It’s making an image of someone that portrays them in an unrealistic and offensive context.

Yeah, but only one of degree.

Iran isn’t directly mentioned. Vague terms like “the North” appear, and historically many American evangelicals have identified the USSR with it, because that was the geopolitical bogeyman of the day. I’ve had older evangelicals insist to me that Russia borders Israel as a result.

Iran’s more plausible than Russia, but if we pretend for a moment it’s not all some desert guy’s mushroom trip it could just as easily be Turkey.

Upvote because that sounds about right. I don’t think we actually disagree.

You do know Hamas (and most other similar organisations) claims the Holocaust never happened, right? They’re not above spreading lies they find convenient. As often happens in geopolitics, everyone sucks.

I don’t know, maybe you think Palestine has had such a rough time they’re justified, and they have had a very rough time, but it’s still lies.

I mean, that’s a kind of stereotypical view of China’s history. There absolutely was just as much dysfunction and disunity over there as in Europe. Feudal societies gonna feudal.

If you read the article, it’s has more to do with Chinese people not understanding US politics for obvious reasons, and the Chinese government being somewhat okay with errors that make the US look bad.

I am beyond tired of this thoughtless take. “You can’t murder me, that’s illegal!” “You can’t harass me for being homosexual, that’s illegal!” “You can’t slam me into the ground and arrest me for nothing, that’s illegal!” Just. Fucking. Watch them. It was illegal the first time they did it too.

My #1 issue with the Democrats. I’m not sure how they talk about unprecedented times so much without actually acting on it.

Probably bad. There’s no reports I’ve heard the guy isn’t good at his job. It seems to be a political decision, maybe partly motivated by unrealistic ideas Zelensky has about where the conflict is now, which he’s publicly contradicted.

Good, although I’d like to register my protest that this guy is relevant once again.

Let’s be real, both sides do. One just does it in English.

More like “someone small said something mean about China, now China wants to fuck shit up”. This doesn’t hurt China much, and isn’t even legally binding by the sound of it. They just take 0 shit from anyone they regard as a 2-bit player.

Another example: They’ve pretty much fed their friends in Myanmar to pro-democracy rebels over some local organised crime thing on the border.

Knowing China, a phone call involving someone from the US as well as Zelensky would probably go a long way. I doubt Xi is particularly invested in Chinese companies helping Russia, but he would take issue with Ukraine not going through him about it.

Yep, that will fix the underlying weakness! /s

This and things like banning short sells are bad news on two fronts, in that they both reveal a problem and will be ineffective at solving it.

Apparently they at least tried.

I’m guessing nobody checks anything at this point. They hear a rumour, they bomb it. And, of course, there’s going to be a small but significant number of people on the Israeli side fabricating rumours whole-cloth.

It’s a relative thing. Right now, what war there is is mostly within the internationally recognised borders, as opposed to across them. If shit really pops off we could see, like, Dubai being leveled by Iranian rockets and most of the survivors dying of thirst with no desalination plants.

Also, since we’re doing nitpicks, the Middle east wasn’t necessarily more warlike than every other civilisational region. It’s just that China or the Himalayas aren’t in the Bible, so Anglos don’t think about them as much.

Nah, it’s the Middle East. “America” is reason enough to be embarrassed about it.

At this point, it feels more likely than not the Middle East is going to explode.

So TL;DR it has no teeth really.

Man, I’ve got to watch that sometime. It’s been famously underrated for so long it almost counts as hype.