We should be doing all we can to help the Lebanese government against Hezbollah. But we won’t because it’s woke or something.

#OTD in 1945 the Uralmash-1 SPG chassis was approved. Two vehicles would be built for testing: the SU-101 with a 100 mm gun and SU-102 with a 122 mm gun. Ultimately, neither went into production. #tanks #history #WW2 #WWII

That's a pretty big vulnerability, I imagined Iranian oil mostly using other flags because of sanctions. Every loaded one is probably worth around 100M so it is even profitable to capture them.

Saudi Arabia has informed Tehran that while it prefers a diplomatic resolution to Iran’s standoff with the United States, continued attacks on the kingdom and its energy infrastructure could prompt Riyadh to respond in kind.-Reuters

Hard to say how widespread this is but it can definitely be used as pretext to strike economic targets.

Not good.

A year long investigation into the Hyperloop found … “The truth was far simpler, far dumber, and far more prescient: Musk and his lieutenants truly had no idea what they were doing.” washingtonian.com/2026/02/12/h...

Start von Deutschlands größtem Raumfahrtprojekt für die #Bundeswehr – OHB, Rheinmetall und Airbus wollen wohl gemeinsam antreten. Sachsens MP Kretschmer lobbyiert dafür, dass das Bundesland zum Satellitenproduktionsstandort wird. - nachrichten.handelsblatt.com/1bb398d79125...

This seems to be an attempt to peel off some countries from the US-IL coalition. I guess they are not keen on Iran but they are also not likely urgently committed to its downfall. It is also something govts need to sell to their people that may be suffering in a war they may not consider "theirs".

Was browsing the Eisenhower Library site this morning trying to find a quote I remembered. President Eisenhower, WW2 military hero: “In my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventive war… none has yet explained how war prevents war.”

Happy mello! #melodifestival #final

Ca 400 pers manifesterar just nu vid Triangeln i Malmö mot iranska regimen - och för Reza Pahlavi, shahens son. Iranska och svenska nationalsången spelas. Många iranska flaggor, men inte nuvarande regimens flagga utan flaggan med lejonet från shahens tid. Även enstaka israeliska flaggor syns.

Trump’s second-term pardons are historic in their enormity—billions in fines erased, allies protected, donors rewarded, DOJ undermined, and election norms threatened. Corruption looks less like an exception and more like the rule, says Dan Greenberg. https://ow.ly/JJBt50YqcXk

This makes no sense and it is disgraceful and incomprehensible that this is the president of the United States, with lethal force at his disposal, communicating in wartime. It’s hackneyed now but it should never be: don’t normalize this.

New catalog more than doubles the number of gravitational-wave detections made by LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories news.mit.edu/2026/new-cat... The latest crop of space-time wobbles includes a variety of heavy, fast-spinning, and lopsided colliding black holes.

"In 2003, the US had spent decades working with an Iraqi opposition coming up with blueprints and plan. That has not been done with this intervention." @renadmansour.bsky.social compares the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the current US-Israeli military campaign against Iran⤵️

Well, of course they can...

Interesting that among the few advance plans we made are those that benefit Russia. See my longer essay on Oligarchic Corridors. snyder.substack.com/p/the-oligar...

Coffee, straight out of my nose.

This is a fucking travesty. “In just three days of fighting in the Middle East, more than 800 Patriot missiles were used — more than Ukraine has received throughout the entire Russian full-scale invasion.” (A year’s worth of production or more, btw) kyivindependent.com/over-800-pat...

This map offers a pretty good explanation of why Turkey is never thrilled when the US talks about backing Kurdish rebel groups in Iran. It also shows why the impact of such groups in Iran is extremely limited, even if they are successful.

#OTD in 1934 Harry Knox patented the rubberized tank track link. This might not have seemed like a big deal at the time, but it set the trend in American tank building for the next decade. #tanks #history

Trump’s Iran War is not going to be ending anytime soon. And calling for a country to surrender unconditionally means it is unarguably a war that requires a declaration of war.

Hemvärnet behöver fler förare, men har inte tid att utbilda som förr. När ambitionen krockar med verkligheten riskerar vi att tappa både kompetens och engagemang. Det är dags att renodla utbildningen: fokusera på det nödvändiga, få fler operativa förare – snabbare. militardebatt.com/2026/03/06/k...

"The U.S. is being run by gung-ho nutters like Trump and Hegseth."……. Former NATO commander and British General Sir Richard Shirreff delivers a stark warning for Britain to avoid being dragged into America's illegal war on Iran. -Analyst News

"I hope you are impressed," he said to me. "How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better. How do you like the performance?" "How do you like the performance?" An illegal war for the sake of spectacle and the amusement of POTUS.

The Misconception That Air Supremacy Has Been Achieved Over Iran While there are areas where air superiority exists over Iran, total air supremacy has not been achieved, which should be no surprise. www.twz.com/news-feature...

The JSOC experience: arrive, murder a member of the armed forces of a nation who we want to be a partner, leave. The use the language of "clash" but the additional reporting is that a column sent out to investigate what was happening got air striked with no warning. www.rudaw.net/english/midd...

in fairness that's not exactly DoD's job on paper, but that's also why you have an interagency involving State and others that scopes the bounds for a conflict which are transmitted from the APNSA to SD; this is what happens when instead of that you have 3 marcos rubio in a trenchcoat

Genomsnittshastigheten motsv ungefär 30km/h. Nu vet jag inte om det är direkttåg (det verkar vara det) men i så fall hade ju varit fint att få upp det till 50km/h. Då hade det gått på två dagar. jarnvagar.nu/direkttag-pa...

For the last few days the President of the USA and the White House communications team have been active agents of Russian influence, spreading the Putin narrative and trying to undermine democracy.

whole lot of you need to come to the realization that as moronic and illegal as this war was and as far as no actionable strategic goals the US actually had, by the weekend it's mostly gonna be donezo and just a question of how much stuff we wanna keep bombing for fun/nominally killing goons

Iraqi government has been working super hard to prevent or at least limit Shi'a militias from fighting directly for the Iranian regime. I suspect it will be near impossible to prevent the direct involvement of Shi'a militias after "Kurdish forces" have entered the chat.

Some of this stuff could be lifted word for word from a British colonial office briefing in the 20s

I have a pit in my stomach thinking through the many ways in which this goes very, very wrong.

Good plan, there’s no way that the US would ever betray Kurds who fought on their behalf, or that Turkey would be upset by and seek to frustrate any US-backed Kurdish forces, or that an invasion from Iraq would trigger Iranian nationalist opposition. None of those things have ever happened.

This will not cause any issues for Iraq whatsoever, right? RIGHT?

This is what “regime change” means for Trump. No freedom for the Venezuelan, no democratic vote, just leave the old dictatorial system in place with most of the same people.

an example: it's probably possible right now/soon, to create an AI tool that searches the web for people whose online presence betrays feelings of loneliness/latent mental health issues, finds them, then creates multiple virtual friends or even entire communities, & pushes them to violence

Det här är en mycket välskriven och kunskapsrik artikel av Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi om utvecklingen i Iran efter krigsstart och dödande av Khamenei. Rekommenderas. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

This is a good piece, but I am struck by how he explains that Trump's brazenness has taken every 'congress must authorize' and turned it into 'congress needs a super-majority to stop.' And I think the solution, to be frank, is in 2029 to put administration officials on trial for their illegality.

Performance for one, really. It'll be picked up by chud influencers, laundered through X. Jesse Watters will celebrate it, so will Hannity. Maybe someone will call The Old Man and tell him he thinks Hegseth is solid. Professionals hear this and know a clown is speaking.

Of great interest, good decision

Hur lutar en cykelbana? cykelmagasinet.se/hur-lutar-en...

Price of oil is up. USA is running down stocks of Patriot Missiles. European states are deploying force outside of Europe. Yep, the only real winner so far from Trump's decision to bomb Iran is.....Vladimir Putin. Funny that.

CNN put together a montage of the regime's incoherent talking points about Trump's war on Iran

Explain to me again why this can't be done over Ukraine?

"There’s a scramble by the administration and GOP sycophants to cobble together some Rube Goldberg contraption combining international law, domestic law, and executive authority that would somehow make this totally cool and legal, but there’s no way to make it work."

Pete Hegseth's crazed rants at reporters reveal that Trump's rationales for attacking Iran are incoherent, confused, and based on lies. Dems don't have to take refuge in criticizing Trump's war on purely procedural grounds. They can go much harder. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2072...