Thoughts:

1. Was this just a gesture? Did they even seriously hit Fordow with for example nuclear bunker busters? Because their conventional ones would need several hits for sure success.

2. Also once again this proves Iran's air defenses are not good folks. They just strolled in. I was thinking originally maybe they hit facilities near the borders with glide bombs but to hit Fordow they'd have to go deep. Is it too much to ask for them to down a B2? Apparently so and it really puts doubt into my mind about those claims of shooting down f-35s from the zionist air force.

This attack was CLEARLY telegraphed. The whole waiting two weeks was such an obvious ruse just as they'd attacked them during talks that if Iran wasn't on full alert they are naive as hell. If they were it shows they're powerless against American air power. I mean WSJ leaked it was happening.

Iran is a sitting duck and it is frustrating to read this. They should have gotten a nuke. They should have expected these bombings and should have developed or bought or stolen better air defenses. They should have chosen at least one of these to do.

Let's say they moved the nuclear materials. But if they did they now have to hide them and move them and hide them and I doubt they have any places as hardened as Fordow. Mossad infiltration is pretty deep so if Iran doesn't go sicko-mode on the US and zionists in response the US will just bomb that new location and act like it's not an act of war.

At this point frankly I don't get the point of bluffing with the uranium enrichment beyond 60%. I understood it to be an Iranian tactic to threaten to get nukes and show they could in order to get concessions in negotiations but given how the west has shown their dishonesty both with Iran and Russia it seems kind of silly at this point. But perhaps they believe in great man politics and hope a Democratic politician will negotiate (and for some reason that a Republican won't just undo it like Trump did).

If it was an empty gesture, if no real damage was done to say Fordow and Trump is just going to declare victory regardless it may be tactically smart for Iran to stay mum on the failure of the strikes and let him have his win. Though the problem with this is Bibi may publicly announce it failed anyways to pressure Trump into more strikes.

If on the other hand these strikes were successful Iran needs to hit back by sinking a carrier group. Closing the strait of Hormuz is an option but one which will fuck up China's economy if maintained for any significant period of time.

Iran however may no matter how bad the damage choose to just grit and bear it. They chose the "poison pill" of the JCPOA after all in 2015 and may choose not to do more than symbolic retaliation which of course emboldens the empire to hit them again and more frequently as well. Iran frankly either stands up right now or they can kiss goodbye any hopes of reclaiming their regional power status. With Hezbollah already on the backfoot and Syria out of the picture their power projection and proxy projects were already fucked up medium-term at least. But if they let the west salami-slice their way to hitting them however they want, decapitations, strategic bombings to take out valuable assets in their borders, etc they cease to be a functioning state and enter Syrian circa 2018 failing state territory where more pushes and shoves will come until they topple them and remove them from the picture.

So I fear the US and the zionist entity slowly strangling and bombing them to death as they turn the other cheek again and again because they fear escalating and allow the salmi-slicing tactics to work.

Honestly not great. One of the few large instances, open registration, stable that didn't "preemptively as a last resort" defederate from HB, grad, etc and didn't have aggressive State Dept admins. Sure they had lots of lib users and mods but unlike (world) they weren't totally terrible and astro-turfed.

This weakens the fediverse and solidifies the power of .world which with only a bit more further concentration will have way too much power.

I had an account on there for viewing places that defederate from the usual instances like HB/grad I'm wondering where my next account should even be. .ml is not as stable as .ee was and I'd rather not tax the resources of a comrade if there's a free speech tech bro I can tax instead.

Sh.it's just nazis is obviously full of not great people. .world is out. The genocide loving German instance is out. I just want an account on a lemmy site that doesn't defederate (except for illegal content type stuff or porn instances) and isn't widely defederated from and doesn't have state dept admins who will reach in and ban my account for Marxism and lemm.ee was perfect for that.

Paywall. Archive link?

Edit: I'll do it myself: https://archive.is/nzDtc

The site was part of a network of CIA sites that were first discovered by Iranian authorities more than ten years ago before leading to a wave of deaths of CIA sources in China in the early 2010s.

Important info. This isn't anything super recent or relevant. It was part of a huge network of front sites for communicating with informants.

Ciro Santilli, the researcher, said he was drawn to investigating the network of CIA sites for various reasons: his interest in Chinese politics (he said his mother-in-law is part of the Falun Gong religious movement)

Love to be an impartial reporter and call a dangerous, coercive, violent, racist, controlling cult which itself receives CIA backing (relevant) a "religious movement".

The sad thing is it won't be the same. The denial of the genocide will continue. The west allowed in the one unique instance of the Holocaust acknowledgment of the crimes in order to lionize themselves, demonize their enemies and gain some moral high-ground they very desperately needed to fight the USSR and communism because they fought on the right side in WW2. Because they could paint themselves as being on the right side on that one it was trumpeted around and taught and wailed about unlike all the others before it because it was part of a narrative of triumph over evil, of the west being good, of standing and fighting for good to justify it's atrocities and attacks on communism. This instance because they're not just on the side-lines but actively abetting will be denied for quite some time and when it is acknowledged it'll still be contested in the way that teaching about Jim Crow and racism in America is contested today by chuds and quite a few liberals who will acknowledge but state they had no way of knowing, they were fooled by the tricksters who ran pissrael (happily engaging in anti-semitic tropes because they have their aided the zionists card). Or some other revisionism like it was all Netanyahu and a cabal of close others and a few bad apples in the IOF and how you can't dismiss the whole of the zionist project and you're not allowed to talk about the polls from the era showing the overwhelming support for genocide among the zionist colonists who live in the entity, etc, etc.

All they wanted to do was pretend to cut government "waste", scare people, shake them down for loyalty, push them to purge DEI and progressive policies or language and then turn the spigots back on once the obedience was there.

Who denies climate change too. Thinks because he writes vaguely science-related stuff he's qualified to dispute the conclusive findings of thousands of scientists in their field and dozens of world-wide scientific bodies.

Excellent news if true and if he sticks the course and doesn't reverse in a week.

I can hear it now:

"Folks the Chinese I've decided to go easy on them, they're very weak and in a bad spot and I'm a nice guy, I'm a nice guy. I look at them in this bad spot and I said okay I'll go easy on you, it's very sad, very sad what's going on in China and you know I'm America first but I had to do it, just had to do it. They're in a very bad spot, it would be a catastrophe if I didn't and then it would be our problem too. They still have too much of our stuff and I think we need to figure out a way to get it back but it's going to take some time and some plans. And let me tell you folks I have the best plans, I'm a planning genius. People are constantly coming up to me and telling me how brilliant my plans are. So we're going to use these wonderful plans and we're going to win but it's going to take time. And right now folks let me tell you we need to deal with the radical left lunatics in this country. Did you see what happened just recently? They made Elon into the soyjack, they turned him into the soyjack and humiliated him. It's disgusting and we can't allow it. These radical left America-hating universities have got to put a stop to this. We're not going to allow it anymore folks."

Under communism this will be the only allowed format of super hero cape-shit movie. Just a series of movies where Magneto is right and vindicated and eventually wins in the series with the help of his human communist comrades and a broad group of mutants. And it ends with him visiting his friend Professor X in a comfortable low security re-education facility (actually located in the professor's mansion for some reason) and playing chess with him in a homage to the old movies where Magneto is imprisoned and Xavier visits him to play chess. Then as the credits roll Magneto appears for a short message to remind the audience that in real life hundreds of thousands of ordinary people risked it all, sacrificed greatly and gave their lives to overthrow capitalism and that they are the true super heroes.

America can't be blamed for the next pandemic if we turn off all surveillance and early warning, gag scientists, stop any reporting on it, stop looking for it, etc. Then when it does break out into a pandemic there won't be any solid proof of where it came from and we can blame China (or maybe Mexico since this is Trump) for that as well.

All of this is bad but what particularly stands out is that criticism of a rival social media parent company is removed. That's uh pretty telling they're either being bought by them or bending the knee in a kind of agreement to no competition, no defending yourself, no shitting on American companies, allowed type arrangement which really is more like full prostration head to the ground than kneeling come to think of it. Hopefully it implodes.

This person is such a naive liberal and that's why they didn't get deeper and why this won't have a meaningful impact. Lifestyle anarchist maybe at best. I mean outing themselves to protect a bourgeois reporter who most likely was in no real danger from these cowards and had no particular reason to and immediately blew his cover (that's exactly the thanks you get and why your attitude towards bourgeois press should be "fuck em")? After all that work too. Rookie mistake after being the only one to raise anything about it in a conference.

This guy freaking out and blowing his cover over this is bad, people may die (actually good people, not bourgeois stenographers) because of his decision to unnecessarily reach out to a reporter who didn't even care to protect his attempt to help them. It will only encourage these groups to engage in that kind of testing earlier and more often and perhaps even actually force recruits to kill or maim leftists. Because after all it worked here, it finally outed him.

Also should have sent a copy of the documents to like unicorn riot or some other leftist doxxing group as these "responsible reporters" from Propublica are capitalist, imperialist stenographers who aren't going to actually out any of these people to anyone but their direct supervisors at the FBI meaning there will never be a full uncovering or any kind of even tiny reckoning from this. Not to mention having those names could help operational security for leftist groups immensely as they're absolutely infiltrating DSA and ML parties.

Kind of like how many of those Snowden documents vanished and will never be published because he didn't send copies to better people who might have leaked more or all of it.

Not that institution and fourth estate loving liberals will ever learn but let this be a lesson to folks here, send it first to amenable liberals but schedule another release to an actually left group, include instructions not to release for a few months so your liberal reporter doesn't feel burned and pre-empted but make sure it all gets out soon enough.

Say Mr. Lame Duck maybe you should protect vulnerable groups like trans people or undocumented persons with maximum executive action in your final months before Trump gets into office?

What's that? What you really care about aren't those vulnerable people and just want to do some reactionary shit instead to already sanctioned countries that have been under illegal oppression and embargo for half a century which Trump would agree with and could have done anyways? Oh cool. Nice to see the mask continues to slip.

Please slap liberals who claim to care about vulnerable groups with actions like these, his pardon for his son which is suspiciously all encompasses and reminiscent of the Nixon pardon and get that doubt going on whether actually maybe Democrats aren't harm reduction and won't actually fight for them.