We saw significant success with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other countries in the past. But more recently, similar efforts seem to have ended in failure.
We fully went into those countries and were willing to spend decades rebuilding them.
They’re also nice countries, with governments and organisation. Places like Afghanistan have nothing. You have to try and start civilisation from scratch, in a hostile land.
> They’re also nice countries, with governments and organisation. Places like Afghanistan have nothing. You have to try and start civilisation from scratch, in a hostile land.
Territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing boils down to "more resources for me and those most closely related to me genetically." It's difficult to think of a course of action that is more materialist and less abstract.
Israel today is run by a group of religious fundamentalists who do believe it is their "promised" land. And then we have an American ambassador publicly supporting this because he thinks that as a Christian he needs to support Israel's "Biblical rights" over the all of middle-east!
You don't judge a person by what they say, but what they ultimately do - Netanyahu is a right-wing religious fundamentalist as is evident by the kind of right-wing identity politics he practice, his support for the assassination of Israeli (and Palestinian) leaders who didn't support his political ideology and sought peace (Israel PM Netanyahu denies incitement before murder of Rabin - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-pm-netanyahu-denie... , Will Israel ever have another leader who truly wants peace? - https://forward.com/opinion/780946/yitzhak-rabin-assassinati... ), his attempts to usurp democracy in Israel and become a dictator (If Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition have their way, my country could deteriorate into a dictatorship. - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/israel-ben... ), his calls for the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, and the military sanction for the actual ongoing genocide in Gaza (and now in West Bank). The Likud party he leads emerged from a terrorist organisation that conducted Hamas like massacres of the Palestinains. ( The Terrorist Forefathers of Israel: The Irgun and Lehi - https://dissidentvoice.org/2023/03/the-terrorist-forefathers... ).
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and does what a duck does, it is a duck.
Netanyahu is not religious. He is, as the parent says, secular. If my cat quacked he's still not a duck.
There is "religion" in the broader sense which can be any set of beliefs but Netanyahu is as secular and logical as can be. He may be overly logical in the sense of advancing his personal agenda (avoiding standing trial) over the interests of his country but he's still very different than the religious crazies in Tehran where logic plays no role and g-d is everything.
I agree that one must be quite illogical and committed to some grander creed to issue a prohibition on nuclear weapons while Israel and USA are doing everything in their very much nuclear power to destroy you.
It's definitely illogical to enrich materials to nuclear grade and invest immense amounts in bunkers with centrifuges while saying you don't mean to have nuclear weapons.
No, those are both rational actions in this case. Iran getting nukes is less dangerous than only Israels current nukes. If both Iran and Israel had nukes, the region might have a chance at peace.
I do this too. I think it is basically simulation out of fear. (modeling because of uncomfortableness with thinking with System 1 fast emotional / System 2 slow rational)
"Logs" is doing some heavy lifting here. There's a very non-trivial step in deciding that a particular subset and schema of log messages deserves to be in its own columnar data table. It's a big optimization decision that adds complexity to your logging stack. For a narrow SaaS product that is probably a no-brainer.
I would like to see this approach compared to a more minimal approach with say, VictoriaLogs where the LLM is taught to use LogsQL, but overall it's a more "out of the box" architecture.
Sharing this in the spirit of "great websites". The music is also (usually) great if you are into fresh electronic stuff or old school disco. Prominent repeat guests have included Four Tet, Fred Again, et al. in addition to tons of smaller/local artists.
Background from site: "We are an independent online radio station live streaming 24/7 from a repurposed shipping container on an empty lot in NYC."
Thiel is one of the more public faces of what is now known as the "Epstein class" of societal predators. But one of many and certainly not the epicenter.
There is certainly a shadow cabal of these elite billionaire types that avoid all public exposure yet are working very hard to destroy society and profit
Yep Epstein class. It’s a great phrase for the billionaire elites who have corrupted our society through their wealth. We need heavy taxes on them now to preserve our democracy.
And also, Thiel is literally in the Epstein files. Meeting with Russian officials repeatedly on the island. One is said to be his handler so he may just be an asset tasked with destabilizing America.
Is it courage or desperation? There obviously is no liberal democratic utopia waiting for them on the other side. Iran will be turned into another Libya, Syria, or Gaza, like the rest of Israel's adversaries. Enormous human suffering so that a fake biblical prophecy can be fulfilled.
Any subsequent government isn't likely to be a friend of Israel, either. They might decide to stop actively funding attacks and put the money to better use, but I wouldn't be so sure of that. It's the basis of a lot of ally relationships that they will want to maintain.
Iran had good relations with Israel prior to 1979 and never persecuted or expelled its Jews after 1948 unlike every other country in the region. In fact there’s a great degree of very old cultural affinity between Persians and Jews. A secular Iran is likely to have very close ties with Israel if for no other reason than as a backlash to the excesses of the cleracy.
I agree, we don’t know what comes after bad leadership. Maybe a worse one.
I’m afraid there isn’t much worse than a leadership that openly states that Israel should be destroyed, while developing a nuclear program.
Maybe a similar but more competent leadership is worse.
Why? a non-religious Iran would have difficulty maintaining alliances with islamist organizations such as PMF and Hezbollah that were used to slaughter Iranian protestors. Also, like Syria it would probably pivot to a US-led alliance
Are Iranians supposed to believe that after Israel destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza? Insulting. The IRGC is under every brick and pebble.
I have an ex-colleague from Tehran and he told me that people actually throw parties whenever Israel bombs Iran or assassinates one of the IRGC leaders, because they consider Bibi the only person in the world who is actually standing up to the regime. Make of that what you will.
Generally the IRGC has everything to do with the current state of Gaza, as it was involved in planning and training for the October 7th attack.
This was a masterstroke of Iranian strategy, while it initially looked they have yet again encouraged the Palestinians to commit national suicide on their behalf, in two years it looks like this is going to end with a national suicide of the Islamic Republic
What does Gaza has to do with what Iranians believe?
In war, when civilian infrastructure is used for military purposes, it will get destroyed. Look at all the cities in Ukraine where combat did happen, like Bahmut, or Mariupol. They got absolutely decimated.
Any country on earth engaging in ground combat would do exactly the same tactics as Israel did, and we have plenty of evidence of that from the past 20 years.
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