US/Israel conduct airstrikes on Iran again

Well one thing is certain bombing Iran is only going to stiffen resistance, and it looks like they learned nothing from bombing Hanoi.

All the failings of the Iranian form of government get put aside when your self proclaimed liberator blows up your schools. Everything Trump has done regarding Iran only makes the overthrow of the Shah look more justified with age.

Tbh I think if Donald had unfettered power I would fear for my life if I was Rosie...

Donald and his bunch of cnuts don't have that so she's probably safe

Donald and his bunch of cnuts are very much and have been taking steps down that road however

Now perhaps Im naieve but I don't think many here think the US would be worse than Iran, I don't think many here would choose to live in Iran if the had the choice to live in the US instead...

But it's not unreasonable to say the US has definitely been deteriorating due to who has been elected in recent times..the behaviour is very much that of a dictator/strongman (a gobshite version) not someone who respects democracy..and many realise these things are a slippery slope....

The Trump administration is very much starting to ape the traits of a "regime"

Iran has released video of aircraft wreckage in Isfahan region. They claim multiple aircraft were shot down. Shown on CNN.

Update: Bryan Stern of "Grey Bull Rescue" on CNN now saying it was the Americans who blew up the aircraft in the Iranian videos. Says they are C130s.

Not sure why the US would blow them up. He says 'there are things that went wrong in the rescue' but emphasises that the US will "move heaven and earth to rescue Americans'.

If a gun was put to my head and I was told I had to live in one of the USA or Iran, I'd choose the USA.

If a gun was put to my head and and I was told I had to live in one of Israel or Gaza, I'd choose Israel.

If, as a white Irish person, I'd been alive in 1942 and and a gun was put to my head and I was told I had to live in one of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, I'd have chosen Nazi Germany.

I'd have chosen to live in the rich country with the better living standards where I'd have been safer.

As opposed to the poorer, less developed country with the lesser living standards which has a much lower degree of personal safety mainly because the rich country which has fallen into the grip of a mad regime has decided to launch a totally unjustified genocidal war against the poorer country.

On last point, a strange way to phrase it but would agree they (average Iranian) don't hate either the US or Israel.

I don't think Israel's govt. cares what the "average Iranian" thinks of Israel or the US any more than they care what an "average Palestinian" thinks, and they do want to wreck Iran completely, so it cannot pose a military threat to them for a long time no matter who is in charge.

Iranian airspace is open to them now (thanks to the US air power + logistics support during this war) so we can already see the IDF tugging at the leash and moving on to more "dual use" type targets to destroy Iran's industry/economy [even before the potential escalation threatened by Trump].

e.g. Netanyahu recently crowed that the Israeli airforce had taken out most of Iran's ability to produce steel - an odd thing to boast about if you are trying to free the Iranian people to rise up or something.

To borrow from Oscar Wilde, "to lose one aircraft may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness!".

The rushed manner in which Trump is desperate for some kind of win leaves very little for the military to plan for effectively.

More US personal died by accident and friendly fire in the first Gulf War rather than in combat because the military had six months of preparation. Now US bases are being abandoned in GCC member states, personal are hiding in hotels and many have had their families evacuated home, all because of the whims of a populist president who thinks those who sacrifice for their country are losers.

The same portion of the electorate who voted for him three times seem to be ok with criminality in the highest office. It may not yet be dictatorship, but if he succeeds in suspending the mid terms it will be in practice.

You're comparing different cultures through the eyes of a westerner, have a conversation with people of other cultures once in a while and see their views on your opinions

Edit: Congressional control of appropriations and taxation are crucial to preventing a dictatorship. The Appropriations Clause of the US Constitution states that Congress decides appropriations (spending). This WH has flouted it by refusing to spend funds allocated for USAID and spending cancelled by DOGE. Their excuse is that they say the Impoudment Control Act 1974, which reaffirmed this requirement is "unconstitutional". I thought the courts decide what is and isn't constitutional, and this act has withstood legal challenges for 52 years.

It is true that the I.C.A. allows the President to request Congressional permission to refuse to spend appropriated funds. But they didn't do that.

Whenever they come across an Act of Congress they don't like, they just refuse to abide by it, even longstanding precedent, if they don't like it. They say its "unconstitutional" even though SCOTUS precedence says it is constitutional.

I don’t live in Ireland and that’s not a good analogy anyway. Very few Irish voters wanted to see a housing crisis or massive cost overruns at the Children’s Hospital.

Unfortunately, Trump’s support has been solid since he entered politics. A substantial fraction of Americans love his message. I can’t avoid them when I have to travel there.

the US does it bombing far from its own shores and helps its main pals In Russia and Israel to do the same.

Israeli society is based on apartheid - a sick and depraved society

Reading social media, people with knowledge of military affairs say they are very sceptical of the account being given by the US. Yes, the wounded pilot was rescued, that part appears to be correct, but they are pointing to numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in reports of how two helicopters and two transport planes could have been completely destroyed during the rescue.

I'd nearly agree with the idea that the average Irish person knows more about American politics than the average American.

The whole information system in America is geared towards stupidity. The quality journalistic outlets there are being steadily run down or corrupted by corporate ownership/ government interference. I've lots of problems with the way Irish media operates, but on the whole it's fairly well trusted and bar fringe shltrags like Gript it isn't designed to disinform you like so much American media is. We're much better served by our information system than Americans are by theirs. And we're small, so we have to look at the world. We can't just confine our interests and knowledge to what happens on our small island.

The US has a massive cultural arrogance where people are taught that nothing that happens outside the US is of any consequence, and that's the way most people there proceed. That idea then inevitably extends to apathy about what happens inside the US itself. So many Americans just come across as…oblivious. Like they're in some other dimension. You see that to a lesser extent with the Brits too (Britain is another country where people are taught to believe that what happens outside Britain doesn't matter). How the Farage supporters seem to be hypnotised or something.

The internet has had a disastrous impact on American minds. It was very much an individualist society as it was and the internet has massively ramped that up. The whole system is geared towards disinforming - relentless attacks on education, relentless disinformation from corporate media and social media. News is covered as a mixture of soap opera and football. News media seems to only understand politics through the medium of "wins". This isn't football.

Even with Americans who ostensibly come across as "reasonable", it would shock you how much they seem to understand the world and understand life only through the dumbest of slogans. That's mainly a right wing thing but it exists on the left there too. I hear American commentators, paid professionals who are supposedly paid to know their stuff, and so many of them are little different, relentlessly wheeling out dumb slogans like religious mantras, with the thinnest of paper thin "intellectual underpinnings" to their beliefs.

If there's ever a real history of America's decline written, front and centre will be the absolute nonsense, the delusions, the lies that most people there believe and the methods by which nonsense of various shades became the dominant belief system.

It's a country that's trapped in an information hellhole. The problem is, they've exported that information hellhole because of their cultural dominance and we can only withstand the effects of it for so long.

Most Americans now see bombing Iranians as being equivalent to bombing computer game characters. That's how much their information system has desensitised them and dehumanised "the other".