Some of us actually want to understand things below superficial level I guess. 🤷
They lost control of the narrative eventually there, but not from the very start. And it’s not like Vietnamese were able to put their own message out at the time.
The US is stuck in a war it cannot win, and Trump doesn’t have a good way out.


they keep changing the title, here’s an earlier one in archive https://archive.is/VSOAs
I can only link the title that was available when I posted the article 🤷
In fact, this might be the first conflict where the US isn’t really able to control the narrative even in the west.


lol China clearly did


It’s frankly incredible how this has been going on for three weeks now, and traders are dumb enough to keep falling for it.


Nothing’s going to make up for the brutality Iran has suffered for decades at the hands of the empire. But they will extract their pound of flesh now.


Exactly, it’s pretty clear that the US is disrupting global energy markets and trying to position itself as the sole supplier for much of the world.


If you actually read the article, it’s pretty clear that Canada doesn’t have much capacity in the near future. These are all potential long term projects which don’t really help Europe today.


The key benefit is that it’s public infrastructure that’s not owned by a corporation. Public forums should be publicly owned. These are essential social tools that allow us to have discussions with each other and shape our views and opinions. These forums must be operated in an open and transparent manner in a way that’s accountable to the public.
Privately owned platforms are neither neutral or unbiased. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned. When the content that a user produces does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed.
Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it can be useful to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as open forums.
Open source platforms provide a viable alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.
From that perspective I think that open and federated platforms. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, federated platforms have many servers that all talk to each other to create the network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.
One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Reddit and BlueSky. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions.
Open platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. It’s also more difficult for third parties to collect data since it doesn’t all conveniently live on the same server that some company owns. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and tracker bloat.
Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook or Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.
On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network. More users joining Mastodon is a net positive for Lemmy because we get more content and more people to have discussions with.
Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.
In order to be truly free, we must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.
At the end of the day, it’s about owning our tools and using communication platforms built by the people and for the people.


At this point, Europe might be worse off than the developing countries. They can still get energy and fertilizer from Russia and Belarus. Meanwhile, Europe made itself entirely dependent on the US, and has no replacements. And the refugees will flood there too, so that will deepen the economic crisis.


I have little hope for the US just because the oil industry has so much control there, but I’m hoping for much of the rest of the world this will finally be a wake up call. Given that even if fighting stops tomorrow, it’s going to take years for some of the infrastructure to be rebuilt, things are not going back to the way they were. So, there’s going to be an ongoing need to find alternative energy sources. It’s not a one time event countries can wait out and go back to business as usual.


The only way around Hormuz is by embracing renewables. And if countries get serious about doing that, then it would be the best possible outcome of the whole thing.


Pretty funny how much screeching western media did about Russia supposedly attacking ZNPP, but now that the US actually attacking a nuclear power plant in Iran there are predictably crickets.
I love how ignorant chuds are always attracted to these threads like moths to a flame.


This attack represents a major shift, as the base falls outside the responsibility of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and is under the jurisdiction of the US Pacific Command (USPACOM).
The distance traveled by the missile exceeds 4,000 kilometers, revealing that Iran possesses a continent-crossing arsenal that had been hidden from Western surveillance. This targeting indicates that the war zone has effectively expanded to include areas that were not part of the direct confrontation calculations.
The arrival of Iranian missiles at Diego Garcia which is a strategic stronghold for US forces far from land reflects a high level of preparedness and logistical and technical management that has surprised Western defense systems. Missiles falling in Pacific regions mean that rear bases that were considered safe and launching pads for heavy bombers are now at the mercy of Iranian fire. The attack also proves that intelligence reports about the range ceiling of Iranian missiles were misleading.
Washington is now forced to secure vast areas in the Indian and Pacific Oceans which will lead to further dispersion of air defense systems and interceptors that are already in short supply.
I’m not here to amuse you. If you don’t find something interesting then just move on. Nobody cares what you you choose to watch or not, and the world doesn’t revolve around you. Work on your narcissism.