Uproar in Heaven from 1964. Freely available on YouTube.

The Iranians essentially practicing piracy in the strait is unambiguously counter to international law (UNCLOS), and breaks one of the fundamental elements of how world diplomacy has worked in the modern world. What the Iranians are doing is in fact an act of war against all nations which ships the Iranian stop.

Countries like those in the EU are keeping a low profile right now, because Trump has made such a giant mess of the diplomacy. But long term, I can’t imagine they will let this fly.

Also, the law to release the files was pushed through by the Democrats.

Even if we find out there is a Democrat in the files, that does not mean the Democrat party as a whole is irredeemably compromised. Bad apples can and will exist everywhere, the problem is only when the organization doesn’t try to remove them. By passing the law to release the files, the Democrat party is doing exactly that.

The damning thing for the Republican party is their coverup of the files.

From both a moral and an economical perspective, price controls on oil in the US would make tons of sense right now.

• The US oil producers have done nothing to deserve the current arbitrary price windfall. So morally acceptable
• The US economy would do much better without the price increase

The US is self sufficient with oil, so technically there is no problem with shortages if price controls were put into place.

But as Krugman said, in the current political environment, such price controls are simply not being considered. The US is run by free market morons.

Ross Perot

Ah yes, the billionaire. Electing a billionaire businessman is just what the US needs, right?

Cluster bombs hitting civilians is good news to you, I guess?

One common fertilizer is literally shit. So I guess I did worry more about the Iranians hitting literal shit, than the Iranians hitting US Marines… /s

So fuck the US, but this is not good. This can create a huge economic crisis and food instability, which would create untold suffering among innocent poor people across the world.

You are allowed to rightfully criticize the US for this war, without applauding Iran sinking ships with fertilizer the world desperately needs to not starve.

From a narrow ethical standpoint, there is no issue I can see?

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How about neither?

There is a power imbalance when dating your daughter. Just like a teacher is generally not allowed to date their student. So there is an issue with dating your daughter.

if Iran hit it, it’s because they got a tip Israel or the US’ dickhead billionaires were involved,

Iran’s proxy the Houthis made a promise to also only hit enemy ships. And then shot at everything that moved - ships were sunk where people could see no connection.

It is quite reasonable to doubt how precise Iran is here…

You know that Hamas entered Israel and took lots of innocent civilian hostages, right? Which Israel enetered Gaza to get back. Hence, Israel had an extremely good reason to enter Gaza.

How is that relevant?

Often it is the case (and documented) that Hamas deliberately used hospitals and residential buildings to shoot from, or for other military purposes. In that case, by the laws of war, Israel is actually allowed to level those buildings - and Hamas are the ones who committed a war crime. A fact that often seems utterly lost in social media posts. Often in war, a party will retreat from or surrender a city, rather than shoot from the buildings, if the defending party is not a death cult.

Power plants can be military targets, and as such valid to bomb. But… Trump has pretty much stated here that he is bombing them as terror against civilians, which is a war crime. So Trump is arguably behaving worse than Israel.

You surely need a lot of oil tankers to sail oil across the Pacific Ocean - because each voyage takes so long. And there needs to be export oil terminals in the US towards Asia, which I assume there isn’t currently, because Asia was supplied by the Middle East.

So a priory doesn’t seem too surprising to me, that there is a price spread.

Does lifting sanctions on a country that you’re at war with the smart thing to do? Literally helps to fund their enemy.

It is not a zero sum game. Letting the oil through, and thereby preventing the world market from a total tail spin, probably helps the US more than it helps Iran. So is on the surface surprising, but surprisingly rational on second look.

I’m pretty sure he thinks allies of the US are beta males that follow the US alpha male…

Vance said Trump was “America’s Hitler”. Before Vance realized that he could get power by supporting Trump.

You seem to be using “he thinks” in the sense “Vance genuinely believes”. I am not convinced Vance believes anything, his actions look like pure opportunism.