Roadsternut

Got any examples where Airwar alone has resulted in "democracy"? It was tried in Libya, and for a while we were cheering on the RAF-trained old boys from the staff college at Sirte leading from the front. The problem is oil, and how it corrupts. There is too much money at stake to let Ali and Miriam off the street have a say. Literally the message from the Whitehouse today was overthrow your government, or you are all going to die. The US has set its criteria where it thinks Iran has unconditionally surrendered, which seems to be when there is no longer organised resistance. The problem then is a vacuum. Its not just the nice Kurds who will want their own stake. The not so nice Balochs will kick off. Afghanistan hates Iran, will they decide to have a go, a bit of a land grab

General Sir Richard Shirref shares his thoughts on American planning. He was formally Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He commanded a tank squadron in GW1, 3 COIN tours of Northern Ireland, commanded 3rd (UK) Division in Iraq 2005-2007, commanded Allied Rapid Reaction Corps from 2007. He probably recalls from his time in the Balkans how the Americans tried to get the British troops to attack the Russian troops, to trigger WW3. The Americans hadn't counted on Captain James Blunt.

US temporarily lifts ban on Russian oil sales as a result of the war/SMO. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy031d1ny7jo India has about 45 days/ 100 million barrels supply of oil. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/06/us-india-waiver-russian-oil-iran-war-energy-supply-worries-.html The deal allows India to purchase about 140 million barrels of Russian crude https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/03/06/us-india-russia-oil-waiver-30-days/

The former plumber challenged a union leader to a bare knuckle fight in the Senate, leading Sanders to tell him, like his dad, to grow up. Markwayne Mullin. His mum and dad didn't know about spaces between names? By war, he meant shifting at 12" lincoln log. Literally the closest he ever got to the action was last weekend's Call of Duty binge. This guy could be fun if he does more quotes like this. Speaking of people who have known war, and who hates it, whats happened to Vance? The Mooch has some idea, and ideas about Rubio. American Vice Presidents generally can't be sacked. The rest of the cabinet can. https://youtu.be/a1HKgHxRpQ0?si=tifkrtlTE4FL1z_l

How to get a "feeling"

Other accounts are that it has nothing to do with Yiddish, and is perhaps a corruption of the German word for <deleted>ter, or the name of a Philadelphia lawyer. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shyster https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/legal-app-ad-using-the-word-shyster-cleared-of-causing-offence/5111603.article The poster had tried to accuse me of something I am innocent of. An apology or clarification would be nice.

It appears the girl's school was deliberately targeted, rather than being a victim of falling debris. Photo's show deliberate hits on several buildings, but others carefully avoided. It also appears that a clinic was targeted. There is no excuse for this. We rightfully charged the Japanese for targeting hospitals in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Plato's famous maxim comes to mind: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/05/ukraines-solution-stop-iran-drones-patriots-us-shahed/

A former Marine in his dress blues, protests about the Iran SMO. Gets his arm broken. I think the guards/police officers make a bit of a meal out of removing him. None of them seemed to know restraint techniques.

I suspect the Iranian Ambassador in South Africa isn't fully on board with his government. He wrote a note to his Ukrainian counterpart, inviting him to signe a Book of Condolance, on the face of it a normal request between diplomats. The Ukrainian Ambassador wrote back:

Her lover has been booted. She hasn't exactly gone, there is a made up job for her; "Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas" Her replacement is a US Senator who once challenged a Union leader to a bare knuckle fight in the Senate.

Sleep well, experience is in charge. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-appoints-22-y-o-ex-gardener-grocery-store-assistant-as-us-homeland-department-terrorist-chief/ Everyone has to start somewhere, and now his mettle will be tested as, I guess, the terrorist threat level must be off the scale.

The War, or SMO, may last until September. Over by Christmas I suppose. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/pentagon-prepares-israeli-us-war-iran-could-last-until-september-report So the intent is carpet bombing/ Gaza-isation of Iran, carved up into break away states. The Kurds are boing tooled up. They won't win, anymore than they won in Turkey, Syria, Iraq. I expect to hear some softer language about the Balochs, depending how important the US thinks of Pakistan.

Amazon data centre in Bahrain targeted. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/04/amazon-bahrain-data-centers-targeted-iran-drone-strike.html Of significance, because a few months, the President announced Project Stargate (!) a plan to supercharge AI adoption through expansion of core infrastructure, funded by the Arab banks. I suspect the bit that was solar powered data centres in a Middle Eastern country is now dead in the water.

The Guardian is reporting on a report from elsewhere. The Guardian didn't write the story, and they are not the only one reporting on it. The Baptist Standard wrote an opnion piece about the reports. You could hardly accuse them of being "atheists". https://baptiststandard.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-examining-this-talk-of-armageddon/ Another religious tome also reported https://baptistnews.com/article/us-military-personnel-object-to-armageddon-talk/ And others https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/us-troops-told-war-on-iran-is-part-of-god-s-divine-plan-alleges-religious-watchdog The report originated from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/ The founder of this Foundation is a former US Army officer, and a Jew. https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/michael-l-mikey-weinstein/

Hmm, Europe has just loaned $90bn. A $10 + $30bn addition tranche would be welcome, not sure it would be that decisive. Ukraine is already exporting expertise. Operation Interflex is the UK operation to train up British troops. But it contains formalised mechanisms for skills transfer back to the UK. Ukrainian instructors, for instance, are developing training packages to train British drone operators, expanding considerably the British approach, with the Ukrainians favouring a longer 30 hours classroom time and 30 hours real world flying before operations. https://soldier.army.mod.uk/issues/jan-26/update/innovation-station Putin can't stop, because if he does, he's toast. He's destroyed his military (its gone way beyond getting rid of some old kit to clear the decks for gucci kit, and the high casualty rate means the Russian army is being bled of accumulated experience), and he's destroyed his economy. 50-60% of the government budget is now defence. 10% of GDP is spent on warfighting machines. That's 10% spent of things which are intended to be destroyed. The Russian government is paying for this war through loans; the debt interest payments now exceed spend on healthcare and social services. Demobilisation will cause an immediate economic crisis, with hundreds of thousands out of work. All those foreign companies who, pre-war, had invested in factories, have gone. At best, factories become final assembly/packaging operations for China. The war ends by either a 1917 sudden collapse of the Russian military machine, or a palace coup, which will enable the war to end, because the new leaders can blame the guy who fell out of his groundfloor window, falling 300 feet to his death. While on fire. Freak electric blanket accident. Since 1613, 44% of Russian rulers were overthrown. Prigozhin’s mutiny wasn't stopped by the army. Whenever the mutineers met the army, the army stood aside. The mutiny stopped because the Belarus President brokered a deal. https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/03/russia-should-get-ready-for-the-fall-of-vladimir-putin/

I don't get you. First I'm adding the MAGA commies to my blocked list, now you. A shame, because usually you have useful things to say, Ta ta.

You never heard of the common word shyster? Its nothing to do with Shakespeare, and appeared as a word long after the bard was dead. A shylock is an anti-Semitic term, a Jewish moneylender. Shyster is a word people think came from Shylock, but actually is a corruption of a German word, to originally refer to dishonest or fake lawyers. Ali Khamenei was basically a fake Grand Ayatollah.

That's about as wrong as wrong can be. https://www.fondapol.org/app/uploads/2020/06/enquete-terrorisme-gb-2019-11-18versionfinale-3.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Nah, you capitalised "ALL". If there is loyalty to him, its because of political loyalty, not because of him being a spiritual leader. Hence all the fakery to get him the job, and later on to give him a promotion. The fact the Iranian leadership felt they needed to do that indicates they weren't completely convinced all Iranians would follow him into the Islamic equivalent of the halls of Valhalla. I think its extremely simplistic to suggest Shia Muslims equate loyalty to their religion to loyalty to a foreign government. Look at Iraq; its very complex. The Shia leaders who returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein mostly represented groups that had a political affiliation to Iran. The dogma that Khomenai created was quite curious; he spent many years in exile, in France. A group of Iranian exiles, at some point, came into contact with a Farsi translation of the Muslim Brotherhood's manifesto. The Muslim Brotherhold developed a political belief, very influenced by European political movements of the 1920s, with bits of Maxism, Fascism, Anti-Capitalism. Its very grass roots. In Islam, certainly in the Persian Gulf area, traditionally the Shia'a were the down trodden lot. Poor. The rulers were Sunni, whether it was the Turks or the Sheikhs. Its wrong to characterise the system of government in Iran as somehow primative. Its very sophisticated and modern. The Republic's Constitution is based on the French model, which was inspired by the US Constitution. There's irony for you. They learnt to dress up things in a veil of tradition. One of the reasons the Shah did a runner was that Iranians didn't like the pace of change, the enforced Westernisation; something that resonates in Western societies with the immigration debate (basically, people don't like change). Pol Pot did something similar. Went to France, in the 50s/60s, mixed up fairly conventional Communism with some pretty disturbing French intelligentia thought, throw in a dash of Khmer nationalism. And you end up with Year Zero, and the Killing Fields. Why France? France generally celebrates when it killed off Royalty in a fairly bloody fashion. Over in England, we get apologetic over Regicide. When Cromwell died, his rotting corpse was dug up, and the head stuck on a spike, presumably in some attempt to apologise. It seems French history gets coffee drinkers in smoke filled rooms to think of some pretty apopcalyptic approaches to social change. Anglo Saxons are innately more cautious unless their genes get mixed up with Mittel Europa craziness. 30-35 years or so, an Iranian stuck a fatwa on Salman Rusdie. There were street disturbances, and he was attacked. But he's still alive. Not every Shia is coming for him. A few are, but generally they are nutters looking for an excuse, and often acting out of some position of perverse atonement (ie. criminals). Not sure what effing agenda you think I have, not that I particularly care. Most leaders of major economies leaving office will face the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder. Trump is of an age that, like George Bush senior, it won't be for that long. The Iraqis took a pop at Bush after he left office. I think people honestly won't care that much about the rest of his family. No one really cares about Tony Blair's kids. But there is a whole subject of political assassinations in wartime, or as a prelude to war. Of course WW1 was triggered by a Grand Duke being shot in Sarajevo, but by the end, few really remembered that. In WW2, the Free Czechs infiltrated occupied Czechoslavakia, and assassinated Heydrich (Operation Anthropoid), a wicked man. Did it really alter the course of the war? Not really. The Czechs suffered for it, with the reprisals afterwards. The Free Czechs though felt good about it. Operation Foxley was a plan to assassinate Hitler. Churchill approved of it. If it had succeeded, would Churchill have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life? Possibly. Nazis were fanatica, and for some, it was a religion.

The "Supreme Leader" whom I suspect you are referring to when you used the made up term "Ayatollah of Iran" is NOT a major religious figure for ALL Shia Muslims, unless you are suggesting all Shia share the same quasi Marxist-Islamist-Muslim Brotherhood mashup that the political classes in Iran share. The characters who ARE major religious figures in the Shia world are the Grand Ayatollahs, or Marjas. There are 12 of them, mostly Iranian, but not all. For instance, Mohammad al-Sannad is a Bahraini Grand Ayatollah who lives in Iraq. The oldest is Hossein Wahid Khorasani, at 105 years old. Sayyid Reza Hosseini Nassab is a Grand Ayatollah born in Iran, but preaching from Canada. Ali Khamenei was not a proper Grand Ayatollah. Originally the Iranian constitution was written saying the Supreme Leader had to be one of these 12. But guess what, just before Ruhollah Khomeini pegged it in 1989, they rewrote the constitution. The bloke, the Marja, that Khomeini thought was going to take over from him, had a falling out, because Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri didn't approve of the human rights abuses, he was a staunch defender of the rights of members of the baha'i faith, women's rights and civil rights in general. Khomeini canvassed the other Grand Ayatollahs, and none of them wanted anything to do with the job. Montazeri didn't think the Islamic Republic of Iran was much of an Islamic state. He was one of Ali Khamenei's teachers. Ended his days under house arrest for basically calling Khamenei an idiot. Montazeri was a figure who inspired the Green Movement. Let Americans know; Iran will remain as an Islamic Republic, their religion will be the centre of their politics. There is no appetite for a Western style secular government (though arguably, the US Goverment is in the process of ditching its secular nature, with the institutionalisation of religion in the classroom outside of RE). Ali Khamenei was a lower ranked Ayatollah. In 2018, he said he didn't think he was qualifed to be one of the Marja. But in 2022, one of the Marja, citing old age, resigned. This had never happened before, and Ali Khamenei was elevated. It was obviously rigged, to give this character some false grounding during a time when Iran was facing internal strife. The one who resigned is still alive, and not even the oldest. You can see the reaction in the Shia world, or lack of, to Ali Khamenei's death. I am not reading of Southern Iraq becoming ungovernable, and ministers hanging from lamp posts. Bahrain remains orderly. I think few actually mourn him, recognising him as a bit of a shyster. Sure, there are proxies affiliated to Iran doing their bidding, but no mass outpouring of support.

Its a reference to this rumour: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/the-wild-rumor-that-justin-trudeau-is-barron-trump-s-father-just-wont-die-101751942287211.html Presumably Barron has suffered a mutation. Neither of his grandfathers are/were all that tall. Fred Trump was 6'1", similar to his son. Viktor Knavs is reported 5'11". Melania's maternal grandfather also appeared to be of average height. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/241675903/anton-ul%C4%8Dnik Sometime children can grow to be much taller than their parents, if their parents had an impoverished childhood that stunted their growth. That's clearly not the case with either parent, both of whom had relatively comfortable childhoods.. So he might be tragically suffering a pituitary gland disorder. One expla

There is an unsubstantiated rumour that at the time of his birth, neither his father nor mother were citizens, making him ineligible anyhow for the draft/conscription.

US military warning that Iran is trying to exhaust the US capacity for anti-drone interceptors https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/04/us-interceptors-iranian-drones The challenge is to track down Shahed launchers https://militarnyi.com/en/news/the-way-the-russians-launch-shahed-drones-was-revealed/ The drones might stacked up in a commercial truck body, or, seeing how Russia is using these launched from Dodge pickups, from a light truck. But Iran is also using these light launchers; they are clearly designed to be collapsible, an easily transported and deployed rapidly.

Ukraine has been sharing real world operational experience, but with strings attached. https://www.forcesnews.com/ukraine/zelensky-offers-ukranian-blueprint-taking-down-shahed-drones