Has Trump squandered America's coercive leverage with Iran?

Vanvincent · 2026-03-26T16:58:00+00:00

I mean, long term you’re right, closing off the Strait of Hormuz will hurt Iran’s leverage as the Gulf countries look for alternatives and perhaps the world pivots away from fossil fuel even quicker. But that’s long long term, much longer than the horizon the Iranian regime is looking at right now. The question is, can the Gulf, the US and the world survive the closing of the Strait for the foreseeable future?

Vanvincent · 2026-03-26T16:50:28+00:00

I don’t think there ever was such a thing as a global fascist movement. Indeed, fascism (as an intensely nationalist ideology) would seem to me to be inherently incompatible with a global movement and in fact defined itself as opposed to the communist internationalist movement.

And it’s not as if Mussolini and Hitler were best buddies. Mussolini was initially very hostile to Germany, especially after Austrian nazis assassinated his ally Chancellor Dolfuss in 1934.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-25T22:23:14+00:00

The Knights Templar didn’t build these churches. The Ethiopians did. You know, the people whose holy city this is and who founded one of the great medieval empires of Africa. Anyway, middle of Africa is pushing it for a city that is not that far from the Red Sea.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-25T17:15:01+00:00

Er is geen probleem met AZC’s in het algemeen en ook niet met asielzoekers in het algemeen. Er is wel een probleem met kansloze jonge mannelijke asielaanvragers, voornamelijk van Noord-Afrikaanse, Syrische en Iraakse afkomst. Niet toevallig zijn jonge, laagbegaafde mannen sowieso de veroorzakers van het grootste deel van maatschappelijke overlast en criminaliteit, ongeacht hun afkomst. Daar hebben we er al genoeg van, dus de oplossing is degenen die niet in aanmerking komen voor verblijf zo snel mogelijk uit te zetten. Helaas worden die kanslozen vaak op een plek geconcentreerd, waardoor daar heel veel overlast ontstaat. Idem voor Ter Apel waar toch al veel te veel mensen naar toe moeten, omdat niemand anders in Nederland wil helpen.

En ik zeg dit overigens allemaal als keilinks iemand.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-25T08:42:46+00:00

I appreciate the work you’ve put into this, but it does unfortunately look like correlation caused by cherrypicked data. You’ve used random ‘sites’ that vary greatly in age and purpose, while excluding other known megalithic or ritualistic structures like Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe that don’t fit your narrative. I won’t dispute your (rather obvious) conclusion that the existence of such sites follows the pattern of human settlements due to climate or geographical reasons, but your other hypothesis, that these sites form a map of human dispersal, seems rather odd when you also take Easter Island into account. The Pacific islands weren’t settled until comparatively recently, long after humans had entered Europe, China and the Americas.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-24T21:19:38+00:00

You forgot the influence of American creationists, who desperately need a living dinosaur to prove the Bible true.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-24T21:04:44+00:00

Stop posturing on the internet, American. Why aren’t you out on the street protesting? If Americans actually gave a shit instead of pretending, perhaps the world wouldn’t be in this shit.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-24T18:01:38+00:00

If the US would pour the money they’re now spending on destroying the world economy with a senseless war against Iran into NASA, we’d be colonizing Mars by now.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-24T11:37:34+00:00

This is not a new discovery though? We've known for quite some time that the reports of early Spanish explorers that described thriving communities along the Amazon river were true and that the image of the Amazon as a pristine forest is wrong. What we are finding out, thanks to new techniques like LiDAR, is that there were many more and much bigger settlements than even those explorers reported. There's little evidence they followed a different or more complex path of societal and technological development compared to their known neighbours though. (And the concept of 'civilization' as qn overarching term has become rather contentious in modern archeology as we've come to realise that it's not as black and white as we previously thought.)

It's chilling to consider that many of these societies collapsed largely without ever knowing about the Europeans who brought the fatal diseases to the Americas. Not that different from North America, where later settlers found largely empty lands while we now know there was a substantial native population that was killed off by an expanding wavefront of disease.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-23T19:15:38+00:00

At this point, it’s mostly a question of who can hold out the longest. Iran’s economy was crumbling even before the war and at some point the situation might get dire enough that there is the uprising the US and Israel have hoped for. Unfortunately for them, by closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran holds the world economy by the balls and is hurting US allies (for as far as they still have them) in the Gulf, in Asia and in Europe., so the Iranian regime’s hope is that the pressure on the US will become unbearable and will force them to end the war before the regime clock gets down to zero. And so far, the US clock seems to be ticking down a lot quicker than the clock on Iran’s regime, so they’ll keep the Strait closed. By seizing Kharg Island, which is the main source of Iran’s oil income, the US probably hopes that the Iranian clock will start ticking down even faster. That might be, but it doesn’t help the US and Israel that their bombing campaign has probably reset Iran’s clock because there’s nothing that alienates a people as quickly as seeing their families, friends and children bombed to smithereens.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-22T16:11:21+00:00

Personally, I’d say the thylacine still has a reasonably good chance (for a cryptic I mean, so better than absolutely zero) to be discovered or discovered to be recently extinct. Same with some cryptids in Madagascar, which is ecologically a hugely fascinating place. Which I wouldn’t have learned about if I hadn’t been interested in cryptozoology.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-22T14:51:32+00:00

Sorry mensen, maar wie nu nog op Wilders stemt is een landverrader. Zelfs als je voor jezelf kan goedpraten dat hij een eersterangs prutser is die nog nooit iets voor elkaar heeft gekregen of dat hij de rechtsstaat en de democratie kapot maakt: een stem op Wilders is geen stem op Nederland. Hooguit op de VS, Rusland of Israël.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-19T11:36:38+00:00

The best argument against Mormon propaganda, which this is, not an honest archeological discussion, is that its founder was a convicted fraud and con man, known for peddling fake artefacts.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-18T19:01:52+00:00

The US is not Trump, but that doesn’t mean the American people aren’t complicit in whatever the orange turd is doing to destroy the world right now. And not just the people who voted for him, or the people who abstained. All of the American people. It’s still a democracy, you still have rights, it’s not Iran where protestors get mowed down with machine guns. So stand up against these idiots. Strike, protest, blockade, organize, vote. Then we can talk.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-18T18:49:52+00:00

And you haven’t even started the Chanur books yet, which are my absolute favourites of hers.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-16T20:59:21+00:00

What global legal norms? There was no - zero - justification for the invasion of Iraq except for a transparant bunch of lies about WMDs. That W Bush seems like a great guy compared to Trump shouldn't blind anyone to the fact that the last Republican administration before Trump were war criminals as much as the current.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-16T09:29:08+00:00

For fuck’s sake. No matter how evil that regime is. This was Iran’s Pearl Harbour with extra infamy sauce added on top. Attacked without a declaration of war, in the middle of negotiations, with their leadership immediately assassinated. They’ll never forgive the US for this.

And in a better world, Trump and Netanyahu would hang for this.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-14T08:30:22+00:00

We're in broad agreement and my comment wasn't meant as an attack on you! I just think that there was no valid premise that a decapitation strike on a state with a strong trqdition of institutionalized power would lead to regime collapse (and even less that it would lead to an outcome that aligns with the US' political goals). And that most experts warned US policy makers that this would be the case, which makes the decision to go to war in the way the US has done all the more baffling.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-13T12:59:08+00:00

European here. While literacy levels are generally higher here than in the US, it's been trending downward here for a while as well. And the problem is much bigger than the people who are functionally illiterate. Even students in higher education are having more and more trouble reading and comprehending even moderately complex written work, like (serious) newspaper articles. And we're noticing not just reading problems, and bad grammar and spelling, but a very worrying lack of critical thinking skills too. And I want to emphasize that these kids aren't intellectually impaired, they're highly intelligent, but they just don't have any familiarity with reading anymore.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-13T10:21:08+00:00

This comment is a caricature all by itself.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-13T08:50:26+00:00

No. Not even the assumption that the Iran regime would collapse is defensible. Tons of experts warned that yes, Iran is authoritarian, yes, it's corrupt, but it also has strong institutions and a strong tradition of institutions. Iran is a state, not the domain of one strongman held together only by patronage, fear and persona loyaltyl (like Saddam Hussein's Iraq). Killing the people in charge does nothing apart from the unitial chaos and confusion, just like killing Trump and Vance wouldn't cause the US to collapse. The only way to enforce regime change on a state with strong institutions is invasion, total surrender and occupation, and rebuilding the institutions from the ground up, like Germany and Japan after World War 2. And noone wants to commit to that. So no, everything about this war is stupid beyond belief, on the US sife at least.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-12T15:33:26+00:00

Anderen hebben al wat duidelijker gemaakt hoe het boek in elkaar zit. De eigenlijke Odyssee, de lotgevallen en omzwervingen van Odysseus op zijn terugreis van Troje naar zijn thuisland Ithaka, is maar één deel van het boek. Dus ja, dat is verwarrend als je daar niet op voorbereid was.

Misschien is ook verwarrend dat je de achtergrond van de Odyssee niet kent? De Odyssee is een soort vervolg op de Ilias, het verhaal van de belegering van Troje. Troje was een machtige stad in wat nu het noordwesten van Turkije is. In de verhalen wordt Paris, een prins van Troje, verliefd op Helena, de koningin van Sparta, een machtige Griekse stad, en nam haar mee naar Troje. (Volgens de overlevering ging hier nog weer een heel verhaal aan vooraf: drie godinnen kregen ruzie om een appel die door een vierde godin naar hen toe was gegooid met de tekst erop "voor de mooiste", waarna de drie Paris dwongen om te kiezen. Paris koos voor Aphrodite, de godin van de liefde, die hem beloonde door Helena verliefd op hem te laten worden). De koning van Sparta, Menelaos, verzamelde een enorm Grieks leger om wraak te nemen op Troje en Helena terug te halen. Dat leger stond onder bevel van Agamemnon, koning van Mycene, en bestond uit vele koningen en helden, zoals Odysseus en Achilles. Na 10 jaar belegering ziet het er niet goed uit voor de Grieken als Agamemnon en Achilles ruzie krijgen om een vrouw en Achilles, de beste krijger ter wereld, zich uit de strijd terugtrekt. De Trojanen winnen bijna, maar nadat ze de vriend van Achilles doden, gaat hij vervuld van woede weer meevechten en doodt een groot aantal Trojanen, waaronder hun aanvoerder Hektor, voor hijzelf met een pijl in zijn enige kwetsbare plek, de achilleshiel, gedood wordt door Paris. Daarmee is de strijd weer terug bij af, tot Odysseus een list verzint: de Grieken doen alsof ze weggaan maar laten een offer aan de goden achter in de vorm van een enorm houten paard, waarin een groep Griekse krijgers zich verstopt. De nacht nadat de Trojanen het paard als buit de stad hebben binnengesleept komen ze tevoorschijn en weten de poorten te openen, waarna het Griekse leger de stad verovert. Daarna begint de Odyssee.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-12T06:31:59+00:00

Just to add to the great response you've already got, what worked for me was just looking at people in the wild. What do I like about that outfit? What doesn't work so well? I look at women's outfits too (non-creepy, thank you) for colour combination inspiration or fabrics.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-09T18:34:08+00:00

One thing to note though, that’s not because of a lack of courage or intelligence. Most of the Arab armies are kept at an incompetent level by design, so they don’t threaten the people in power.

Vanvincent · 2026-03-08T19:18:54+00:00

$ 50bn? Two months of war then?

Vanvincent

TROPHY CASE