We don't know what happened with the bulk of Epstein's private island videos. Who knows, they may well have resurfaced in Tel Aviv or Moscow. Both countries have a lot to gain from this disastrous campaign.
Pizza like its predecessor Focaccia (panis focacius in Roman times) was initially tomato-less. Even today many pizzerias offer pizza bianca in their menus
Bloom was a rare exception to Lem's law: nobody reads anything and even if they read they don't understand, and even if they understand they immediately forget
The only thing Trump achieved so far was replacing Khamenei with Khamenei. Otherwise, it's a total disaster from the strategic point of view. Making the US that much weaker in the long run is somewhat ironic for a guy wearing a MAGA hat.
But yes, I generally agree with you. It’s like the US/Israel don’t know how Iranians think about their country, their government, and the history of US in the region.
Do they not know that many people who hate their government’s domestic policy actually support their foreign policy?
Do they know that of dozens of ace fighter pilots (e.g. Jalil Zandi) minted by Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, most of them were “Shah loyalists” who preferred an Islamic Iran over foreign invasion of Iran?
It’s too incredible to think that they don’t know these things, so I guess they don’t care. So the goal must not be military, but something else.
As an Iranian in the West who has a family of Shia mulsims, what Westerners don't understand is that the sectarians _pray_ for death..
It's difficult for someone on this forum to fathom how anyone would _want to die_, but that's how these guys operate. Killing Khamenei did nothing but to grant him exactly what he wanted. He was martyred at the hands of the enemy during the holy month of Ramadan. He had already delegated all his operations and stayed home, waiting for bombs to drop.
Assassinating him simply poured more gasoline to the fire. Decapitating extremist leadership doesn't achieve much (as we just witnessed), you can't kill an ideology like this with guns.
The other thing that I'll mention is about 30% of the population in Iran supports IRGC and within those 30%, at least _half_ of them are willing to die for the cause. in a country of 90M, that's millions of people..
So unless you're going to conduct a genocide, you're not killing all of them, and even if you do, the few that remain will grow again.
United States did a great job exporting liberalism to Iran over the past 40 years and some of those ideas were starting to take shape. However I feel like now they undid all that work and united all IRGC supporters because of the war.
I think TRUMP miscalculated Iranian's abilities to take over the regime. The diaspora celebrating Iran getting bombed are out of touch with the reality of the country.
As a rule - I disregard the opinions of the diaspora. It's nothing personal but often they are often the least informed and most biased when speaking about any given homeland.
As a rule you disregard the opinions of refugees because you think they are the least informed on the topic that has intense personal impact on them and their families? WTF?
What do you think the prospect is of those 15% successfully stopping the secession of Balochistan and Kurdistan? Not a trick question, I'm genuinely curious.
Exactly. Normally u would think that the Security Services would see tRump as unsuitable for President because he's compromised by a foreign power. However, the Zionists tentacles are deeply embedded within the US Govt including the CIA et al. Schumer deliberately delayed the vote until after this attack because he too is a Zionist. MAGA were deeply naive about the influence the Zionists have on US Govt departments.
Not really, I think it was more that Iran thought the US could control Israel, so they said 'if Israel betray the ceasefire agreement, we will hit your bases'.
The US probably asked Israel to not betray the agreement, Israel as usual betrayed the agreement, said to the US 'we will attack during the negotiations', probably because it was effective the last few times they did, and the US couldn't force them to stop, so they had to preemptively strike.
Do you agree there is a meaningful difference between the US feeling forced to follow Israel because of their own political choices, and the US being controlled by Israel ? The outcomes are the same, but acknowledging why and how the US got themselves involved is key if people don't want this kind of situation again.
Israel completely depends on USA. USA are the ones with all the power in that particular relationship. There is no way for Israel to force USA. USA has a lot of ways to force Israel.
USA can be convinced to do something by Israel, but not forced.
Prior political choices prevent the US from saying to Iran "Sorry that Israel attacked you, that's unfair, please don't attack our base, we won't fund Israel military anymore, and we remove the embargo".
Hence, since during the previous ceasefire, Iran told the US "If Israel break the ceasefire again, we will attack your ME bases", US was "forced" into preventive strikes against Iran military installations, and into an offensive war, without any preparation.
I'm not a huge fan of this US admin _at all_, but in this very case, the amateurism isn't caused by the childishness and the whininess (is that a word? i mean constant whining and victimization) of the US admin and their overall lack of skills, but by the fact they were forced into it without preparations.
Is that argument more clear? I feel you talked past my argument which is probably my fault since i have trouble expressing myself without thinking for hours beforehand
I dont find that believable argument at all. USA in fact can not attack along of Israel. Nothing prevents then from removing embargo, tho that is not relevant.
USA can tell Israel to not attack. Full stop. It can even tell Israel they will give them less support. And dont tell me that Trump administration would be afraid to pressure or even bully other goverment. If USA did not wanted this war, it would not happened.
Third, USA had option of approaching negotiations seriously. It simply did not.
> US was "forced" into preventive strikes against Iran military installations, and into an offensive war, without any preparation.
This is nonsense. It was not preventive attack, it was active first strike attack against opponent that is not much threat right now.
USA was not in defense. It was not forced to attack either.
So, what was the actual threat supposed to be about? Israel will stop defend USA? Common.
But to your other point, they both lie often and confidently. If they are nerveus, they probably just thought they look like idiots (regardless of whether they are saying the truth).
Although there is small error regarding the neutron number calculation. I assume 3/4 of the neutrons are lost and then the author can multiply by 1/4 to get the result that the naturally occurring uranium is safe (as its neutron number is less then 1)
For the super-prodigy category, someone like Mozart or Chopin, who could compose symphonies or polonaises at the age of 8, it's almost certain to maintain their elite status in adulthood (as opposed to someone who just plays the piano well or skipped a class or two in elementary school).
Probably it's Middle Liddel, I haven't decided to buy the unabriged version due to its unwieldy size, high prize and because it is 80 years old. Apart from this, it's fully available online.
Just started relearning Ancient Greek after twenty years and I highly recommend Cambridge Greek Lexicon.
Generally, I go with wiktionary which is reasonably comprehensive. I remember as an undergrad being stumped by a word in the Septuagint that I could not make any sense of and now I imagine I can search on the inflected form on wiktionary and know exactly where I went wrong. (I would note that as an undergrad I was also pretty thoroughly defeated by Attic Greek. I’ve since learned that the textbook we used, Hansen & Quinn, is pretty rough going, but I’ve also found that the approach taken by the Biblical Greek textbook I worked through (N. Clayton Croy) made what was nearly impossible forty years ago a breeze on the retry nine years ago.
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