Comment by ericmay
1 day ago
> Bombing a girl's school in Iran looks like a PR master stroke by comparison.
Iran killed more than 30,000 of its own people for peacefully protesting and continues to hang its own citizens to this day. They (along with Hamas, Hezbollah, and more) intentionally set up military assets next to civilian facilities because they know we don’t intentionally strike civilian facilities and they tell you that themselves. Iran intentionally attacks civilians and civilian infrastructure and provides military support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They should be attacked for providing support for Russia alone, let alone anything else they’ve been doing.
Anyway back on topic
> The US can demand that we seize other people's gold, but if we acceded then it's game over for our financial industry - London is an important financial centre today but if it's actually just New York but on the far side of the Atlantic who cares?
The kind of scenarios envisioned in which the US seizes gold from the Netherlands are so catastrophic and crazy that requiring the UK to also seize said gold would seem to be not that big of a deal.
You guys are driving yourself into psychosis about how the world works and creating nonsense scenarios like the US is somehow going to just seize a pathetic $80 billion in gold and completely ruin the credibility of its financial system when Europe won’t even seize Russian assets and it’s practically at war. This shows the kind of bar needed to seize sovereign wealth. And no, Trump can’t and isn’t dumb enough to start seizing assets of another country. If you think he can and he is, you’re wrong and it is further evidence that you’re just whipping yourself up into crazy land.
The entire leadership of the IRGC can burn in hell as far as I am concerned.
But that does not mean that launching an assault on Iran at Netanyahu's bidding was a smart move. Especially if it turned out that US arsenals were half empty. This is what you get when no one can tell "no" to the President and survive in their function.
It is not clear to me yet how this entire Iran thing is going to finish. Now the bet seems to be on strangling their economy, which may not even work, but will probably cause some serious suffering of the same people who already suffer under a gallows-happy totalitarian government.
> But that does not mean that launching an assault on Iran at Netanyahu's bidding was a smart move.
We didn’t launch a war based on Netanyahu’s bidding. This is a nonsensical mischaracterization of the war and belittles the general strategic situation.
> Now the bet seems to be on strangling their economy, which may not even work, but will probably cause some serious suffering of the same people who already suffer under a gallows-happy totalitarian government.
Same can be said for Russia
Yes iran is a murderous regime, but thats not a get out of jail free for either failing to do logistics, plan for the enemy you face, or failing to properly vet your targets in a war of choice.
> And no, Trump can’t and isn’t dumb enough to start seizing assets of another country.
I mean Maduro would like a word.
He literally kidnapped a world leader to gain access to a country's oil system.
Then there is the agitation, visits and posturing to invade an ally's fucking land. Its not that difficult to imagine trump confiscating "foreign gold" to even up the "trade deficit". There are no effective controls on trump's actions.
> completely ruin the credibility of its financial system
Besent is doing a good job ruining that trying to shout at the bond market, and pissing about with the Yen.
Then there is the attempts to yeet parts of the Fed it's self.
> Yes iran is a murderous regime, but thats not a get out of jail free for either failing to do logistics, plan for the enemy you face, or failing to properly vet your targets in a war of choice.
Sure, but it’s brought up as though the US is going around arbitrarily bombing children and schools and it’s simply false. In wars, mistakes happen. In the case of the US it was a mistake and we owned up to it on someways (we should do more, IMO) but Iran is doing much worse and we should focus on that primarily. I didn’t bring Iran up here, someone else did, so I can only respond to their characterizations by informing them how they are incorrect.
> I mean Maduro would like a word. He literally kidnapped a world leader to gain access to a country's oil system.
He’s a criminal destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and the results of his and Hugo Chavez’s policies resulted in an exodus of around 1/3rd of the Venezuelan population. Our actions were good there and will be good in the long term. Plus he was helping Russia evade American and European sanctions. That alone is good enough justification to arrest him.
> Then there is the agitation, visits and posturing to invade an ally's fucking land. Its not that difficult to imagine trump confiscating "foreign gold" to even up the "trade deficit". There are no effective controls on trump's actions.
We would lose far more than a whatever the Dutch gold is worth and it’s also an insignificant amount of money so there’s no reason for that to happen. You’re whipping yourself up into psychosis around Donald Trump which is clouding your judgment.
> Besent is doing a good job ruining that trying to shout at the bond market, and pissing about with the Yen.
Read more about European bonds then. If this is your criticism it applies more to France, UK, &c.
> He’s a criminal
yes he is. but since when has US led regime change been positive for the country?
Also trump is also a convicted criminal, so is he ripe for extradition? Thats the point right, it creates a precedent. Rules mean shit all, might is right.
> Read more about European bonds then.
The European countries are not trying to bring up the value of the Yen, or buyback longterm bonds with homeopathic amounts of shortterm bonds. The treasury cannot work against the fed, because the fed has way more control over the money supply.
> We would lose far more than a whatever the Dutch gold is worth
The iran war has already lost far more than the Dutch gold is worth.