Pray for worse news. It seems economic blowback is the only thing that tempers the Orange Goblin.

Gramsci wrote: Also, how is this “shit I talk about Muslims”? Are we doing that tankie thing where Russia and Iran are actually really just misunderstood good guys, and their standing up to the US and NATO means they’re “leftist”? Iran is a right wing capitalist theocratic dictatorship. I’m perfectly happy as a leftist to say fuck everything about that government.

Nothing about what I said was anti Muslim. But I am anti clerical to the bone and will never support any form of theocracy. Those who been here long enough will remember long arguments between members about the borderline theocracy that crept in during the Bush terms. No Muslims needed....

See initial comment about holding more than one idea at once. The same way I think Israel did war crimes but Hamas can all be dropped from helicopters into the Med.

Pretty much all of this. Doesn't mean anyone should bomb them, w/ or w/o congressional authorization, but exactly.

Totally possibly to loathe the Iranian government (especially when you have not-remotely-Shahs-of-Sunset-type Persian friends who survived it while having plenty of family still over there) but also think the US "solution" (b/c of Israeli coercion) is way the fuck out of line and will lead to more problems. That's just analysis, as opposed to simplistically turning world events into them-vs-us football games.

It's ironic but unsurprising that some of the loudest voices about this pointless bullshit mess in Iran (which I am also fully against, obviously) make all sorts of excuses for Russia's actions in Ukraine or wholly ignore stuff like the anti-Muslim Uighur genocide (sorry, "re-education") in China.

Half of me thinks that Russia's Ukraine incursion helped open the floodgates for countries like Israel and the US to say, "wait, we can do this again, now?"

Gross world powers gonna act like gross world powers.

Trump's out there saying he will only accept total surrender from Iran.

So, we kill their leadership, bomb their schools, their hospitals and their police stations while we were negotiating, then bombed their battleship that was in Milan at our request for a mutual naval exercise, and we didn't even try to warn them or help them afterwards, and Trump expects Iran, who's been planning a response like this for literally decades, to just just give up or else we'll be forced to put boots on the ground?

The world just became a lot less safe for America, thanks to the mad king.

And now he's talking about going to Cuba next.

It's a fucking world tour of American history lessons.

https://www.404media.co/with-iran-war-k ... no-bottom/

"In a series of tweets over the weekend, Kalshi’s CEO and founder Tarek Mansour repeatedly twisted himself into pretzels attempting to explain how the absurd, grotesque exercise of allowing people to bet on politics, geopolitics, and world events is not supposed to allow people to profit from death.
“We don’t list markets directly tied to death. When there are markets where potential outcomes involve death, we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death,” he wrote. He then posted the underlying rules of the bet, which read “If <leader> leaves solely because they have died, the associated market will resolve and the Exchange will determine the payouts to the holders of long and short positions based upon the last traded price (prior to the death).”

This is how we end up with extremely underregulated companies more or less making up rules on the fly as they hop from crisis to crisis trying to determine the nature of reality, such as whether a suit is a suit or whether a dead guy is still in charge of the government, with each disputed bet having millions of dollars on the line. Both Polymarket and Kalshi have decided to go with the line that letting people bet on war, politics, and the general nature of reality will not distort reality through the insider trading we’ve already repeatedly seen, but will somehow improve public trust in the reporting of news. Polymarket has added a note to all Iran-focused bets that says “The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society. That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and X could not.”

cakes wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 2:39 pm

zorg wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 2:21 pm

cakes wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 1:27 pm That's like Marco Rubio looking to overthrow Cuba, not because he's cuban, but because his family was making money off the backs of Cubans and were thrown out by Castro.

Yeah, people need to bone up on their Scarface (1983).

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 9:47 am If the war truly is unpopular, than the bloodbath is going to be huge.

I think the writing is already on the wall that the US will back off to "tactical support", and let Israel and whatever opposition proxy cabal they've erected fight the ground war. Call me cynical, but I can see this being a wildly popular move with Jesus freaks, Michigan's Chaldeans and other Shahs of Sunset styled exiled "Persians" that FM HBiden is repping. These people are nostalgic for the scummy petro-monarchy which was a plant by the evil British American assholes who wanted the usual oil and power. Naturally the RNC are betting they will then vote their appreciation in the swingy-states.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have 50,000 troops moving towards Iran? The senate just voted 52-48 to give Trump war powers. How is any of this backing off?

Trump told our US partner NBC News overnight that Iran has "lost everything" and a potential ground invasion was a waste of time, adding that he wants the country to have a "good leader" who will do a good job.

I, too, want Iran to have a good leader who will do a good job.

Also, does anyone else agree that it’s nice when the weather is nice?

In seriousness, what Trump says out loud about a ground war means nothing.

There's a Teen Jacobin Magazine now? Hasan Piker centerfold, maybe.

zorg wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 1:40 pm

Trump told our US partner NBC News overnight that Iran has "lost everything" and a potential ground invasion was a waste of time, adding that he wants the country to have a "good leader" who will do a good job.

How old is that? Because he was just saying we destroyed their military and he's got his leaders picked and also that Iran has to surrender or be destroyed.

This is so confusing, I can barely keep up. I'm sure Iran has had their military infrastructure attacked, but does anyone know what the status is? Are they still bombing? Is this still a war of attrition?

I would assume if he's not going to bring in troops, then Iran is just going to get bombed to high hell and then we'll just install a puppet and wait for the next Iranian revolution to happen.

enframed wrote: There's a Teen Jacobin Magazine now? Hasan Piker centerfold, maybe.

Dropping by to note that you just pulled an HOF-level post out of your ass during the midst of this ugly fiasco of a thread. I laughed...

(Although personally, I always thought that regular Jacobin was more or less Tiger Beat-level, at least in terms of its international news.)

Ok, back to the regularly scheduled programming.