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What if the reason Trump hasn't attacked is because Iran is supplying Russia with the drones they need in Ukraine?
Yeah but the benefit of the US and other powers blowing through all their air defense missiles in another conflict with Iran would be so massive to Putin that in my opinion that is a major reason Trump is pushing this war.
No doubt Russia will move if a regional war kicks off, maybe even China. Which is no doubt why the Russian agents are getting so much pushback against attacking Iran.
The timing of the nuclear sabre rattling from the Kremlin is suspicious too.
Total crackpot armchair hypothesis: is this what it would look like if Russia's plan was to escalate the war against Ukraine and Europe, and to do it while the United States is too occupied with other problems?
I don't think Russia can meaningfully escalate without just resorting to nuclear bombs, but I think that would be a red line for China if it was just done arbitrarily as an escalation.
In every other respect Russia is near complete exhaustion militarily and any additional actions they take have to be done with elements triaged from other military efforts at the front.. and as we are seeing Ukraine does not simply let Russia quietly remove intensity from its offensive without immediately punishing them in devastating localized counterattacks.
What Russia is doing here is trying to project limitless strength at the point they are at near exhaustion, they can't really meaningfully tip the scales either way with Iran in my opinion, at least not to the degree the world seems to by default assume they can because they are a "military superpower". Russia needs hostilities to pause in the Ukraine war soon or the problems at the frontline for them will begin to accelerate non-linearly. They also need to be given all of the defensive lines that Ukraine built in a shitty diplomatic deal because they don't even remotely have the strength and vigor to power through them in the years long battle it would take to do so.
Russia's original plan was to take Kyiv in a week. Everything since then has seemed more like reaction than anything else, and I don't see how they could have controlled events to make this happen when they can't even control their own supply chain adequately.
Would they take advantage of a distraction, though? Sure.
The CIA has consistently reported that not only do Russian strategists and leaders not have the intention to invade more of Europe, they also do not have the capability and capacity to do so.
So yes, it's a crackpot hypothesis because it doesn't match reality as we know it.
TBF you don't need to be the CIA to observe that part.
Yes. Which is why the discourse is so obviously manufactured I can't believe any of you don't see it.
The enemy is both weak and strong. Russia is both losing terrible for 4 years straight and also we need another $100B worth of the most powerful weapons in the world. Russia is both sending soldiers out to the fields without shoes or guns and also if we don't send more support Ukraine will lose. Russia is both almost completely out of soldiers and tanks and also all they will invade all of Europe if Ukraine falls.
It's so obvious. It's been obvious for years. The same people saying it's obvious that Russia is in an abject state are the same ones saying that unless we send weapons, or even troops, then Europe will be overrun by Russian hordes.
It's important that we see this discourse for what it is - pure manipulation of the masses. It has no basis in reality. Most of the discourse on the conflict has no basis in reality. The ruling class of the Western empire has one objective - maintain power over the world, including and most importantly, their domestic working class.
Hanlon's razor, though. There's always a tendency to think this way about enemies. The trick is not letting it become official doctrine, if you want to be the good guy and want to win.
And it's not FWIW. There's clickbait about imminent doom and shitposters talking about how Russians are just sunflower holders, but actual officers, agencies and analysts paint a much more nuanced picture.
Social credit +20
Believabilty -1,000
https://quincyinst.org/research/right-sizing-the-russian-threat-to-europe/
That's an argument, not proof.
Iran wouldn't blow through a serious fraction of US air defense. The main threats from Iran would be torpedo's and water based mines from hidden/small launch sites. Their drone attacks would probably land a couple hits early on, due to sheer volume, but they wouldn't get to launch waves like Russia is able to in Ukraine. There wouldn't be enough launch sites remaining after the first two weeks.
The bigger issues would be what other countries do in reaction. China and Russia at the top of that list.
Iran already did in the 12 day war with Israel? What? Are you kidding? Air defense missile production capacity in the west was shown to be completely incapable of sustaining a complete blanket defense against a barrage of Iranian missiles and it has been a discussion since about how to address that. The air defenses work, clearly, but they run out quick.
In order to continue challenging air defenses, there has to be someplace left to launch an air attack from. And since Iran has nothing to stop US air attacks, that becomes an issue long before US air defense runs out.
Where is your evidence that will happen? Especially in the geography in which this conflict will occur?
I think the precise opposite has been demonstrated.
The entire concept of extremely long range missile trucks is the ability to fully exploit interior expanses as launch points for offensive strikes.
Who cares if you learn the location of a missile launch if the vehicle is already moving and chose an irrelevant place in the near backline to fire from?
The entire concept of long range missile launch from mobile trucks like this is the idea of mobility as an fully organic individualized capability.... a problem air power is least equipped to neutralize since the targets are maximally decentralized in a spatial sense and in motion.
The US is showing up with 4 times as many cruise missiles as Iran has total launch systems, on day one. The US has a working supply chain to bring more. Iran won't have a supply chain from anywhere, and construction won't be an option without materials, which would also be targeted.
Iran has no chance of standing up to the US military, that's never really been a question. The only thing they can, and probably will do, is cause some losses to the Navy and any land troops. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, the US will take serious casualties if it goes into Iran. That won't be enough to stop the invasion, or really even slow it down. Internal politics would be a far more likely reason to stop any open invasion.
No, if Iran does a serious amount of damage to the US it is going to have MASSIVE blowback in the US. It might not immediately translate into the US backing off but the idea that Trump will pay no political cost in real terms if Iran does serious damage to the US military I just don't think holds up.
Long term I think it will just make the rightwing even more war obsessed but that is independent of a direct tactical transaction going on here in political power. If Iran hits the US hard during the attack Trump will look worse and it will cost him and his allies materially.
In the US War Cycle we are at the Brenschluss, the point where fascists completely take over the war machine from the remnants of a decayed irrelevant professional/elite class and the centrist/establishment warhawks are temporarily all onboard just before the first massive catastrophe utterly destroys the coalition's image of power and once again we fall subject to gravity, same as everyone else.
The US is massively overextended in the region. And has limited platforms to deploy power from. Just as you say the US would first target Iranian launch capacity, Iran would first target US regional platforms, including the incredibly vulnerable carriers. Iran already demonstrated it can bypass missile defenses. The Houthis already demonstrated that they can threaten naval assets. Iran will target airfields and carriers first and those US bombers are going to have a hard time finding a place they can land.
LoL. Can you all not see how obvious it is that your analysis is fundamentally flawed? You both think Trump is doing Russia's bidding and come to exact opposite conclusions that are both totally backed by your assumptions.
I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better 2-comment encapsulation of the problem with this analysis.
I don't feel gotcha'd here at all, the way I see it the most important, vital aide that can be given to Ukraine right now are missile interceptors/air defense, and it is politically awkward and costly for Trump to completely gum the works up and give nothing to Ukraine, same story repeated in other European nations harboring radical rightwing elements, so thus an easy solution for shitty people like Trump is to bomb Iran, get Iran to attack Israel and then print money for military industrial companies by utterly depleting air defense stocks for years among NATO powers while panicking about it.
Then... there is no political cost to withholding crucial air defense missiles to Ukraine because there aren't any and the question of helping Ukraine can be turned against the need to protect the home country blah blah blah.
The logic is pretty straightforward in my mind? All that matters is that you assume Putin is Trump's daddy, and I think we can all agree on that right?
US missile companies sure as hell aren't going to lobby against this sequence of events either...
But this analysis requires entirely cutting out all context that might complicate your analysis.
For instance, Trump was the first US president to authorize weapons transfers to Ukraine.
Second, Iran is the last country on the list of 7 countries the US intended to invade as revealed by General Wesley Clark. That list of 7 countries was formulated under the GWBush administration, and the 7 countries that were on that list were:
So the conflict with Iran is at least 20+ years in the making and the plan has been followed not just by GW and Trump but also Obama/Clinton. The Biden administration continued the inter-administration policies in Syria, specifically the covert cultivation of the ISIS terrorist who eventually became the leader of Syria.
History didn't start when Trump took office. The US has vested interests in the region and Trump is presiding over the administration of those interests. Just like Venezuela, the showboating may be influenced by Trump, but the development of the aggression against Venezuela started in 1999 and continued through every administration since then, Republic and Democrat.
The analysis that everything bad Trump does is because he's really an extension of Russia is very clear example of a retreat to innocence. These are US decisions that have decades of history behind them, not idiosyncratic acts of a single president who is actually not part of US interests but actually is part of our enemy's interests.
It's such a reductive way of ignoring all of the years of effort that has gone in to US regime change planning and preparation and leaves us with the totally incorrect understanding that if only we elected someone else that none of this would be happening. It's entirely possible that it wouldn't be happening in precisely this way, with the particular PR, rhetoric, and media spin. But these operations span administrations and the president is operating, as all presidents generally do, on the basis of recommendations from the JCOS.
Yeah, you are definitely projecting it on to me that I am someone that would disagree with that, the US needing to bomb Iran is one of the more rabid devotions of US foreign policy over many decades and administrations.
That doesn't mean Putin isn't Trump's daddy?
Stop trying to lecture me about a belief I don't hold, I don't at all think the fucked up relationship the US has towards Iran started with Trump or is the result of some Russian conspiracy.
Nope, it is just there are two shit sandwhiches here aligning in the sky above us in a total eclipse of rationality.
So if you understand the role the conflict plays in the continuity of US policy, attempting to analyze whether it will or won't happen on the basis of Trump being owned by Putin is mostly useless. If the national security apparatus is still functioning enough to maintain this level of continuity, then how did it allow for a known adversary to take the presidency. If a known adversary took the presidency, why are his actions still continuous with the last several decades of foreign policy?
Who said the ruling class of the US are really the enemies of Russia? Like kind of, but in reality it is more about money and making deals than anything else so yeah... om my answer to the above quote is very easily, all it took was buckets of incompetence, collusion and people saying "not my problem!".
So then are you saying Trump is a puppet of Russia or are you saying that the ruling class of the USA is and has been collaborating with Russia for some time, in which case, Trump is not a puppet but rather just another bog standard member of the ruling class?
Both to a degree.
What you are asking is how could the current situation be probable given my estimation of the motivations behind the important actors involved, relying on some kind of Newtonian perfect estimation of how one thing will bounce off another and I am saying these people are unbelievably incompetent, they absolutely would and did elect a complete traitor to have power over them. They make existentially conflicting strategic choices all of the damn time. You can't evaluate the shitshow that is US power politics without adding in a massive dose of idiot juice, otherwise it will endlessly confound you that sometimes the decisions that are made don't even seem to benefit the people who are in power making them.
Putin is Trump's daddy, that doesn't mean I am attributing the follies of US foreign policy all to some elaborate Russian conspiracy, I am just stating the obvious, Putin is Trump's daddy, it is clear from his behavior.
Which is it? Your opinion is that Trump is pushing this war to deliberately weaken the US military establishment so that Russia can take military advantage of the situation because Trump personally has a submissive relationship with Putin personally? Or you don't attribute the foibles of US foreign policy to some elaborate Russian conspiracy?
From the outside, your words look entirely contradictory
Trump is a senile lunatic, of course the nonsense spewing out of his brain is contradictory. Nothing he is doing makes any rational sense on any level. People are just trying to play idiot-whisperer to sus out what random two malfunctioning brain cells are going to form his next policy choice (foreign or domestic). Of course what they're saying is contradictory, the random-bad idea generator running the country is a contradiction factory.
Again. Trump is not operating with a blank canvas. The JCOS present him with specific options after heavy bureaucratic deliberations and he is choosing between those options.
The country, including the military, is still a bureaucracy. Electing a president to preside over that bureaucracy, while certainly subject to individual differences in leaders, is predominantly driven by that bureaucracy and not by the individual in the oval office
Both!!! The subject we are speaking of is inherently contradictory.
You call it contradictory. I call it over determination. Everything the US government is doing it would do even if Trump wasn't acting at the direction of Putin. We've seen proxy wars before. We've seen how the US manages them. Ukraine is entirely explainable through the calculus of historical US proxy wars, and particularly proxy wars with Russia/USSR. The conflict with Iran is explain able without an appeal to Russian conspiracy.
This is over determination at it's most essential. It becomes contradictory and irrational when you add in the puppet conspiracy. Without that conspiracy, it's all explainable with what we know about the US bureaucracy, military strategy, and geopolitical conditions.
Did you miss the part about US helping Putin into power and keeping him there!?
I think with so many puzzle pieces missing you may just be grasping at straws.
I do agree with your general premise though.
The US also helped put Saddam Hussein in power and look what they did? This is just more confirmation bias and selective reading of history. Yes, GWB said he looked into the eyes of Putin and saw in his soul that he was a good man. But Cheney is an anti-Trumper. So which is it? Trump is a personal puppet of Putin? The entire Republican party is individually or collectively controlled by Putin? Or the US (and its European a forebears) have always seen Russia as a prize to be conquered and ending communism was not enough for the US to change positions on that?
If Russia is a long standing enemy, everything the US is doing is consistent with that thesis without needing to also establish that some significant portion of effective leadership is actually working for Putin. The waffling with the Ukrainian weapon support is classic North Atlantic proxy war behavior and does not require an entire 5th Column of Russian actors to explain.
Yeah, I see the problem. You are failing to separate propaganda from facts, but maybe you are just commenting that no one else can seem to do this either. If it is the later I agree. If it is the former you need to stop taking anything at face value.
Russia is not an enemy, nor is China. These military conflicts are just a way for the Industrial Military Complexes of the world to use up expiring ordinance and have a reason to make more.
That is my two cents at least. Cheers!
You need to read history. Russia has been a target of Europe for a very long time. They want the natural resources under their control. Napoleon invaded Russia in an attempt to dominate it and control who it could trade with. The US and the Allies invaded Russia in 1918 to stop the communists from taking over. Hitler invaded Russia intending to enslave everyone and control all their resources. And Western Europe was pretty bullish on that idea. Many American business leaders supported Hitler, as did many English political leaders and business leaders.
When Russia was dismantled, Bill Clinton held NATO meetings with Yeltsin and Yeltsin made it clear that, following years of rapprochement with the USA, Russia would be a good capitalist ally. Clinton instead chose to expand NATO, a transnational nuclear military with no democratic accountability that was designed specifically to counter Russian military capabilities and staffed by Nazi officers specifically because they were trained on anti-Russian strategies and tactics. That choice demonstrated a US and European consensus to continue having a violently oppositional posture towards Russia and indeed enhance that posture over time. Putin continued to enrich Yeltsin's position of economic and military cooperation with the West, thinking that the expansion of NATO was just precautionary and eventually the West would accept Russia into the club. But after multiple failures of repeated attempts to integrate their Russian security framework with the West's, it became abundantly clear that the West would never accept anything less than total Russian subjugation.
@frisbird @world This analysis doesn’t even consider Putin. You built this entire framework without even mentioning the impact of the strong hand ruler of Russia for the past quarter century. That seems like a choice.
Uh. It includes Putin. Did you just miss it?
Oh I missed the .ml my apologies.
Yes, it was the former. There is so much propaganda here I don't even know where to begin.
Go for it. Pick a single thing that you think is false or spun in a way that leads to incorrect conclusions.
Sure, Billy the molestor Clinton championed Eastern block nations joining Nato, but it wasn't ever his decision as it required buy in from Eastern block countries to agree to as well as Nato members (a real sore spot for nationalist Russian assholes)
The expansion of NATO is the propaganda (along with stopping "nazification") that Putin the mass murderer used to justify invading Ukraine costing well over a million casualties now. This is particularly distasteful because of how close Ukraine was with Russia. They were brothers and sisters forced to kill each other by murderous fascist pigs.
That is the problem with .ml squatters, they will tell you that China's fascism tastes better than US fascism with a straight face. It is okay when their team kills millions of people. It makes me sick.
Also, the US and Russia ended up being great trading partners increasing trade dramatically every year until 2008. Propaganda always has a little truth sprinkled in and a lot of big lies.