This is a discussion about what the people who live there want, not what the government does, are we not on the same page here? The fact is the Iraqi PM is facing internal pressure to expel US forces and he is in the process of doing that.

You sure do talk a lot about this for someone who doesn’t understand the basics. The groups Iran backs in Iraq are there to prop up the current Iraqi regime since they’re afraid of another Sunni leader emerging if the current regime falls. They’re mainly worried about an Islamic State takeover, and Iraq accepts their presence.

Jordan has a dictator who lied and said the US base that got struck was in Syria instead of Jordan most likely to avoid backlash from the population about the presence of a US base in their borders.

And most of the people that live in those countries for the record.

It trades on Hong Kong Stock Ex so not a traditional Chinese market, but technically a Chinese one nonetheless. Honestly considering how many tech stocks are traded in retirement funds today, Evergrande probably once seemed like a relatively conservative investment.

Rule of thumb is about 1/3 go to foreign investment for a typical retirement account in the US. But you’re right, it should be a very small part of the average portfolio.

Yes, both stock and bonds. But the stock and bonds have been trading near zero for a couple years so the damage was done in '21.

The main divergence between the two is that Zelensky is more optimistic about the war while Zaluzhnyi is more pessimistic. There’s also been some chatter that Zaluzhnyi could make a run at the presidency in the future so it could be a factor. This article covers most of it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/31/valerii-zaluzhnyi-ukraine-general-president-volodymyr-zelenskiy-rift

Yeah, I’m sorry but this is stupid. I think you’re on to something here in that technocracy has led to a situation where corporate stooges are put into positions of power as “experts” who just make policy that benefits capital. On the other hand economics is a legitimate science with rigorous case studies to back up at least some of its theories. The real problem is there are a lot of junk theories out there that have been implemented through the political weaponization of faux-expertise. Chicago Boys’ economics is a good example of the problem.

Yeah basically admitting it’s state sanctioned. Should save the South African lawyers some paperwork.

Yeah I’m pretty sure this is Israel’s methodology for calculating Hamas deaths, 100% of adult men are soldiers. It’s obviously a lie but I do believe that’s where the number comes from.

How convenient for dem leadership that anyone who disagrees with them is actually a foreign agent.

To be clear since it seems like Pakistan is trying to re-muddy the waters here, the cable is authentic. It does show that the US pressured them to jail Khan. https://theintercept.com/2023/08/16/imran-khan-cable-pakistan-us/

Edit: my bad I meant the US pressured the military to remove him from office.

Yep between the mountainous terrain and Iran’s advanced missile program it’d be a disaster. If a president got involved in a war like that, the opposition party might end up with 70 senate seats instead of the 60 the dems got after the Iraq war fell apart.

ETA: the other problem is that Iran has a much, much stronger central government than Iraq or Libya did in terms of control over the population.

Biden seems to be making a habit of making statements that contradict US intelligence and then having to backpedal so we’ll see.

This being the most high profile example of Biden doing this: https://theintercept.com/2023/10/31/gaza-death-palestine-health-ministry/

That’s definitely a big factor here, but NK does have some leverage over China. China for example has not been happy with NK nuclear and missile tests, but they have continued anyway. I guess it’s just a question of how far NK might stray from China’s authority.

I think you might be misinterpreting China and NK relations here. China moreso sends aid to NK since if the regime collapsed, they’d have to deal with the refugees. It’s not as simple as China pays the bills therefore Kim is their puppet. If he went against their wishes they could use force or withhold aid, but that would also just lead to them dealing with a refugee crisis.

Although an invasion is unlikely it’s worth keeping an eye on since the result would be a disaster for every party involved.

The timing of this discovery seems awfully convenient, no? Even if it’s true, it looks like the Israelis sat on this info.

So they didn’t throw out the case nor did they order an end to military operations. Consider the can kicked, not that it’s a surprising outcome. Tough to parse the legalspeak at this point so I don’t have the whole picture.

This is well put. The fact is the US has been trying to deal with Iran since '79 and none of their tactics work to unseat a purely ideological regime.

The Taliban is a great example too since the US fought them for 20 years to no avail just to see the regime they put in place go down in a day to a few bribes (allegedly).

Mainly when people talk about this they mean privatization through some convoluted scheme. Look up some of Thatcher’s policies for some out there examples. Outsourcing supply chains is a big part of this privatization, and probably what the commenter meant was that not funding domestic chip production led to this mess.

It’s a bit difficult to take all this pearl clutching about independent media seriously when it all comes from corporate media whose bottom line is threatened by people choosing a different news source.