply reducing dramatically the capacity of transport from most food and materials being harvested and used locally, solves most transportation problems.

If you look at essentially any super industrial renewable energy proposal to power Western economies today, the resource bottlenecks are enormous, and then even more enormous if the proposal is to scale that solution (which we clearly don't have as like 20 COP meetings with zero deviation in emissions demonstrates) to the global south. However, simply improve poor people's lives in the global south with solar energy, we can do literally tomorrow at not only radically low cost compared to massive industrial proposals but after a critical mass it is self perpetuating (just as plenty of poor regions simply spontaneously adopt solar water heating as it's just cheaper).

I'm talking about the US foreign policy establishment, aka "the Blob", the neocons, etc.

It's not a homogeneous group, but since it is interested in maintaing/re-establishing US primacy, it's options are bounded by the realities of geopolitics, which leaves a very narrow margin of deviation. — Tzeentch

I did not mean to imply there's no variation in your model.

However, my argument is there is plenty of margin for deviation.

Obama's diplomatic policy is a deviation from the strategy of trying to contain Iran (by stick and / or carrot) to the extent of preventing development. Iran did not negotiate itself into some permanent economic hobbling in the JCPA.

Then these recent actions by Israel, there's little evidence they are carried out on behalf of "the Blob" as defined apart from the Zionist faction in the blob acting on behalf of Israel.

For example, if Israel knew about the planned Hamas attack, which seems exceedingly likely, and allowed it to happen in a catastrophic way and moreover kill their own citizens as part of the Hannibal directive, the agency there is Israel and not the US policy blob. Then if Israel used the Hamas attack and subsequent Hannabling as a pretext for genocide, my argument is that that is Israeli and Zionist agency. Likewise the attack by Israel on Iran is Israel-Zionist agency.

Plant of other parts of the blob do not see any advantage of escalating conflict in the Middle-East, for example Obama's policies represents a large coalition of the blob; if this coalition thought war with Iran was a good thing they would have attacked Iran under Obama's presidency.

In terms of maintaining/re-establishing US primacy, the genocide in Gaza is absolutely terrible policy.

Likewise war with Iran.

Now, the great power and influence, but not unlimited power and influence, explains the situation.

Zionist have enough power and influence within America to prevent America from preventing Israel committing more genocide, but not enough power and influence to get the US to fight Iran on behalf of Israel at immense cost to the US.

And, indeed, why this is happening now is that Zionism is at a pretty high maximum for power and influence as well as there being a window closing of US military power. The dollar could collapse in the short to medium term, China and Russia could simply accelerate their relative gains in economic and military power (especially if we imagine Ukraine completely collapsing and Russia outright winning) as well as Iran's continued development (made easier by being in the same sanction boat as Russia), or then conflict break out in East-Asia or elsewhere, putting into disarray any plans to have the US attack Iran. So, it's very much a likely closing window of opportunity from the Zionist point of view and therefore a now-or-never decision (in addition to Netanyahu getting older and clearly the final solution to the Palestinian problem and outright assassinating the Iranian leadership he wants as his legacy).

The model that Zionism is cashing in its political capital to try to achieve regional goals with US resources, military or diplomatic, fits the data of the genocide and attacking neighbours and then Iran.

However, that the US balks at getting into high intensity warfare with Iran where there would be US casualties and no end in sight, fits the data that this faction is in conflict with other powerful factions.

As a result the policy is not some coherent strategy with little deviation, but is extremely chaotic.

The Biden administration was well aware the genocide harmed democrat reelection chances and there's no reason to believe the friction and half measures to try to mitigate the genocide was not genuine friction, but the Biden administration simply chose genocidal Zionism (whether for ideology, blackmail, money, whatever) over their own reelection, for the simple reason that it was mostly filled with Zionists!

However, if there was coherence to the strategy then the US would have continued to escalate with Iran and be in a high intensity conflict right now.

A "bit of bombing" and a "bit of assassination" doesn't achieve any strategic objectives.

The only purpose for limited bombing that has no chance of eliminating Iran's nuclear development capability would be to delay the development of a nuclear weapon in order to prepare an invasion. The way the bombing was carried out (with dozens of trucks removing material from the enrichment plant ahead of time) makes that delay even less likely.

There's simply no appetite among the American people for high intensity war with Iran, it's high-risk and low reward in terms of "US hegemonic interests" that go far beyond Iran, and Zionism ran into this limit in using US resources to achieve Zionist objectives.

Now Israel is in a terrible strategic position, with a terrible economy and risking demographic flight, which could end the entire Zionist project. So if the point of the whole strategy, if coming from US empire, was that genocide in Gaza and attacking everyone would shore up the strategic position of the US proxy in the region, that is not what is being achieved.

And the genocide not only doesn't serve US Imperial strategic interest, it doesn't serve Israel's either.

The motivation is to get the land and also enjoy a psychopathic killing, torture and rape spree, not some strategic improvement to Israel's military position.

Indeed. Lots/most philosophers will take the general meaning of a word then run with it and just explain how they are going to be using it (hopefully). — unimportant

Yes, but we unfortunately we are not even at the stage of considering the textual or historical context of the use of a word, but are only considering dictionary definitions as a starting point of discussion.

I wasn't arguing about which dictionary we use, only that we use a dictionary to guide our use of terms. — Harry Hindu

This whole thing about dictionaries is obviously bad faith. There's plenty of concepts and meanings of words, in philosophy and elsewhere, that do not appear in the dictionary.

The good faith thing to do is either ask what's the definition of things for our purposes here, or then good faith research such as starting on the wikipedia page for anarchism or then a visit to the library to see if there's any philosophical resource on the issue.

However, for good faith participants that are interested in the discussion, it is of some interest the etymology of the word anarchism as adopted by a philosophical school.

Originally it comes from Greek "anarkhia" which literally means "without an archon".

As the Anarchist Library informs us:

Let us look, however, at other cases from ancient Greece in which the word anarchy is used in a more distinctly political sense. There is, for instance, the single occasion when a Hellenic population appears to have matter-of-factly used the word to refer to its own situation: the Athenian ‘year of anarchy’, 404 BC. This is something of a curiosity, since the circumstances of that year were anything but anarchic. As a matter of fact, Athens was at the time under the very strong rule of an oligarchy — The Thirty — installed by the Spartans following their victory in the second Peloponesian war of that same year. Moreover, there was literally an Archon in place, installed by the oligarchs, in the person of Pythodorus. However, according to the historian Xenophon (c.430–355 BC), the Athenians refused to apply here their custom of calling the year by that archon’s name, since he was elected during the oligarchy, and ‘preferred to speak of it as the “year of anarchy”’.[7] Despite its counter-intuitive appearance, this first popular application of the word anarchy is very telling. It resonates with a mass symbolic defiance, refusing the recognition that a ruler was supposed to receive in everyday language. It was this defiance which led to the restoration of democracy in Athens the following year. — Anarkhia — What did the Greeks actually say? Uri Guron, Anarchist Library

Which is a nice symbolic example of the tradition of the "anarchist spirit" of defiance to non-democratic authority, even if not directly coined due to this anarkhia in the ancient world.

Where anarchy gets adopted as a political term is that by the enlightenment anarchy is used to simply mean the chaos and madness that would result if the existing order were to collapse.

People arguing for order under feudalism were not arguing for order as such compared to disorder, they were arguing for only 1 just and divine order of the feudal world as it existed at the time. Anything other than the one order defined by god was bad and by definition evil disorder and chaos.

As this feudal language was used in the time of feudalism, it made no sense to contrast the feudal order under the divine right of popes, bishops, kings, and lords and some alternative order. Order meant one very specific order or then orderly little sub-orders nestled in the overall feudal order (such as an order of priests or knights).

Order simply meant feudalism as practiced at the time. Feudal intellectuals didn't view or talk about themselves as feudal in contrast to other ways of doing things; the status quo was simply the common sense and divinely ordained way. No one referred to the pope or a king as "the person being deferred to in this decision making process ... for now, could be different later if we think of something more just or efficient under one view of justice and efficiency or another".

So, anarchy would be and is the state of absence of the feudal order.

However, this begged the question for some of whether an absence of the feudal order, and even some democratically approved analogous feudal structure (president instead of a king, for example), would really result in chaos and madness as assumed?

Adopting the term anarchist is to then really emphasize the boldness of the assertion that humans can live without obedience and discipline to a hierarchy, but maybe radical ideas like not beating children could actually work.

I agree. I love trees, in fact, I love all autotrophs. I wish all organisms were autotrophs. In fact, it would be even better if all organisms were energy beings who could live without consuming any air, water and food. — Truth Seeker

Glad we share an interest in trees. Highly debatable if it were better that there was no life as we currently know it.

↪boethius Thank you very much for sharing your insights about numerical analysis. I am certainly anti-fossil fuel and pro-renewable energy. Solar is not the only option. Wind farms, wave farms, and geothermal power plants are also good options. — Truth Seeker

Yes, there are other renewable technologies, but there will likely only be one that is significantly underperforming, therefore the optimum choice to develop.

To connect with trees, a tree when used for fuel is a solar energy device turning the suns energy into chemical energy. As a solar energy device a tree is less than 1% efficient, for a long list of "losses" if the goal is to burn the tree; likewise for all biomass sources.

Even worse, as a ecosystem degrades biomass production efficiency gets less and less, orders of magnitude less when the ecosystem can't even support plant growth over most of the surface most of the time (such as a desert). So using trees unsustainably is an exponential process of ecosystem degradation.

There are roughly 2 billion people that rely on biomass as their primary energy supply and billions more that rely on fossil fuel as a primary energy supply, which is obviously also not good (but better than deforestation, these local uses being pretty minimal compared to Western emissions from cars; although particle pollution is still a big problem from uncontrolled fossil burning, but biomass burning has the same problem).

But just take the 2 billion people currently relying on fossil burning, upgrade them to a solar thermal device and solar efficiency of their technological setup is now around 50%, so 50 to 1000 times the increase in solar efficiency compared to the previous technology of burning biomass.

If the technology can be made with only common materials (which solar concentrators can; just mirror, steel / aluminum, and even wood/bamboo construction) and built and maintained locally, the potential is truly revolutionary. And this solar revolution has already happened spontaneously in many places in the global south where it becomes simply common sense to use a solar water heater for example. Solar water heaters are super simple but limited in temperature; higher temperature solar thermal devices allow for the same kind of revolution where it becomes common sense as simply obviously cheaper, but each temperature bracket requires more skills and sophistication.

We can get into the limitations of all the other renewable technologies in detail if you so desire, but in short: all the technologies that produce primarily electricity (wind, hydro, photovoltaic) simply don't really address the fundamental energy problem which is heat based. Most energy consumed is to heat things; and even more so if we're talking about primary energy needs; things that need electricity, such as lights and electronics, simply don't consume much, few watts, especially in a low-income region whereas heat needs are in kilowatt -- doesn't take less energy to cook rice simply because you're poor, but you can make do with very little lights or computation and still derive significant benefits.

Then there's complex issues around the grid. We take the grid for granted in the West, but grid ubiquity is due to burning coal. It's way better to burn coal in a far away power station and "pipe in" the energy by wire, and if the coal is plentiful and cheap then that pays, in terms of energy to-do-it and energy derived from it, the cost of making the grid. However, without burning "cheap coal" (in brackets to ignore their external environmental costs), grids don't make much sense to move thermal energy around. Whereas there's a huge incentive to get coal smoke out the city, there's similar pollution reason to put a solar device far from where you're living.

There's a lot of technical details and history, but the basic thesis is once renewable energy is being considered as the primary input into society, the Western grid connected way of life doesn't make much engineering sense. If we have the technology to get energy from sunlight, then putting these solar devices far away and transferring the energy over long distances makes little engineering sense.

This is particularly critical for poor places that do not at the moment have a high capacity, high reliability grid. Because even when you have a grid, more energy simply can't be dumped on it; increasing the capacity is massively expensive.

Grid capacity is usually financed on 30 year amortization periods paid by governments. And building up capacity is a slow process; a few percent growth in capacity per year. Then there's the problem of copper supply and battery storage if we want to transition to renewable energy.

However, off-grid systems can be up and running basically instantly. If they provide the same value, there's really no need for a grid. However, off-grid electricity is limited in its value production. Most primary economic activity requires huge amounts of heat, which can be supplied by solar thermal.

To compare to just wind even ignoring it doesn't provide low-cost heat: The first problem is that there's not so much wind in the tropics where large numbers of people live, especially poor people. The second is that the efficiency of wind turbines increases to the 3rd power of the wind blade diameter, so there's massive efficiency gains in building huge wind turbines. So to realize the recent gains in wind turbine technology requires a large amount of capital not just to build the wind turbines but also to build the grid and a long list of grid balancing requirements to deal with variable wind inputs into the grid, and none of this is helpful to the vast majority of poor people on the planet. Likewise there is similar issues for all the other renewable energy sources.

However, solar energy can be accessed tomorrow pretty much anywhere in the world with technology you can carry around, available in even more intensity in the tropics and is not limited in total supply such as wind and hydro (which, even assuming all the grid problems are solved, fundamental limits are rapidly reached; for example, extracting all tidal energy on the planet would be 2 terawatts, whereas humanity consumes about 20 terawatts; sun represents about 170 petawatts).

On top of these basic engineering efficiency considerations, there's massive systemic benefits to decentralized systems. To take one example, solar thermal devices are completely immune to an electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare or nuclear weapon; if primary energy needs and economic activity are powered by solar thermal devices then a massive EMP would not cause much problems at all. The spread of disease can be far easier controlled in a decentralized system, and quarantine, if necessary, would be by village and not people staying individually in their apartments with massive long term harms to society. Most of all, however, is in a decentralized system in which energy, food and most materials and their transformation are mostly sourced locally, volume of transportation can be radically reduced, which is the main cause of our ecological problems (just moving billions of tons of stuff around the globe is not sustainable in itself, even if you did have renewable energy to do it).

↪boethius Thank you very much for your fascinating post about trees and the problems with human immortality. I learned some new things, which is great. — Truth Seeker

My pleasure, trees are really an extraordinary life form and taking care of them is foundational for a sustainable way of life.

As we don't yet know how to make humans and other species immortal, let's put that plan aside for now.

How do I get everyone to love everyone? If everyone loved everyone, there wouldn't be any wars or crimes or poverty or injustice or exploitation. Why doesn't everyone just love everyone and be vegan egalitarians? We should share resources equitably, and everyone should receive according to need and contribute according to abilities. If we can do this, all 14 worldwide objectives would be achieved. — Truth Seeker

I didn't read ahead, but hopefully my expose on trees is some use and interest to the conversation.

However, obviously we agree medicine is a good thing all things being equal, and so making medicine available to people is going to extend human life on average.

But poverty and pollution are far bigger killers, and cause of suffering, now than a lack of access to medicine. Most people alive today do not owe their lives to modern medical intervention, and so pursuing medicine is diminishing gains in terms of helping people on the whole. Why the focus on medical research and medical access in poor countries is because corporations profit from that and the corporations and imperial policies that make ad keep those people poor aren't put into question in the framework that medicine will make their lives better.

I have also put a lot of thought into what is "the best" that can be done, both from the perspective of some general strategy or collection of strategies of the humanist-ecological movement broadly speaking, as well as my own individual strategy to maximize my contribution.

Since I studied math and numerical analysis, I am conditioned to view objectives as the increase or decrease in a single variable. The first thing you learn in numerical analysis is that simply waiting for the computer to finish the job and just sit there staring into space is almost always cheaper than trying to think of a more efficient program, not to speak of solving anything analytically like some sort of deranged self-flagellating priest of mathematics seeking purity at the cost of his own flesh and sanity!

The second thing that is taught is that for optimization to be an approachable problem a single variable must be defined that we are optimizing for. So if there are several different measurable or otherwise quantifiable metrics of consideration, they must be combined by some function into a single variable of which the change, up or down, is good or bad in the context of the problem and of which the purpose of the algorithm is to push to some global or local maxima or minima. If all goes well the process even says something about the real world.

To translate this mathematical insight into more profane terms, I once had a friend (before he started helping to launder money for international illegal diamond cartels) that wanted to do good and also be rich and saw no issue with being able to pursue both goals maximally.

Now, while doing some good and being quite rich are compatible, unde most conditions under consideration for the exercise, I explained that they cannot both be maximized, if by "being rich" meant spending money on enjoyments and pleasantries (leading a "rich life")above what is required to pursue the first goal. One can do good insofar as it makes one rich (but equally willing to do bad insofar as it makes one rich), and one can make money insofar as it helps to do good (and lose all one's money insofar as it helps to do good), by maximizing both is not possible.

Every dollar that comes in one must choose whether it goes towards the good works, granting they are good works, or then goes towards personal enjoyment. If the personal enjoyment is required to do the good works (like sleep) then that is money going towards the good works and it is just the special case where the money being spent on yourself maximizes that goal. If it's to useful to starve as continuing to live is the best way to continue the good works in question, then obviously some capital must be spent on eating and drinking and even keeping up good spirits and creativity. There is no reason to assume suffering would be required, though it cannot be excluded either depending on the conditions. If it was good to hide jews from the Nazis, and doing so resulted in getting arrested and tortured by the Nazis, then in these circumstances it was necessary to risk suffering to do good; but assuming that's not the case, reducing expenditures on ones own creature comforts only insofar as it maximizes the good works is by definition the maximum of the good works. Simply imagining the life of a multi-billionaire with all its normal pleasantries and imaging plenty of good works is not maximizing those good works. It may not be maximizing the life of a billionaire either, but the point is there is no rational way to determine which dollar goes to what (every dollar that comes in one must choose whether to help others or whether to help oneself beyond the point of what is efficient to help others, which is just helping others but in the special case described), and so the life would be arbitrary and thus meaningless.

Now, this is clearly not your dilemma, but by seeing how "living the life of a billionaire" (in how we normally think of it) and "doing good" cannot both be maximized as a matter or principle simultaneously, even if health and comforts in themselves are fine things and can be subordinated to a single goal of maximizing good, so too does the same problem arise in considering all the good things that we could list would ideally occur.

For, it is not such a difficult task to list the ideal characteristics of a system. Ideally food is healthy, tastes good, instantly available, free of any cost and changes in an ideal way to keep those good ideal characteristics at every meal.

Where optimization comes in is how to navigate all the ideal characteristics we would wish for and stay clear of unwanted consequences in a rigorously defined way. For example, higher quality food generally costs more. One may say if we're optimizing the food then cost is not an issue, but obviously it is as other necessities in life also have a cost and so spending all ones funds on food does not optimize overall health. Even if we were to solve the most optimum lifestyle for health ... well what would be the point if all resources and time were consumed by that objective? What about other objectives? Shouldn't we be productive and pursue health insofar as it makes us more productive and able to accomplish some goals? For example, ensuring the society we're optimizing our health in itself stays healthy and sustainable.

So, we have a numerical model of what goes into a meal, imbedded in a numerical model of what goes into a healthy life style, imbedded in a model of productivity, imbedded in a model of what goes into a healthy society and environment.

The point of going through this exercise that a component (such as a single meal) cannot be optimized without larger and larger context and ultimately the context of the whole, is not only instructive in how optimization works, but also how over-optimizing a single component is going to lead to pathology. If someone was only concerned about food quality they are going to spend all their money on food which is going to cause more problems than it solves.

I have to go now, but the end point of these deliberations is that getting to the full context reveals fossil fuels and the centralized economic systems that result from their exploitation is the root cause of nearly all our problems. Local solar energy is the one thing that addresses our problems but is underdeveloped from its potential, and so it is not the only thing to do (as there are always diminishing returns in doing any one thing) but the one thing that can spread exponentially and radically alleviate poverty in a sustainable way, while also removing the "need" for resource wars as the sun shines everywhere.

I am sorry that I don't understand. How can the ageing of most species and the non-ageing of some species be an optimised evolved trait? They are the opposites of each other. — Truth Seeker

Natural death evolves when older individuals in a species are a hindrance to the younger individuals. The old must die to make way for the young essentially.

Trees are the best example of these sorts of evolutionary pressures to evolve natural death, as they grow to similar sizes and have the same basic features and conditions (i.e. "eat the same thing" of relying on photosynthesis, minerals and nitrogen fixing etc.), yet some trees grow to be thousands of years old, others essentially immortal, and some have a natural death after only about 70 years.

With non-tree organisms there's a lot of confounding factors like size and metabolism and diet, but trees are a sort of special case where confounding factors filter out.

Obviously trees can live a super long time, so if that was an evolutionary advantage in all cases then all trees would be super long lived.

The advantages of natural long life or natural short life are also easy to see with trees.

There is the clonal advantage of not needing to bother with sexual reproduction at all:

Wollemi pine
According to Cris Brack and Matthew Brookhouse at the ANU Fenner School of Environment & Society: "Once you accept that a common, genetically identical stock can define a tree, then the absolute "winner" for oldest tree (or the oldest clonal material belonging to a tree) [in Australia] must go to the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis). It may be more than 60 million years old. The Wollemi pine clones itself, forming exact genetic copies. It was thought to be extinct until a tiny remnant population was discovered in Wollemi National Park in 1994... There is also substantial evidence that the tree has been cloning itself and its unique genes ever since it disappeared from the fossil record more than 60 million years ago." — List of oldest trees, Wikipedia

Then there's "stemming" trees which have the advantage of capturing resources over a vast areas and occupying the soil, even though individual "trees" are shorter lived.

Quaking aspen
Covers 107 acres (0.43 km2) and has around 47,000 stems (aged up to 130 years), which continually die and are renewed by its roots. Is also the heaviest-known organism, weighing 6,000 tonnes. — List of oldest trees, Wikipedia

Then there's long lived trees, without stemming or cloning, in the more normal sense of a single trunk that live thousands of years:

Wollemi pine
Patagonian cypress
A new 2022 estimation of 5,484 years expands on a previous minimum age based on incomplete tree rings of 3,654 — List of oldest trees, Wikipedia

Of which the advantage is monopolizing space in the canopy.

Point being, there are plenty of trees covering most ecosystems that can live a really long time, way longer than short-lived trees in the same ecosystem.

Compared to the shortest lived trees of similar size, so like a birch, is about 60 yeas.

One advantage of a shorter life span is that the species can evolve and adapt more ably. If evolution is largely constrained by generations, the shorter the generation the quicker it's possible to evolve to new conditions. Trees can produce a lot of seeds so "probably" young trees of the same species are going to grow in the space where an older individual dies. Though that's not even a universal tree strategy, as trees in rain forests have evolved ways to keep distance to avoid epidemics of diseases and pests; for in a more biodiverse environment the pests and diseases are evolving quicker too.

Another advantage is that shorter lived trees usually grow faster and do that by being less dense and so are weaker and more likely to be felled by a storm, eaten by birds and insects and beavers, and burn in a fire and so on. Species that anyways don't have long-term survivable conditions have no evolutionary pressure to be able to survive long term anyways, so can put energy and information creation and preservation (that also takes energy) into other things.

I could go on about trees, they're pretty fascinating, but I hope this is sufficient to explain why very different characteristics may co-evolve in different species of the same general kind in the same environment. There are pros and cons to different characteristics and natural death span has lot's of positives from an evolutionary survival and adaptability point of view.

Trying to make humans immortal is more likely to be a recipe for extinction than continuing on as we're doing. We know the current way "works" and balances all sorts of factors (including younger generations learning from the mistakes and biases of the old), whereas trying to make humans immortal, or as immortal as possible, may go terribly awry in all sorts of ways.

We can even develop interesting game theory scenarios to underline how dangerous it is. For example, someone adopting the explicit goal of causing the extinction of humanity is a rare event, but not impossible; such a maximally destructive individual with a limited life-span will face very adverse conditions for achieving their objective; the goal is rare, he or she will find few allies, very special circumstances will need to be created to ensure the extinction of all human life with any assurance and those circumstances will take considerable time and effort to create, so difficult that it is likely impossible for one individual to accomplish in a natural human life time span. Make that person immortal! In obviously super sophisticated technological conditions, able to work in the shadows for centuries if not millennia to find that "very special sauce of circumstances" that would kill every living human. Given enough time and consistent application of a single person's faculties, such goals are no longer discountable. Immortality is not a goal we would have any reason to believe extends the life, exploration and enjoyment of humanity as a whole.

But again, it is not even worth considering extending human life as a project apart from general health and well-being, in conditions that are not sustainable. If our environmental and ecological conditions were sustainable then we could argue the morality, theology, practicality of trying to extent people's lives beyond the natural bound that evolution has resulted in.

*Please note: Any teleological language to describe natural processes is because it's more understandable, and easier to use teleological language but then remind everyone at the end that trees do not themselves have "a strategy" of evolution; evolution happens to the trees regardless of what they think about it.

In that case, why do some organisms age (e.g. humans, cows, dogs, etc.) and some organisms don't age (e.g. planarian flatworms, hydra, Bristlecone pines, etc.)? — Truth Seeker

It's an evolved trait that optimizes over time for the survival of the species.

In terms of chromosomal continuation all species are functionally immortal in terms of their chromosomes until they go extinct. From the perspective any chromosome you have right now, there's an undivided chain of chromosome divisions all the way back to the common ancestor, and it all happens inside a cell membrane of one form or another. Of course, most chromosomes die when the individual of a species dies but all chromosomes in your or any other organisms cells today "doesn't know that", so to speak. How exactly a species chromosomes perpetuates into the future then evolves to best able to do that. Turns out that having individuals that procreate and then die is an efficient evolutionary strategy (to use teleological language).

Rate of mutation is also an evolved trait. There is an optimum rate of mutation that balances harm to the species due to the vast majority of mutations being harmful and the benefit to the species that some mutations are required to evolve.

On its own, making humans immortal won't be enough to achieve all 14 objectives. We would need to build spaceships to transport organisms to other planets and star systems so that we can spread life across the universe. — Truth Seeker

Step one in such a plan would be to ensure the current biosphere of the planet we're currently on is sustainable.

The idea that colonizing the moon, Mars or anywhere else in outer space somehow mitigates the danger we've created to our own survival on our own planet is preposterous.

If Elon Musk actually succeeds in sending people to Mars and having them live there permanently, such a colony would be entirely dependent on supplies and technology and people from earth for likely hundreds of years.

Therefore, if things are not sustainable on earth there is no point in trying to leave earth and colonize elsewhere. In the situation that the earth biome really was collapsing it would still be far easier to setup a sort of space colony on earth (under the sea, or in a bunker, or just out in the "desert of the real") than in outer space somewhere.

If we stopped being selfish and instead shared resources equitably (i.e. everyone receives according to needs and contributes according to ability) there wouldn't be any poverty. — Truth Seeker

Yes, so therefore that's the primary problem and making people immortal would be a secondary problem, even if it was a good idea which is debatable.

Many illnesses are preventable, and many more are treatable. Again, sharing resources would make healthcare accessible to all. I have been trying for 37 years to get everyone to love everyone, but I have failed because people don't listen to me. If everyone loved everyone, there wouldn't be any wars or crimes. Why doesn't everyone just love everyone and be vegan egalitarians? We should share resources equitably, and everyone should receive according to need and contribute according to abilities. — Truth Seeker

Improving society is a slow process. I don't see why you would expect it to go any quicker than history would lead us to believe.

Evolution is a deeply flawed process. Here is a list of biological design flaws in humans and other species that strongly suggest evolution through natural selection, rather than intelligent design. These features reflect evolutionary compromises, historical constraints, and trial-and-error processes typical of evolution — Truth Seeker

Evolution as such is not a flawed process as it's a natural process that did not have any design criteria to begin with. Saying evolution is a flawed process is like saying a volcano or the sun is a flawed process. Natural processes are the conditions in which we find ourselves and to assign flaws to those conditions doesn't really make any sense.

We humans can make processes to change our conditions to meet some criteria and those processes we make can be flawed given our objectives.

For our customary human goal of good health, clearly our knowledge and technology can help us change natural processes, such as diseases, with processes that can be flawed, such as side effects.

Not only is it extremely implausible the idea we could make flawless medicine but diseases too evolve.

But the project of human health through medicine is simply unsound in the context of critically damaging our ecosystems. First for the obvious fact that if we do not tend to the conditions necessary for our own survival, pursuing pristine health through a calamity makes little sense, but secondarily most of our diseases now are caused by the same agents that damage the ecosystems and it is cheaper anyways to address these causes than to continuously treat the symptoms. The focus on medicine (that the pharmaceutical corporations love) is a distraction from the political organization question that is the cause of so much disease from both pollution and poverty.

You're absolutely right: in most animals, DNA chains shorten during cell division, specifically at the telomeres - the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, telomeres shorten, eventually leading to cell ageing (senescence) and organismal ageing. — Truth Seeker

This is really not how it works.

Cells can add more telomeres to chromosomes to keep them healthy. Of course, in a chronically unhealthy person that cell maintenance will degrade so associations between telomeres health and overall health would not be surprising (though even this has weak evidence; as DNA health is a core task that cells may continue to do even in adverse conditions).

However, the best evidence that telomeres doesn't simply shorten until there's none left and you die is that there are vastly different cell division rates in the body, so if the hypotheses was true then organs with faster division (like intestinal walls) would be far more likely to fail first and people who die of natural causes would overwhelmingly die of organ failure associated with fast cell division.

Instead of that, people die of all sorts of organ failure, and one leading cause of death is heart failure and heart cells don't divide at all in adulthood. Likewise, neurons don't divide at all in adulthood.

The premise that making people live longer achieves your objectives I also think is highly questionable.

First, because there is a long list of more pressing matters of war and poverty and illness, that we have the knowhow to address already but it is a matter of political organization.

Second, it is completely nonsensical to even consider extending human life without first being assured we are taking care of the environment and our economic activity derived from the environment sustainably.

Third, natural age is an evolved trait that nature has found to maximize our chance of survival as a species, and the wisdom of trying to reprogram evolution on these fundamental points resulting from hundreds of millions of years of genetic optimization is highly questionable.

Extending the life of the boomer generation, for example, seems incredibly foolish from the perspective of concern for humanity and the wellbeing of all life on the planet. Natural age may simply be nature's way of getting rid of such generations before it's too late.

Why “however”? What do you want it to contrast to? — neomac

The use of the word "however" is to to contrast with the fact that parties seeking their own gain at the expense of some collective gain (family, organization, business, institutional, government, country, empire, or what have you) usually don't advertise that, but will present their plan as in the interest of the group.

So, party A pursues B and party C pursues D; however, party C will usually also claim to be pursuing B.

Perfectly fine use of the word however.

Your expectations are based on reality or on your moral standards? — neomac

The current state of the conversation is descriptive. People can be described to act in the interest of "something". That something could be anything.

For example, some people act in the interest of their pet, dedicating their whole life to their pets welfare. For this particular conversation, people making (contributing to) US foreign policy are unlikely to be dedicated to the welfare of their pet to the exclusion of all other interests.

National interest is and can’t be anything else than what results from people’s self-serving interests on a national level AND given certain power relations between them. — neomac

It obviously can.

You can easily have a situation where the "certain powerful people" self-serving interest would be to plunder the national treasury and make off with the winnings. This is obviously not in the interest of any sensible concept of "the nation".

The fact of the matter is that people don't necessarily do that even if they can, as other people and even "the nation" as they conceive it has value and meaning apart from the maximization of their own store of value.

In order to analyze how policy is made we must take this obvious fact into account.

Of course, simply recognizing that some parties involved are acting in their own self interest to maximize material gains in the process (for example increase the value of a defence stock they are invested in) or then acting in the interest of another nation (perhaps simply because they are a spy or then duel nationality and are unable to serve two masters equally well) or a religious group or whatever, are going to be inputs into government decision making that likely conflict with any sensible definition of national interest.

For example, if one's reason to have a war is that it will increase defence contractor stocks, it's very unlikely that war just so happens to be also great for the national interest.

If someone else's reason to have a war is to fulfill prophecy; again, unlikely to happen to line up with any sensible definition of national interest.

Of course, what exactly is the national interest, even for people trying to be genuinely focused on that, is up for debate, but what is not really debatable is that people who have completely different objectives than the welfare of the nation, defined as the welfare of the people in the nation or then imperial strength or then any plausibly objective definition (i.e. definition apart from their own personal goals), are unlikely to just-so-happen to happen upon goals that are in the national interest (again, under any sensible definition).

However, in pursuing their ulterior motives they will present their motives as in the national interest, as they must convince and bargain with people in conversation where national interest and national strategy is the mediating discourse.

For our purposes here, if a certain powerful American Zionists puts the interests of Israel above the interest of the United States, they are unlikely to simply state that. They are far more likely to state that their Zionist objectives just so happen to be the plausibly objective interests of the United States. So, let us imagine a Zionist wants regime change in Iran at the expense of the United States, knowing full well the US won't derive any net benefit from that (would be just a really costly war), but it would result, in their estimation, in improving Israel's strategic position in the region, they are unlikely to put the argument to non-Zionist American decision makers and analysts, as well as the media and regular people, that American should embark upon an extremely costly war that will harm America but benefit Israel. Rather, they are likely to come up with arguments to try to convince people that what they want happens to be in the interest of "America".

As I said you are framing a situation not in terms of competing interests, but in moral terms. This reflects your allegedly “impartial” (or “virtuous”?) interest. Yet your views are exposed to the same “bias” you are accusing others to be victim of or purposefully embracing: namely, viewing national interest in light of your self-interest. Your “populist” views are putatively aligned with those of the mass of powerless nobodies which are victims of the putative abuses of evil elites. — neomac

At this point in the discussion you are interjecting into, the debate with @Tzeentch and @Benkei is descriptive of whose interest is even being served by recent policy.

@Tzeentch presents a description of the decision making process as coherent grand strategy since many decades, whereas @Benkei and I disagree the policy changes and decisions in the middle-east represent some sort of coherent US grand strategy over many decades.

@Tzeentch and I have debated this for quite some time, when the genocide first started. While both agreeing a genocide is definitely happening, @Tzeentch is of the view that Israel is acting on behalf of US Imperial interest in that "eliminating" Gaza and shoring up Israel's strategic position, while also creating chaos in the Middle East, is a logical next step in a rational US grand strategy in line or then formulated (or then "formulatable") by impartial imperial grand strategists.

I disagree with @Tzeentch, I view the genocide in Gaza as absolutely terrible for US Imperial interests (defined as preserving and expanding imperial power relative to other powers) and the policy to support and cover for Israel's genocide is due to Zionist influence in American government. That Zionism is a powerful faction, they want the genocide in Gaza and they are expending their political capital in order to achieve it vis-a-vis other factions and coalitions in the United States that disagree with them.

By factions I mean in a broad sense including entire institutions, such as the Pentagon even if the Pentagon itself is of course made up of myriad subsections (there is also resulting collective positions from all that sub-factional dynamics).

My analysis of the current situation is that Zionists "went for it" and tried to push the United States into a high-intensity war with Iran and the faction that stopped that from happening (for now) is the pentagon (because they know it conflicts with US imperial interest, represent far more costs than gains, have other regions they worry about, such as East-Asia) and (I would guess) managed to convince Trump in the situation room where it's mostly pentagon people in the room that war with Iran is incredibly high risk and don't recommend it (if they did, I have a hard time imagining the war wouldn't be on full blast right now). For, war with Iran as concept is easy to talk about, but when you get into the nitty gritty of how to actually make war with Iran, that they fought Iraq for 8 years and are not push overs, have bunkers everywhere, mountains and a surface area of 1 Rocky Mountains + 1 France, and the ballistic missiles capacity and so on, it's obviously not an easy task and many dead Americans would result tin the attempt.

At the same time, I believe Israel was threatening to escalate to them using nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian enrichment plant. Trump bombing the plant with conventional weapons (but not killing anyone) and then Iran's symbolic counter attack, enabled Trump to simply declare a ceasefire.

The reason I was so concerned about Israel escalating to nuclear weapons is because they have no diplomatic off-ramps by design, literally opening the war with assassinating negotiators; precisely so that the US would be inevitably sucked into an expanding conflict.

Trump simply announcing a ceasefire basically short circuited that escalation process, and the bombing removed the reason for Israel to use nuclear weapons.

To summarize, in my model of what's happening, the constant escalation by Israel represents Zionist influence in America essentially cashing in their chips at a combined optimum of the combined factors of their influence in American foreign police and American power relative Iran. A sort of 'now or never' moment for Zionist whose objective is to push Iran into a failed state, as well as carry out genocide while the US can still cover for that.

To this discussion, @Benkei adds the additional information that the previous nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by Obama was clearly part of a strategy of detente with Iran, that drops sanctions and allows them to develop and normalize, and not some sort of 5-D chess move knowing Trump would come in and tear up the agreement, then Israel embark on a genocide under Biden to be finally in a position to attack Iran in a second Trump administration.

Obviously Obama would be aware that if detente doesn't work American could go to war, but the calculation at the time was clearly that a peaceful arrangement with Iran was more in America's interest, even Imperial interest (allow that pivot to Asia), than another Middle-East war that kills plenty of Americans.

For, even if American Imperial violence hasn't stopped qua violence, there are a lot fewer American soldier deaths since many years now, and I would very much suspect that policy and decision makers with any sense of US interest are very apprehensive about any proposal that involves US soldiers returning in boxes at a high or steady volume.

I'm not completely sure if you're disagreeing with me.

By interest I mean people's perceived interest they are working on behalf of, which is (usually) a mix of personal and collective interests of one form or another (family, company, institution, country etc.). For example, someone working in a company may have the interest of the company in mind in making decisions, what the company to succeed, but also want to advance their career; sometimes these interests are aligned (doing a good job advances your career) and sometimes in conflict (advancing one's career requires spreading rumours about someone who's actually more competent; of course in this person's perception; someone else may have "honesty is the best policy" perception as to their personal interest to advance their career).

In terms of how government decisions are made lot's of individuals representing explicitly and implicitly lots of mixes of interests go into these decisions.

However, all of them are going to say what they propose is in the national interest.

To take the war in Iran, American-Zionists who want the US to attack Iran for Israel's benefit, claim this is also the US national interest as well.

So, everyone is always talking grand strategy and sometimes that's in earnest (as earnest as they can, such as the authors of the Brookings paper discussed above) and sometimes it is obviously a lie.

A "healthy" Empire, the plausibly objective interest of the Empire as such manages to assert itself over special interests that wish to plunder the Empire or otherwise consume its capital base (including diplomatic capital) for their own ends. An unhealthy Empire everyone comes to divide up the spoils and get away with their pickings.

I was just about to cite this very paper as an example of people trying to be objective.

The paper essentially makes the point that diplomacy is the only option likely to succeed.

I don't have time to make detailed citations right now, but of the situation we are in (American people simply don't back an invasion so the only attack option is bombing), the authors are very lucid of the likely consequences:

Disadvantages (of just bombing stuff scenario)

- Iran’s determination to acquire a nuclear weapons capability would probably not be reduced by such an attack and, especially in the short term, could well be increased.

-The hard-line Iranian leadership that presently struggles to maintain political support at home might be strengthened by a nationalistic reaction among the Iranian people against what they would doubtless perceive as an unprovoked American attack.

- Even massive airstrikes might only set back the Iranian nuclear program by as little as a year or two, and this seems more likely than the more optimistic possibility that this policy option would delay Iran’s program by three years or more. Given the track record of U.S. and international intelligence in accurately assessing the nuclear programs of foreign states, any attack, even a sustained American operation, might fail to destroy a substantial fraction of Iran’s nuclear program. The United States cannot strike what it does not know about, and there is good reason to think that Iran has or will soon have major nuclear facilities—including alternative uranium hexafluoride storage/production and uranium enrich- ment plants—that have not been identified. — WHICH PATH TO PERSIA? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran - Brookings Institute

Which is exactly what the media is arguing with Trump about presently.

Furthermore, even if the program was delayed by 3 years, which is viewed as essentially the best case scenario, what does that delay accomplish outside a followup invasion? Obviously bombing them is going to motivate them even harder to get the bomb and make diplomacy far more difficult, if not impossible (as we see), to get them to agree to give up their nuclear program (which they've stated pretty clearly they will never ever do). So if the plan is diplomacy, simply doing some bombing in the manner that has been done is not part of any rational diplomatic strategy. If there's no appetite to invade Iran, then bombing (even successful) doesn't delay the nuclear program for the purposes of organizing a successful invasion.

Without a followup invasion, what exactly is the point in simply delaying Iran getting the bomb? With the high possibility bombing: A. causes that to happen as Iran may simply not develop a nuclear bomb if not attacked (as has been Iranian policy for 40 years) B. the bombing is not even effective so don't really delay anything and C. creates domestic and international sympathy for Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon.

All the bombing accomplished is removing the nuclear material (that we for sure know about) from international inspection.

No worries. Slightly off topic but maybe others have the same question. The old forum had on the front page all the main forums and last-post of each forum, which encouraged posting in the less active forums (as your post would stay on the main page until it was a bit awkward no one responded yet). That each forum was on the front page had the bonus that sub-forums could then be listed (without showing the last post so as not to trigger people) but people looking for scriptural debate or then current-events knew exactly where to go to get their fix. Mostly scriptural debate was catholics arguing with protestants so was pretty amazing. There was this one catholic called Mariner who absolutely brought the fire; totally lit.

It's in the lounge, it's under "all categories".

The lounge is where political stuff is put so that it doesn't show up on the front page. On the old forum there was a current events sub-forum to the political-philosophy forum, and you could see the link to the sub-forum but last post wasn't shown, which was a less confusing way to achieve the same thing of not showing current events last posts ( / controversial flamewars) on the front page.

Same thing was done for scriptural discussion sub-forum to the theology main forum.

Oh, and this is nonsense too. I'm repeatedly trying to start a conversation about actual geopolitical realities - ergo the 'root causes' - but you've been pretty much categorically ignoring them. — Tzeentch

I have little time these days, but I am "fully in" the geopolitical theorizing.

However, has extremely good points.

A better framework that brings the two arguments together, as I argued for quite some time on the Ukraine thread, is "grand strategy mediated discourse".

Decisions are made by individuals in a network, which are usually best modelled by factions we usually call "special interest" today.

In these decision making processes everyone uses strategic language. For example, if you represent the arms industry and all you want is to sell more arms and have more wars and tensions to sell more arms for short term shareholder value, you're not going to just say that; rather, you're going to translate your interest to sell more arms into grand strategy language.

It's called rationalizing.

Of course, some parties in the decision making process will actually care about a US empire "as such"; for example, a lot of analysts are hired to analyze the world and the interests of "the US" and simply do that job. However, even then, what they come to define as "US interest" is going to be shaped by more powerful players that may have self serving definitions. So, simply because you're an analysis and your identity is serving US interest, doesn't mean you therefore come up with some plausible definition of what US interests are. If it becomes the institutional status quo that defeating Iran is US interest, then you'll start just repeating that as that's what's expected of you.

Point being, "US strategy" is not an accurate model of what drives decisions. All sorts of interests go into policy and government decision making, of which genuine concern for strategy is only one component, and even within this component of some plausibly impartial attempt at "US strategy" there will be a diversity of opinion.

So there are genuine attempts to argue for "US interests" within the establishment, but everyone else is going to present themselves as doing the same thing.

In this case of the 12 day war, the main faction pushing for a US war with Iran in the US establishment is obviously the American Zionists (often duel citizens). Now they want a US war with Iran for Israeli-Zionist interests but they nevertheless present that as US interest.

They've pushed hard for a war with Iran before, and didn't get it, so that in itself informs us there's other factions that disagree that a war with Iran is in US interests and / or their own interest (such as own political or economic interest). For example, the arms industry wants to sell weapons, but they don't benefit from a war's that are too big and chaotic. What they want are arms races, specifically technology driven arms races where they make the most profit, not actual resolutions to conflicts or wars so big that it disrupts the global economy (people need money to be able to buy your stuff). Arms industry doesn't want to get nuked same as everyone else.

Then there's the pentagon, US intelligence agencies, and other US institutions. Pentagon may simply have no viable plan to defeat Iran, so they may hear the rhetoric but then those analysts who identify as objective try to formulate as plausibly objective view of Iran and plausibly objective evaluation of a giant war with Iran. If the results aren't good there's going to be pushback from any general that either also identifies as representing some sort of objective US interest or then doesn't want the embarrassment of losing a war.

There's also diplomatic factions within all these institutions that don't see war as the primary tool to advance US interests, but rather diplomacy is (war being a last resort).

We put all this together, and the original plan to invade Iran was clearly as a next step to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is in the middle. For that to happen the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would have had to go well, they don't.

Obama's elected, there's a giant push to carry out the attack Iran plan, but Obama disagrees that's a good idea, goes with diplomacy instead.

As @Benkei points out, there's no evidence this change in policy to negotiate a resolution is somehow a cynical ploy to keep Iran from developing. Definitely it's a plan to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but the only way to do that is a process of phasing out the sanctions.

One of the fundamental reasons to favour diplomacy (in which Iran also gets some of what it wants, that's how diplomacy works) is that war with Iran would be simply too costly for the US and may not even succeed in at least regime change in the short term. The US may simply lose a conventional war with Iran simply because it would be too costly to win (require a draft for example). Iranians fought an 8 year war with Iraq, so there's no good reason to assume invading Iran would be easy and it could turn out to be so difficult that the US gives up. In addition to the prospects of very clearly failing to topple the Iranian government, there's all the regional chaos Iran could cause; straights of Hormuz and all that.

I could go on, but the point is there's lots of inputs into decision making. Obama decides diplomacy is in the US interest. Then Trump gets elected, undoes Obamas deal not to then immediately start a war with Iran, but because he hates Obama so much. Of course, Zionists don't want a diplomatic resolution with Iran, they want war even if it greatly harms the US (they see Israel as winning in that scenario), so they get to work on increasing the tensions with Iran. However, overall they are losing, as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't going well, and Trump starts the withdrawal from Afghanistan process; that's really not good if you want to attack Iran.

The war we just saw, notably, was not started by the US, but directly by Israel. This isn't the Zionist preference, but a plan B of starting the war themselves and assuming the US will join in.

That also didn't work, so shows the limitations of Zionist influence in the US government.

And here the courts got an ample amount of this rhetoric after the Hamas attacks. Yet I think the real threat is ethnic cleansing on a vast scale. — ssu

The current Harvard estimate is 400 000 Palestinians "missing", in addition to starvation and all manner of trauma, in particular to children, from physical wounds, concussions to every possible developmental disorder.

We, the West, have essentially been torturing about a million children for about 20 months, and by simple proportions 200 000 children are among those "missing" but could be a higher proportion if children are less likely to survive the weapons used.

Ethnic cleansing of simply moving the Palestinians I don't see how that could be a worse crime, since if they are still alive the situation could be reversed by the world or then at least compensated.

For example, had the Nazis moved the Jews and other undesirables to the camps but didn't starve and kill them, they would have suffered a lot less and then returned home. So I don't see how ethnic cleansing, that is not also genocide, is a worse crime than the suffering we are seeing live streamed.

That they know their suffering is live streamed and the world does nothing is an additional trauma.

But for their proxies in Gaza being annihilated, their nuclear facilities being devastated, their being under attack by the strongest military force on the planet, their enemy being a 3,000 year old civilization that is relentless, and that they agreed to a cease fire, Iran's got them just where they want them. — Hanover

Palestinians did not protect Iran, but Iran tried to protest Palestinians from genocide. First of all.

The nuclear facilities are civilian facilities, everything important was already moved out or can anyways be rebuilt. At least one influential faction in the Iranian military has been pushing for the development of nuclear weapons, they wouldn't do that in civilian facilities.

The civilian program (in terms of weapons development) is only needed to develop enrichment designs, not even equipment. This stuff isn't very large, it can easily be built anywhere (such as a military bunker), and Iran has Uranian mines so all it needs is understanding the enrichment technology, which they have done by developing about 6 generations of centrifuges.

Each generation of centrifuge is more efficient than the last, and more efficiency means you need either less machines or less time, and in both cases less energy.

They already have enriched to 60% which in terms of time and energy is 80% the way to weapons grade (the enrichment is more efficient the more enriched you go).

The limiting factor for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon since decades is not technology but diplomacy.

Iran needs to project stability and rationality to its partners, such as Russia, and that's done by being stable and rational. Now, simply capitulating on civilian nuclear development is not stable and rational and is terrible diplomacy vis-a-vis Russia as Russia maintains non-Western states have the same sovereignty and can develop civilian nuclear programs (Russia also sell civilian nuclear programs); and it doesn't even increase stability because having the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon and counter-strike Israel is a better deterrent than having no capacity. However, rushing to develop a nuclear weapon out-of-the-blue is also not stable or good diplomacy. Russia would likely join in sanctioning Iran as it's simple destabilizing and would lead to accelerated proliferation (Saudi Arabia getting the bomb etc.) if not a nuclear first strike by Israel.

So, for decades Iran has pursued the most stable diplomatic position of developing a civilian nuclear program that also serves as a deterrent to war with Iran.

By striking Iran in an act of illegal aggression, moreover assassinating top commanders and scientists, it removes the diplomatic obstacle for developing nuclear weapons.

Iran can now easily sell the narrative that it's Israel and the US that are out of control, not responsible actors, and they need nuclear weapons to defend themselves from these maniacs, same as North Korea.

The US' advantage in applying diplomatic pressure on Iran was in presenting themselves as the "responsible adults" and Iran as the reckless party that shouldn't have nuclear weapons, and we're simply not going to talk about Israel's nuclear weapons.

This war completely reverses that diplomatic status quo.

Even worse, by having this war, Iran can remove all the nuclear material it had under observation in a civilian program to hardened military sites for the development of nuclear weapons. So that physical obstacle, that the Uranian is being watched and to remove it would trigger a diplomatic and then likely military crisis in which no one has sympathy for Iran, is also removed.

Oh, I don’t agree with that. I think the disabling of the Iranian nuclear capacity is crucial. My point rather was scepticism about Trump’s motivation. — Wayfarer

It is in no way disabled.

The main capability is the designs needed to enrich uranium; those obviously aren't destroyed.

Iran has developed multiple generations of homegrown enrichment designs and expertise. This sort of technology is really finicky and you need trial and error to optimize things.

In addition, there's no indication that Iran's stockpile of 60% enriched uranium is destroyed, so it's safe somewhere. Enriching to 90% only requires 20% of the energy using the same centrifuge technology (you just run it for longer to get to 90%), which all indications are Iran moved to safe locations before these strikes.

Iran also has its own uranium mines. So, it has the knowledge and expertise needed to enrich uranium to weapons grade and also has the uranium.

Therefore, the only ways to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon would be by agreement or invasion and occupation.

Dropping bombs, but not invading, is the best way to guarantee Iran develops nuclear weapons.

Every Israeli that leaves Israel and doesn't return is a fatality in economic terms.

Israel hans't banned people from leaving (except rich people on boats) because people are excited to stay. That's the biggest win Iran is achieving in terms of security metrics. Less Israeli population, less power, less skills, less threat in the future. And this economic cost of missiles blowing up infrastructure, laboratories, ports, disrupting normal life, removing the "sense of Western style safety", is in addition to the economic costs Israel had already incurred due to operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, along with boycotts due to those actions.

Israel is a small country that has millions of citizens with duel nationality that can easily leave, in addition to something like a million ultra-orthodox citizens who don't serve in the military and many don't really work, then there's the Arab population that are there but not necessarily committed to the Zionist project.

I don't know what information you have been following, but Israel's initial decapitation strike did not work; commanders were replaced, Iran retaliated. Sure, people died but their replacements maybe more effective.

Then Iran has struck Israel with missiles and drones every single day since. If Israel owns the skies over Iran, why aren't they able to disrupt and suppress that?

Iran defeated US and Israeli missile defence, about 5 layers, day 1 and even that level of performance (that does not prevent missiles falling) cannot possibly be sustained.

The reports are Iran has successfully moved all of its enriched uranium and critical enrichment equipment to safer locations.

Israel can strike Iran too, sure, but nothing of critical military importance (which is all under ground).

And considering everything important is under ground, what would actually have a chance of seriously disrupting Iran's military capability would be mass bunker bustering. If the US is now out of the war after dropping 6 giant bombs on non-military-critical civilian infrastructure, that means Iran is basically military safe.

Israel can destroy civilian infrastructure, including prisons for some reason, but that doesn't degrade Iranian military capability and is basically just wasting ammunition, and Iran can destroy civilian infrastructure too.

Maersk has paused going to Haifa; that is a pretty big disruption.

And in the long term view, this sort of war is far more damaging to Israel's economy than it is Iran, not simply because Israel is smaller in size and population, but Israel is driven by the high tech sector and there's not only destruction of laboratories Iran has already achieved but this sort of long term disruption causes many "knowledge workers" to leave, along with lots of other duel citizens. Iranians, on the other hand, aren't going anywhere and the oil will still be in the ground when the war ends.

Weak and pathetic would be Iran unable to strike Israel: missiles intercepted, launchers interdicted, no common and control.

Iran is defeating Israel and US missile defence.

As for this recent attack on US bases, seems the gamble was Trump would take that as a win and not escalate further. In this sort of escalation game, doing nothing keeps the tension, so once you've "responded" then the other side has the option to deescalate.

However, Iran sent missiles, I heard 40 missiles but it's hard to verify, at Israel as an immediate response.

Iran has demonstrated it can survive mass assassination of commanders and then retaliate the same day (after Israel's initial strike), keep hitting Israel everyday, defeat missile defences of US and Israel, clearly manage to deal with continued covert activity in Iran, and generally unite the people.

If this is the end of US involvement, then Iran in the final analysis Iran deterred further US involvement and can keep striking Israel to missile exhaustion, and once that happens Iran can produce cheap drones to keep sending at Israel as well as the odd ballistic missile.

Israel has no advantageous end game it can perform by itself (nuclear weapons being not exactly advantageous).

The situation is difficult to evaluate as there's strict censorship now in both Iran and Israel, so it's difficult to know what's going on, but we do know Iran can and is continuing to strike Israel and Israel missile defences and air power can't do anything about that.

So already a massive win for Iran, even if more Iranians have died.

I honestly had zero clue if Iranian ballistic missiles would work as intended, that they could manage to fire them off, and in large numbers day after day. It's impressive. Not easy.

I had to verify it directly on Truth Social, be sure it's not a prank, full message:

Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired — 13 were knocked down, and 1 was “set free,” because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction. I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their “system,” and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA — Trump

If this is true, turns out the code is that ALL CAPS is a bluff (that's likely to work because ... all caps, what can you do) and normal punctuation is supposed to be trustworthy.

Wars over, CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Honestly, I think we can go ahead and wrap up this whole philosophy business.

Medvedev has a reputation for making extreme statements, though. It's hard to say whether they're actually serious or just looking to provoke chaos/a reaction in the US-Israeli camp. — Tzeentch

US and Israel have teased if not directly threatened nuclear weapons use, so Medvedev / Russia is at minimum just counter threatening for the deterrent effect.

Obviously threatening nuclear weapons use is not some sort of special right of the US and Israel and others can do it too.

Israel and the US need to take into consideration that Iran is supplied with nuclear weapons, including North Korean, but also needs to take into account that even after a nuclear strike on Iran that Iran could nevertheless complete development of a nuclear weapon and strike back. It would be diplomatically horrendous obviously for Israel to strike Iran with nuclear weapons, but that may not even prevent Iran developing nukes of their own and counter-striking.

Without nuclear weapons, I really don't see how Israel could potentially resolve things on their own. When your opening move is assassinating negotiators, it's difficult to declare that everyone had fun and to just call it a day.

If the US also can't force a resolution due to anti-air supply by Russia and China, very quickly the only option left is nuclear weapons.

If Iran (and Russia and co.) can successfully deter Israel from using nuclear weapons then it's really not in a good position.

For example of why keeping it "symbolic" is not a risk averse move, Trump's statement about Iranian retaliation was literally all caps and categorical:

ANY RETALIATION BY IRAN AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL BE MET WITH FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT. — Trump

So faced with these kinds of statements, you'd find some other non-attacking-US way to retaliate if you wanted to avoid escalation.

If you don't want to avoid escalation, then that would only be reasonable with assurances from Russia, such as may have been provided in the Putin's meeting with the Iranian foreign minister this morning, on the subject of air defence.

Regardless of the state of Iran's current air defence system, Russia can provide more. Just as Russia essentially wiped out Ukrainian air defences in the first days of the war and had air supremacy, but then with the West's help Ukraine started to regain air deterrence, shot a few planes down, pushed Russia's planes back to operating behind the line of contact, Russia could potentially do (assuming their systems are good enough) the same to the US in Iran.

NBC News’ Richard Engel says the nature of the strike and the well-defended target indicate Iran’s retaliatory strike was a “symbolic attack.” Qatar was also reportedly informed ahead of the attack. — RogueAI

We'll have to see how Trump responds.

Why I (personally) would avoid such an attack if I wanted to avoid escalation, is that Trump may anyways react to the "symbol" the same as a non-symbolic attack.

And if you reached out to the US to try to be reassured that your symbolic attack won't cause further escalation ... how exactly would you trust anything the US says about it?

To me, situation seems beyond trading symbols, but I definitely could be wrong. We'll have to see what Trump does tomorrow to see what direction things are going in.

In addition to this attack, Iran is still striking Israel, so pressure is anyways quite high to go to war with Iran, so why add a symbol to the mix if you wanted to deescalate.

Ah, I see. Iran wins if they get beaten to a bloody pulp but manage to avoid complete annihilation. Right. — RogueAI

Yes that's the spirit.

Obviously the Iranian people don't win in such a situation.

Your claims about air supremacy are fantastical. Neither U.S. or Israel have lost a plane yet and I will be very surprised if Iran ever manages to take one down. — RogueAI

Then why don't we see ballistic missiles being intercepted in boost phase? If you have air supremacy, you can just fly around and B-line to any ballistic missile launch and shoot at those missiles when most vulnerable.

That's not happening, so my conclusion is Iran is able to deny airspace to cover their ballistic missile launches. If they have sufficient deterrence, Israeli planes would just leave the area. If they didn't have deterrence, Israeli planes would be hunting for launches of ballistic missiles.

However, regardless of Iran's capability, Russia and China can supply more, and I don't know what Iran's plan is or decision making criteria. All I can say is that if I was making decisions for Iran I wouldn't escalate with the US unless I had assurances of anti-air supply from Russia and China.

Now, I have not said that what follows from all my points is that Iran will therefore win an air war with the US.

My main points are:

1. If Iran is trying to escalate, or even simply risking escalation, with the US, it's only a reasonable thing to do with in a state of belief that Iran will be supplied with air defence from Russia and China (that they "got their back") and also in the state of belief that those systems will work.

2. All Iranian critical military assets are under ground, so Iran maybe preserving anti-air capability. They clearly have a lot of ballistic missiles that work, so they may have also a lot of anti-air missiles.

Of course, there are other potential explanations for Iran's actions, and it's possible that no system on the planet could defeat US air power.

However, if you were Russia and China, defeating the US in a large air battle would be something you would probably want to do, so they may try. If the cost are to Iran, they may have little reason not to give it a go.

Iran is not going to militarily win against Israel and/or America. — RogueAI

Bombs don't win wars. Since Israel attacked Iran first and its objective is regime change, if Iran survives that's a win for Iran in this context.

This claim that Israel has air supremacy and flying over Iran at will I find incredulous, as then we'd see ballistic missiles being intercepted in the boost phase, which I've seen no evidence of.

What I find more likely is that Iran is using its air defences to cover ballistic missile launches and letting Israel bomb non-critical military asset as much as it wants. Everything military-critical in Iran is under ground ... so Israel bombing the surface is mostly just attritting Israel capacity. Any fixed asset Israel could just strike with a standoff weapon if you did manage to deny the air space to aircraft (i.e. there's no point expending surface-to-air missiles and exposing radar to protect fixed assets on the surface; even if you were successful they just send cruise or ballistic missiles of their own). Concrete buildings cannot only be rebuilt (mostly at lower cost than Israel spends to blow them up), but they aren't assets critical to war fighting so it doesn't impact the war outcome anyways.

Iran is huge, the surface area and mountainous region of essentially one entire Rocky Mountain chain in addition to one whole France, so Iran will focus air defence to ensure ballistic missile launches aren't intercepted in boost phase.

They would turn their radars on to check for planes, and reserve their anti-air capability for any planes that come at them. If there are no planes, they can launch, if planes come at them to intercept launch they don't launch and try to take down the planes. If they have established successful air denial bubbles (i.e. SEAD), those won't cover much of Iran, so Israel can still go around bombing plenty of other stuff, as well as use plenty of standoff missiles systems to make strikes anyways even covered by air denial systems.

However, regardless of Iran anti-air capability, Russia and China have far more than Iran. If you keep supplying Iran with radars and missiles, you'll eventually find ways to take down US planes and then keep doing it even if those systems get destroyed also. Iran may have a limited anti-air stock, but Russia and China can provide far more equipment and missiles. And they can keep producing them and resupplying Iran even for years! Could be the Ukraine of the air that we're still talking about in 3 years time!

Israel and the US have flipped the on-switch to war with Iran, nothing can force Iran to switch it off other than actual defeat, which would likely require a ground invasion and millions of troops. It is to Russia and China's advantage that Iran simply never switch the war off, not their fault there's a war, and so Russia and China maybe quite persuasive in their reassurances.

Iran also has reasons to never switch off the war, in that Israel may just attack them again later so letting them recover serves no military or political purpose.

If peace with Israel is not possible, because they keep on assassinating lead negotiators for example, then Israel turning on a formal war is a better state of affairs.

Since Israel air capacity is limited (for example compared to the US), the smart thing to do (considering the US may join the war), is to collect as much signal intelligence on the F-35 and prepare a giant air battle if and when the US joins the war.

That Israel can blow up concrete buildings meantime, assassinate a few professors and commanders and the like, is a reasonable cost to pay.

In order to "win" against a US lead air war, Iran will need to prevent the US from establishing true air supremacy to carry out a truly massive bombing campaign. As we see with Russia-Ukraine, even with limited resources (that are continuously re-supplied by the West) Ukraine can prevent Russia from establishing air supremacy and this is how Ukraine can stay in the fight.

If Iran (with Russian and Chinese backing) can make a similar situation in Iran, of limiting the US to standoff strikes, then they essentially "win", as there isn't even a ground game and nothing much is going to be accomplished with only standoff munitions against a country of 90 million people.

Of course, maybe stealth is essentially magical technology that nothing can touch.

But, assuming Russia and China have carefully studied this technology and are confident they have systems that can defeat it, then enticing the US into a giant air battle over Iran and defeating the US, would be an absolutely massive geopolitical shift.

Therefore, Russia and China, assuming they have geopolitical ambitions, would be preparing with Iran for such an air war and then to sustain it with resupply (which is super easy to do considering Iran connected to Russia by the Caspian).

Considering Iran would be in a far worse position if it were to completely lose control of the air -- so its missiles intercepted in boost phase and susceptible to way more bombing and interdiction of everything it does -- if I was Iran I would only escalate with the US if I had reassurance from Russia and China that they will supply air defence systems for a giant air battle and then long term battle of air attrition.

Without such an assurance, I would try to keep the conflict limited to Israel, inflict maximum damage over the short term, and deplete their air defence to make the susceptible to drones. In a mutually missile-depleted scenario, Iran has a massive advantage due to being far larger in surface area and population.

Iran coordinated the attacks on the American air base in Qatar with Qatari officials and gave advanced notice that attacks were coming to minimize casualties, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the plans. — NOS4A2

Iran may want to keep things as friendly as possible with the gulf states, but nevertheless escalate with the US.

So giving advance warning to Qatar isn't necessarily indicative.

Also, if you don't want to escalate with the US, you don't need any symbolic strikes at all in this situation (as that anyways risks further escalation), as you can just keep striking Israel to demonstrate capability and willingness to strike things.

It could be some weird logic or then part of some negotiated theatre with the US (give Trump a further optics win of "they could do nothing! nothing!").

But weird logic and diplomacy scenarios seem unlikely as trust and diplomacy with the US is at zero.

Trump is also erratic and unpredictable so there would be no way to be certain that Trump would view retaliation as symbolic, or not take extreme issue with the symbol anyways; he's already used extreme language about any potential Iranian retaliation. Therefore, if you want to avoid escalation you'd probably conclude you simply don't need to strike US bases at all, and just keep hitting Israel, if keeping it localized is the goal.

If you want to keep it local with Israel but want to deter further US strikes ... then you need real deterrence and not a weak symbol (which just invites more strikes), so you'd want to sent US service people back in boxes, show trump the domestic political consequences of further war.

How would that happen? Nothing going on in the Middle East will change the fact the U.S. military is the strongest in the world, the U.S. economy the richest in the world. — RogueAI

If Iran "wins" this war with Israel it is a massive boost for Russia's and China's lead counter-order, further eroding US credibility. However, it's only a proxy failing, like Ukraine, and the US empire could "put it behind us". So would be a big victory for Iran, but further improve Russia and China's position as being able to credibly back opposition to the US.

However, if the US went all in on Iran and then Iran won a conflict directly with the US, that would be a fatal embarrassment to US power and technology, as well as massive damage to US stockpiles, military and domestic moral etc.

Americans coming back in boxes in an unpopular war that in addition America loses, would be catastrophically different than just Israel losing the war with Iran.

Of course, they would still need to win the war with Israel and then the US to realize such geopolitical gainz.

So, I'm not saying that's what they want to do, but if they think they could "defeat" the American war system in Iran, then the firs step is to take advantage of US striking Iran to escalate with the US.

Obviously, escalating with the US isn't good for actual Iranian citizens; that should go without saying.

Iran has fired missiles at US military bases in Qatar and Iraq — CNN

Concerning this retaliation, one of the most important details is that it comes after Iran's foreign minister meeting with Putin (I think literally this morning).

This is Russia-China's opportunity to essentially unseat the US as the world's leading power.

I feel it unlikely that it is simply face saving, because they could just keep hitting Israel if they didn't want further escalation with the US.

They don't need to "show strength" (both domestically and internationally) by hitting the US, as they can just keep hitting Israel with more missiles to accomplish that.

If they didn't want further escalation they would just repeat JD Vance's "we're not at war" and be like ... cool

Missiles on the way according to random social media posts.

Honestly have no idea what's real and what's AI though, we'll have to wait confirmation .... just confirmed on CNN, so seems happening.

Sounds more like Libertarianism, not socialism — Harry Hindu

You literally just put a few sentences before dictionaries as the ultimate arbiter in this discussion:

All of philosophy is contained in language which Merriam-Webster provides guidance for using. — Harry Hindu

And when the definition of a more authoritative dictionary is provided (the one Google uses and provides as the top result) ... you just dismiss it entirely and you know better than the English professors at Oxford.

Sounds more like Libertarianism, not socialism. — Harry Hindu

What exactly is the point of contradicting the dictionary?

Sure, you can use symbols arbitrarily for your own private use — Harry Hindu

There are endless additional meanings to words that have technical meanings in specific disciplines and tradecraft, colloquially referred to as technical jargon. Some of them are in dictionaries if they are common enough, but very few.

Philosophy also has technical jargon. For example using "obtain" to refer to something that is an actuality to differentiate with truth value of a proposition (about those things that actually exist). That definition is not provided by google's citing Oxford Languages, and whether it appears in some dictionary or another does not matter to it clearly having a specific meaning and use in a philosophy context.

It must be that the are using anarchy as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, not as defined in your "Marxist Dictionary". — Harry Hindu

Not all of philosophy is contained in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Furthermore, a dictionary's goal is to list the most common uses of a word, and not many, if any, meanings specific to a tradecraft or discipline.

Nevertheless, the philosophy of anarchism is provided by the Oxford language dictionary that is used by google. So, if you googled "define anarchism" you literally had to skip over Google providing the definition right at the top, which is:

Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
anarchy
/ˈanəki/
noun: anarchy

1. a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
Similar:

2. the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism. — Google citing Oxford Languages

So I hope this resolves the mystery of the dictionary, and that definitely in many context anarchy simply means chaos (what it originally meant) but in other contexts it means a political philosophy, most notably without hierarchal government.

But key word being "organization" so clearly the idea is not some sort of chaotic free for all.

You're leaving out the part where the socialist goal is for the state to be the only owner of property - privately owned and not shared with the rest of the world. Government property isn't much different than private property in that the government still has to defend it by force. — Harry Hindu

That is not the "socialist goal". Definitely the goal of some socialist projects, but even then that was not the final objective but some transitory tactical necessity on the way to communism. Also an important caveat, property in this context is the means of production and not consumable resulting products, which can still be owned by individuals in most socialist schemes. Other socialists want more workers owning the businesses they are working in, and not state ownership.

Unclear what you mean by the state owning everything, but still privately owned and not shared with the rest of the world.

Then why do so many people on this forum conflate anarchy with libertarianism - as in do whatever you want? — Harry Hindu

I have not seen this conflating, so please provide examples.

However, anarchy is one political philosophy that is derived from or compatible with European libertarianism. We don't hear much of this because the debate for religious freedom (that your Lord couldn't decide one day you're a catholic and the next day you're protestant), also the basic principle that actions that don't harm others need not be policed, choosing your own profession, selling your flower at the mill of your choosing or milling it yourself! (and not the local Lord's mill), women not being the property of men, and the other original "liberties" that made someone a free man or women instead of a serf, and made someone morally autonomous instead of ordered about by kings and priests, was obviously won by the libertarian side in the debate with feudal moral and political hierarchy and people-ownership.

Where freedom comes to mean "do whatever you want" is because you can keep building on this concept of political freedom, making you an equal in society with equal rights and equal vote, to come up with consumer freedom of "do whatever you want" in the sense of "buy this thing you don't need because you can do whatever you want as a free person!".

"You're free, do whatever you want" is never meant as some categorical claim, but only makes sense in specific contexts with assumed limits: "You're free, do whatever you want, buy this legally available item and have a good time", or "You're free, do whatever you want, so have sex with whoever you want ... but make sure it's consensual and also not with animals and not in public and oh yeah not with a child and so on".

"You're free to spend your own money", "you're free sexually" is clearly never meant in common discourse as some sort of total freedom. You are obviously not "free", in a legal sense, to spend your money on hitmen. You are not "free", in a legal sense, to place no limits on your sexuality.

The original meanings of freedom and liberty were in contrast to feudal structures that don't exist anymore, so most people today don't really have a clear idea of what these words are supposed to mean in any political sense, except in contrast to dictatorships (free world vs dictatorships people still clearly recognize the difference; but the words no longer really hold much meaning as differentiating political philosophies within Western traditions themselves, as essentially no one advocates for theocracy, or absolute Monarchy, or we all become serfs again and so on, so liberty and freedom are essentially the only game in town and is incorporated in essentially a feel good way into political campaigns and shampoo commercials).

I understand your point.

My point is that we don't really want to have inflation on the term genocide or it to be a popular derogatory adjective as "fascist" or "nazi" describing something that it isn't. With genocide we are talking about the intent of total destruction of people. — ssu

If we agree on the basic physical facts, then we are more or less in agreement.

The reason to use the word genocide is that is that the crime of genocide is defined in international law as those acts you're talking about committed with the intent of destroying a people:

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

So, once the Nazis started systematic murder with the intent of destroying all the Jews (as well as other groups such as invalids) they were committing genocide. How successful they are at completing the objective would not impact the definition of the crime of genocide. Had they been stopped earlier by the Soviets and only succeeded in killing 50 000 Jews at that point: still genocide.

What is normally the difficult to prove part is the intention. As mass chaos and violence and death can be presented as carried out for some other goal.

For example, the US government will argue that if mass deaths occurred in Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and so on, that the intention was to achieve democracy and not destroy a people, in whole or in part.

Which is of course an entirely plausible argument as we may have many things to critique about US foreign police, the CIA, pentagon, and so on, as well as question whether the intention really is "democracy" or more mundane imperialist objectives, but I think we (definitely you and me, if not others) would certainly agree that the American people and government simply aren't genocidal (in the 21st century; they probably would be if political groups, such as communists, was in the definition of genocide but that was left out exactly to avoid that discussion). Americans, on the whole, simply don't have a culture of wanting to exterminate whole groups of peoples, and that has been reflected in US foreign policy in the 21st century.

Now, in this case of Israel, the "difficult to prove" part is simply not present. Whereas other cases the controversy is concerning the intent, especially institutional intent (such as even controversy of "the proof" that Hitler really did order and know about the Nazi genocide) Israeli culture and Israeli politicians, ministers, generals and so on, openly declare their intent to destroy the Palestinian people, including all the children are also enemies and must be destroyed.

How the laws concerning genocide are written is that the threshold of mass killing to be a genocide is super low (as the goal is to prevent genocide, and so trigger responses at a low threshold) and that the difficult part to prove is the intent..

Israel openly declares their intent to commit genocide, then go and do exactly those genocidal acts (such as mass killing and starvation) that they declared was their plan.

It's like if a murder happens and there's lots of circumstantial evidence pointing at one suspect and a lot that can be debated, plausibly denied, not at all a clear cut case ... but then the murderer keeps on confessing to the murder, keeps on describing exactly how he or she committed the murder, explaining why the murder was necessary and doing everything possible to disambiguate the situation. The debate is over about the circumstantial evidence once someone explains in detail how they committed the murder, why they committed the murder, boasts about committing the murder, and they are the only plausible possible suspect based on the material evidence that does exist (even if not conclusive in itself; maybe one plausible deniability scenario is "an accident" ... well difficult to maintain if the suspect keeps on declaring "it wasn't an accident! I killed that piece of shit!").

Hear hear! :100: :up: :heart:

Now the clergy that rules of Iran can really go back to the times of the 1980's when it was in war. The idea that Iran's regime would fall because of this is an example of the utter stupidity now so prevalent. I mean really, think of yourself and your country that you live in. If two foreign countries that are thousands of kilometers away from you suddenly started bombing your country, why would your response be to attack your own government? Nope. Iran will try to transition to a wartime economy now. — ssu

We are in full agreement on the military analysis.

The only intrinsic advantage (all else being equal) an invading force has is the initial invasion when taking the defenders by surprise, as it's super costly to mobilize if then turns out there is not a war. Furthermore, aggressor can just wait for demobilization and attack then, so it's really not an easy situation for the defenders to be in.

"Easing into" offensive action has zero military advantages as we are seeing.

But obviously all the military planners involved know that so it's difficult to make sense of what exactly the plan was. The only theory that fits all the data is magical thinking driven by Netanyahu's personal problems and enabled by fanatical religious fervour of his political allies.

Yet you should give a thought here also to why is Iran, of all countries, so hellbent to be against Israel in the first place? — ssu

The alternative view is that Iran supports the Palestinian cause due to real sympathies. Since Israel maintains Palestinians as an occupied people without any rights, the Iranian policy to support them doesn't go away. If Israel made a liveable peace with the Palestinians and other neighbours then Iran would no longer be "against them", even if they didn't agree with the peace terms it would no longer be their problem.

Iran also correctly identifies Israel as a Western colonial project with the fundamental goal of dividing Islam, which was explicit Western policy after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The West could have kept the Ottoman Empire intact; there's no intrinsic reason why a polity must be broken up simply due to military defeat; the reason was to remove the possibility of geopolitical competitor from reemerging down the line.

The general strategy of strife and chaos in the Middle East proposed by @Tzeentch is definitely correct; where I have doubts is that recent Israeli actions in Palestine and elsewhere are fully an extension of that policy compared to Israel's own policy (that then rides on and also exploits the Wests general policy).

Well, a lot of countries have a lot of resources that the neocons don't control. International trade is for that. In the end, the resources of some country don't justify war, because those resources never make wars actually profitable as in the end they cost a lot more than just to buy the Goddam resources by trade. Neocons and other imperialists give as reasons the natural resources of some country as a valid reason to invade them, but in the real world this never goes out so simple. — ssu

Exactly why I say the US is not pursuing some rational grand strategy from the point of view of some coherent Imperial interest. These resource wars do not accomplish anything and only weaken the US' real power base which is presiding over the global trade system and being generally admired.

The toppest level view of what we see happening, I would propose is that after the fall of the Soviet Union the cold warriors had nothing much to do in any rational US imperial project and so pushed for and succeeded in making new conflicts in order to, more-or-less, entertain their sense of importance. To use a tired analogy, they still had their hands on the Cold War hammers and they couldn't help but use them. A better understanding of what we call Neocons are the more violent faction of the cold warriors who need new violence to find meaning. Hence the desire for full spectrum dominance, war's at all times, such as with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and clandestine operations all over the world to control political outcomes.

Of course they need some nominal reason for the war, such as resources, but they obviously have not been profitable wars, but they keep doing it as the real reason is to satiate their psychological need for conflict in which it "feels cool" to get together in secret rooms and discuss what to do; whereas in peace time that just doesn't feel so adrenaline inducing, kind of boring actually. Pathologically psychotic people can only go through the fantasy so many times before they develop the inevitable need to act out the fantasy.

Which brings up an important dynamic of what's happening now, is that the Cold Warriors are all super old, and they can't stop the younger generation slowly taking over (due to things like dying), and so there's now people like Tulsi Gabbard and JD Vance in positions of power, who went and actually fought in the Neocon wars, so regardless of their personal ideology and objectives, they at least live in reality and not the Neocon fantasy. Right now these factions have reached the compromise of "blow at least something up, but not fully engage in a disastrous war; and really big explosions! Fucking HUGE ASS explosions!".

Just encountered this channel today.

This guy predicts a ground invasion of Iran by the US:



The reasons being that:

1. Iran wants a US ground invasion
2. Israel wants a US ground invasion
3. American people and military planners don't want a US ground invasion
4. Donald Trump wants a disastrous ground invasion of Iran and a US civil war at the same time

And therefore, 1, 2, and 4 are going to get what they want.

Interesting point (though very unsure if accurate points), Israel's goal is to help collapse the US empire (such as getting it into an unwindable war with Iran) as it stands to inherit the US military infrastructure in the Middle East and so dominate the region for many generations to come. A sort of Charlemagne to the US's Pax Romana.

It's unclear to me how that would technically work, even just considering the supply chain issues, but certainly some version of it is possible if the entire region is in smouldering ruins.

The whole theory seems far fetched to me, but seems interesting to reflect on.

He also claims to predict history, so we will have to watch his career with great interest.

In other news ...

Pakistan condemns Trump's Iran bombing after nominating him for Nobel Peace Prize — Reuters

Just what genocide? — ssu

The genocide is an openly declared policy such as starving the entire population and bombing every hospital and university, and horrendous crimes in themselves even considered in isolation to mass murder, such as sniping children, proudly boasted about by the perpetrators.

There is nothing to analyze or debate about these facts. It is as clear as anything taken for common knowledge such as the sun shining upon the earth.

If you want to live in denial about it, then you weld your soul to the fate of these evil doers. So I'd consider it carefully if you entertain the possibility of an afterlife.

Or if I misunderstand you and there's multiple genocides to consider at the moment, you're just asking which one I'm talking about, then in that case I am referencing all the genocides currently being perpetrated by Israel.

I agree with you. This is Likud party's main line: there doesn't have to be any peace with the Palestinians, there can be a perpetual war as far it is low intensity and doesn't cost too much. And that has worked for decades now, whereas trying to do a peace with the Palestinians has been represented as utterly impossible, because it failed. — ssu

To make some sort of plausible attempt at peace, Israel would have to stop its settler activity.

That would be the bare minimum of Israel stopping at some line in the sand and then trying to negotiate some modus vivendi around that, which may include things like offering compensation for land already stolen and obviously some pathway for Palestinians to have rights; obviously 2 state solution being the only viable option if it's assume Israel "needs to be race superiority based in Jewishness".

And that's the bare minimum. If the US federal government was still kicking native Americans off their land today, you think they wouldn't still be resisting that? You think it would be the native population that "can't accept peace" when the US government keeps chipping away at their land. And that's just the land, imagine if the native Americans had also no rights.

This is the main issue that Trump in his ineptness doesn't understand. The only options are limited strikes. Trump should ask himself, just how long did he fight the Houthis? How long? 30 days and that was it, and they are quite alive and kicking. — ssu

We agree here. Also why I think this really isn't "Trump's war" but Netanyahu needed an escalation for his own problems, thought he could get Trump to go along.

The evidence that Trump and US elites broadly speaking didn't want this war is that there's no shock and awe. If you actually through you could smack Iran down from the air you'd go all in day 1, maximum air power, try to collapse the command and control, try to collapse civil society, absolutely pedal to the metal to establish air supremacy on all of Iran and keep hitting every possible military asset and especially convoy of any kind.

When analyst talked about a war with Iran being hard to win before, it was assuming maximum and relentless shock and awe.

Limited strikes by Israel (due to simply being way smaller) and then limited strikes by the US is the absolute worst strategy, as Iran can now transition smoothly to a total war system, and even better now after the US strikes knows exactly what these bunker busters can do.

So this idea that Israel has "softened up" Iran, mentioned in the mainstream media, is just widely naive as to how warfare works. Why Ukraine lost 20% of its territory in like a single week was because it did not transition to total war (as that's costly if you aren't sure a war is coming) and Russia maximized the advantage during that transition.

Point being, maybe Trump did understand it, and why he didn't just go and preemptively strike Iran, but he's not in a political position to just leave Netanyahu high and dry.

He maybe screaming for peace now precisely because he is able to understand generals explain that they can't do much, a message he's likely to believe considering they couldn't even defeat the Houthis. Whether the generals were over enthusiastic or he was overenthusiastic, it's hard to imagine the experience increased his enthusiasm for an air Vs mountain war.

This is behind the absolute stupidity that the neocons have spread for many decades of Iran being an existential threat to Israel and the US. The politically incorrect and utterly out of the Overton window is the fact that Iranian nuclear deterrent would be to deter Israeli nuclear deterrent, not to be used in an all out attack on Israel. Why would Iran want tens of millions of it's own citizens to perish? There's no reason.

The fact is that if Iran would have a nuclear deterrent, the US response would be similar as it was to North Korea. Bill Clinton was the last president that truly thought of attacking North Korea in the similar way as Trump has now attacked Iran. Americans too are sane in the end: they attack and occupy countries that don't have a nuclear deterrence capability. Unconditional surrender, occupation of the whole country and regime change are exactly the things that countries with nuclear weapons will opt to use them against. — ssu

I agree with all this.

Iran, like Russia, represents a lot of resources that the neocons can't control, so both they and their predecessors are psychologically damaged by the existence of Iran. They are used to being able to "do something" when they don't like someone or what's happening in a country.

Israel needed an existential enemy to justify its militarism and refusal of a 2 state solution and obstructing any peace process generally speaking. At the same time, by maintaining the conflict with Palestinians and Hezbollah and Iran, they are naturally on friendly terms, then Iran can turn around and say they are therefore Iranian proxies and no peace is possible until Iran is destroyed.

When this dynamic started, Iran didn't even have any ability to strike Israel, but has clearly developed the capacity since, so became a self fulfilling prophecy that Iran became an actual threat which certainly Israeli warhawks ideal scenario is the US go and destroy Iran.

The problem is it's just super difficult to do and the US just has no good reason to do it.

So, what really motivated this Israeli attack on Iran is either magical thinking or then a gamble, mostly for Netanyahu's personal reasons, that clearly hasn't worked. Maybe a case of becoming over confident in what the Mosad can do after the "brilliant success" of blowing up commanders and children with pagers.

This all just shows how stupid this war is and how Trump has been lured into a war that in the end won't give him that victory he so eagerly wants.

And anyway, especially the vice president is going batshit crazy in trying to deny just what has happened: — ssu

Yes, further evidence they all know they can't get any good military outcome with Iran.

Just normal friendly blowing up your stuff but totally not a war. Amazing.

Maybe Netanyahu's gamble was that he thought they could show Iran "wasn't so tough" based on the idea that decapitation strikes would cause mass panic and disarray, and also that Israeli missile defence was already "good" and US hand would be forced in providing its own missile defence in the region, so certainly results would be stellar.

If Israel could show the war was easy to win, then Trump would want to come in and mop up.

Not clear why they would think that would happen (seeing as True Promise 1 and 2 already demonstrated Iran can penetrate the missile defences), but could just be old man syndrome of not really understanding technology.

If they only wanted more tensions for domestic political outcomes or distract from Gaza, then they would have started a more limited cycle of strikes and retaliation, such as we saw before but just one notch up.