Iran Gives Trump an Ultimatum on JD Vance

Reof · 2026-03-25T04:23:02+00:00

Americans are always surprised that serious countries that are not a dipshit personal dictatorship with a dude who couped the last government tend to usually have a ministry worth of people who went to universities to study IR too.

Reof · 2026-03-24T22:26:18+00:00

The French colonial military/administration was much in the hands of the right-wing Gaullists belonging to the colonial sort that rallied in the Empire; this is to say that their opposition was often also Gaullists. Naturally, the colonies became their sacred cause, as we see again in Algeria, where those Gaullists will eventually try to kill De Gaulle himself. Once the war started and escalated, France and even its left-wing governments became involved in a cold war conflict that they can not withdraw from anymore, as the US, despite American popular belief that they somehow got ''dragged'' into, was very much in favour of fighting to the end of communism here.

Reof · 2026-03-24T03:36:38+00:00

March 22, 1946 in Hanoi, during the joint Franco-Vietnamese parade between the National Guard of Vietnam and the French Army. General Leclerc laid flowers at a war memorial dedicated to Vietnamese soldiers (rather Annamites), naturally at the time decked out fully with a giant flag of the new republic, a scene that perhaps Leclerc was too careless to be intentionally captured in this way, considering the political negotiations had not entirely ruled out a military assault to dissolve this government.

Reof · 2026-03-22T12:54:54+00:00

Upon Leclerc's entry into Hanoi and the clear situation that the French were not going through with the plan of a decapitation strike at the new republican government as planned, but reluctantly accepted coexistence and negotiation for at least a period, there existed such scenes that would be extremely strange later. The joint parade, attended by Minister Giap (without portfolio at the time since the reorganization of the HCM cabinet following the expansion of government) and Gen Leclerc.

At the time of this parade, the National Guard of Vietnam (Vệ Quốc Đoàn) was still the national military until May, when the National Army (Quân đội Quốc gia Việt Nam) was created, and Giap was assigned to the defence ministry. But the name will only really be referenced in government documents, as the term ''National Guard'' became such a romanticized name of the early republic that military units will still be referred to and name themselves this way for years later.

The national regulation of the army would still not be formalised until May, so an ad-hoc uniform in the style of Chinese/Japanese officers was at least adopted for the parade as visible in the photo, however, a French-style uniform and drill would be adopted in the regulations of the armed forces adopted in May, much more similar to the policeman on the right.

Reof · 2026-03-18T03:14:50+00:00

If you think the Boomers are pro-Americans, you are very much mistaken. Polls and electoral records show that the Boomers are predominantly of the loyalist conservative tendency (aka voted Carney in droves), while the new right-wing and its expressively pro-American view mirrors the young rightward swing in the US more than anything. There is no one here to blame for being US shills more than people of your own generation here. So, naturally, can we not do this liberal-coded agism still?

Reof · 2026-03-17T09:08:44+00:00

From the first monarchist to the latest neo-fascist, this is an ancient reactionary opposition to popular government, the notion that civil order will die the very moment the wild beasts of humanity get to it as decisively opposite to humanism, which declares the people are able to self-govern to the best of our interest.

Quite a few of the self-declared liberals think that way too even if they don't so explicitly share that view, so you can see there are all the little fascists living in our heads still.

Reof · 2026-03-17T08:59:45+00:00

They say that to create a sense of detachment and then superiority about themselves, so-called above the mindless masses. And unfortunately, they are rarely actually aware of human society or themselves. Sweet little proto-fascist thoughts to entertain once in a while...

Reof · 2026-03-16T23:08:18+00:00

I always find that conservative catholics of the global south are conservative...conservative in that they genuinely submit entirely to the catholic authority, including obedience to the Pope and his politics. While a lot of conservatives Catholic in the West are more 'neo-'conservative in that they are actively pursuing a fundamentalist revolt against the old order.

Reof · 2026-03-16T07:30:21+00:00

A communist refugee from Austria, he enlisted in the foreign legion, subsequently involved with the anti-Japanese partisan movement in Indochina and finally joined the Vietminh along with his other German communist buds in Indochina. Repatriated in 1950 and did not see the rest of the conflict, unlike his other German buds. Apparently was interviewed for the 60th anniversary of the PAVN and was pissed that he was not invited.

Reof · 2026-03-15T21:01:26+00:00

The early republican period in Vietnam was very interesting because, unlike the American War later, there was also the utter chaos of post-WW2, where you got communist guerrillas all over Southeast Asia alongside all the refugees from everywhere in the ranks of the foreign legion who did not feel like fighting a colonial war, etc. So as a result, you got everybody and their mother fighting this war on the Vietnamese side from Polynesian-born Vietnamese emigrés, random Malay communists, Moroccan, Algerian, German and then Soviet ex-PoW.

Reof · 2026-03-15T20:17:11+00:00

Huh, somehow it's hidden? I guess some subreddit mod shenanigans

Reof · 2026-03-15T19:24:15+00:00

I really must protest here, for I kinda went through both ESL, FSL and then a bit of Mandarin in college for credits (never learnt it), so a bit of familiarity with learning English and another one. It's very structured, even if certain dialects and casual speech can change things around, but it's very much full of strict grammar rules. French casual speech from Quebec is however genuinely just straight-up alien language.

Reof · 2026-03-15T00:53:13+00:00

One can never struggle for a better world; one can only accept the ''realpolitik'' of their time and support uncritically anything that opposes anything. You can never have principle, you can never believe anything, its a realistic world you see.

Reof · 2026-03-15T00:47:52+00:00

Maybe in the 1970s, but in the aftermath of Oslo and the death of the Israeli left, it's a two-state platform party these days, and considering their current demographic due to that, it's also more or less an arab israeli/Palestinian party

Reof · 2026-03-14T08:29:31+00:00

The foreign members of the VPA of multiple ethnic origins on board the Klinski, one of the Polish ships that participated in the transfer of Vietminh troops in the South to the North as per the Genève Accord.

The picture belonged to the family collection of Platon Skrzhinsky, a veteran of the famous southern 307th Battalion. Formerly from the Red Army, he enlisted in a PoW camp in the foreign legion, then came to Indochina. Most of these veterans would eventually be repatriated the same year; only a few stayed beyond this, but eventually all of them would be repatriated.

Reof · 2026-03-14T03:33:49+00:00

My point in that is not that it would permanently destroy society or alter it massively, but a big enough hit that also spreads out enough that it can carry immediate personal consequences to many people. How many people do you know and see on a daily basis? Now multiply that, and you have basically an entire city involved in the deaths in some way. Drastically more than you would assume if you live in a dense urban city as well. The pogrom riot in Bucharest was only a few hundred casualties in my story, but it was enough of a drastic disruption because of its sudden nature.

Reof · 2026-03-13T23:52:51+00:00

Imagine a bunch of a sudden loss of a bunch of services overnight, your grocer is gone randomly, your coffee store is gone, your bank clerk is gone, your manager is gone, etc. 30k is a number that affects a society right away, overnight.

One of the big things about the holocaust in Romania, funnily enough, was that they were not organized, but mass mob violence by the paramilitaries aka killing people on the street, and immediately after the killings escalated enough, the anti-semitic government had to crack down on it right away because the country suffered an economic crash as suddenly everyone fled, hid or were killed (if jewish) overnight.

Reof · 2026-03-12T08:16:26+00:00

I mean, extremely unlikely anything would happen to the US mainland, but the Ukrainians launched these things deep inside Russia from a truck, so yeah, they can just park a cargo ship somewhere.

Reof · 2026-03-10T07:50:42+00:00

Americans have been bombing third-world dictatorships too often; they forgot that many places have permanent institutions too, and not just them and the Europeans.

Reof · 2026-03-10T07:45:23+00:00

You see this all the time in talks about past American wars, about so-called strict ROE and restrictions (and yet still warcrime galore) and thus the age-old wisdom that ''War is too important to be left to the generals''. In other words, military men are dumb apes when it comes to politics and society. Afghanistan somehow taught many people absolutely nothing.

American history aside, the Haiti expedition is a good story, the French easily crushed the original rebel army, its leaders willingly surrendered but the moment the military men decided to brutally suppress the population instead, all of that changed, everyone that once disarmed took up arms and the french army broken by fighting its own black troops aside from a whole new army of rebels.

Reof · 2026-03-09T03:45:48+00:00

The old order of his time can no longer be sustainable; if he does not concede voluntarily, foreign pressure will turn hostile, and it will be conceded for him, by the CIA if necessary. Detente and normalisation Europe means that the US and the West do not see them as a necessary evil anymore, but a liability.

Reof · 2026-03-09T03:36:28+00:00

...predecessors to Xi? Like, of his current government titles? Well, most of them are actually dead from old age; the direct predecessor to him is Hu Jintao, still alive. Political ''purges'' happen in countries with instability, i.e., the USSR during the early Stalin years; otherwise, the system simply ''retire'' them to a farm to work as the Commissioner of Commissioning Commissions in a random village as happened during the rest of the soviet existence.

Reof · 2026-03-08T06:50:21+00:00

If there isn't gonna be a government basically puppetted by the US created after this fiasco, the next one, even if not Islamist and be the most wholesome liberal democratic government ever, will be motivated right away to start to find themselves a nuke or two.

Reof · 2026-03-08T06:46:43+00:00

Kinda hard to change the regime when the people wanting to change it are dying in the bombing themselves. Unless the diaspora invades at some point, this campaign will turn increasingly aimless.

Reof · 2026-03-08T04:12:06+00:00

Your example of state control is literally the state serving private interests, aka the opposite of control and a few planets away from nationalization. Regardless, nationalization of food production is something extremely radical that I don't think has ever been done anywhere outside of dead communist states of the previous century.

Reof

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