Yep, it's an advertisement for an "exclusive" northern lights resort.
As an aside, I read articles about Finland out of personal interest, being of Finnish descent, usually trying to pronounce the places and names for practice. Näkkäläjärvi is a hell of a name, at least for my Americanized palate.
The Finns are an admirable people! As a high school distance runner many years ago, Lasse Viren was one of my heroes. And apparently today they are exceptionally entrepreneurial.
The most important part of a false flag is to have media support pushing the false narrative before any alternative narratives have a chance, and Iran definitely doesn't have that. The uncertainty about who was attacking and these late revelations make it even less likely to be a false flag, IMO. Everybody was expecting this to be the Russians.
> these late revelations make it even less likely to be a false flag
I don't think the timing of the announcements shifts the balance much against the possibility of the attack being a false flag.
The question is: If the real culprits weren't among the convenient "usual suspects", would the French authorities have the guts to name them? My guess is no. Because if you name a specific country as being involved, you also need to take action against it, or you risk appearing weak and meek in the eyes of your own citizens.
So, there may have been political pressure during the investigation and/or its interpretation to steer it towards a convenient outcome:
- "Iranian IP address" you said? It was them after all! I knew it! I knew it!
France has been the most bellicose in rhetoric among European states, and they've given assistance to the Saudis in their conflict with Yemen. Given that Iran seems to view all these conflicts as different parts of a broader geopolitical and regional struggle, choosing to target France makes some sense. In the context of France's current political troubles it makes less sense to meddle and invite backlash, but perhaps they think that they will have the sympathy of the protesters and large immigrant community in France.
List of countries Iran has attacked: Israel, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Azerbeidjan, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Greece, Oman, Syria, Azerbaijan, Turkey and of course US forces.
Of course, they targeted civilians in all of the above countries.
And if you include attacks on ships, the list goes all the way from China to Paraguay and has dozens of entries. Essentially all civilian as well, meaning their attacks against actual military ships were a minority of their attacks.
Of those, perhaps Israel and maybe Qatar can be considered defensive actions. And perhaps the attack on Greece was accidental (really aiming for a US ship in the Mediterranean)
If you made a full list of everything Iran has the physical ability to hit and compared to the list they did hit, the only missing countries would be Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Armenia.
I must say, it also seems to me unlikely in the extreme the French immigrant community, or anywhere in Europe, would significantly be on Iran's side. First, they're largely economic migrants, suffering due to Iran's actions. Second, they're largely from countries Iran attacked. Third, they're Sunni, not exactly Iran's traditional allies. Fourth: they're not making any money of Iran.
So ... maybe it's just me but I don't think rhetoric is the problem here.
This comment makes it seem as if all these other countries were just standing around peacefully and Iran decided to attack them for no reason. The majority of those countries host US bases, many of which were used to stage attacks on Iran, and all of which are fair targets in a war started by the US (and Israel). It's also extremely puzzling, to say the least, why you would say that "perhaps" their attacks on Israel could be considered defensive, when Israel is one of the two that started this last war.
Exactly. France also has very few migrants from the countries 'Iran attacked': they're largely from North African and Francophone African countries. A lot of inconsistencies and half facts in that comment.
> Of course, they targeted civilians in all of the above countries.
I haven't dug into it deeply, but I was under the impression that most of the Iranian targets were US bases and US-owned oil fields/energy infrastructure, with relatively few domestic civilian interests harmed. Am I mistaken?
I doubt the public in any country cares much about Iran's blockade, given that the US has "counter-blockaded" and claimed ownership and control of the stait. Iran was attacked first, then sneak attacked during negotiations, and has maintained a coherent and consistent policy during negotiations. Common people are sympathetic and view them as the underdog.
> Third, they're Sunni, not exactly Iran's traditional allies.
Muslims are far less divided than Western policy-makers imagine IMO, most have solidarity WRT Palestine and broader Middle Eastern geopolitics regardless of sectarian affiliation. Iran has been mostly successful in tying their struggle to the issue of Israel/Palestine, especially with the recently-interested younger people in western countries who have less reflexive reaction against Iran.
First, in many places (UAE for example, also Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel) they definitely did aim at civilians. For example, they aimed at civilian airport terminals in Israel and Saudi Arabia.
And for the military targets, it's just as accurate to say that Iran just doesn't have the technology to actually reliably aim for military forces and still fired at everything they could find, and this increased by a lot after it became clear almost none of their attacks on military targets actually landed. The result was explosives delivered in people's bedrooms.
From the published results, only 3 rockets/drones, out of tens of thousands, actually hit their targets. And one of those was ... people died so we don't criticize. But let's just say that the commander of those soldiers who died made a very suboptimal decision (hours) before they died.
The hits on civilians are despite those military bases targeted being hundreds of kilometers away from the civilians who died. One issue was that they used the same drones Russia is firing at Ukraine (some were Russian-made, even) and flew as low as possible, without avoiding highrise buildings on the flight path. They even hit civilians in Iran.
And can I just add: THIS you consider the US using human shields, but Iran putting a school of minority children on a military base without so much as a sign isn't using human shields? WTF.
Israel and the KSA have been shipping arms via their so called civilian airports.
> none of their attacks on military targets actually landed.
That they bothered to tell you about. They devastated the US bases so much the US can't operate out of them. You have to be a fool if you think only 3 rockets hit their targets.
I'm not going to bother addressing the other parts. You are just repeating some mixture of incoherent propaganda.
> Of those, perhaps Israel and maybe Qatar can be considered defensive actions.
The regime started a proxy war against Israel decades ago, financing Hisbollah and eventually also Hamas, both with the official goal of destroying Israel.
Before the regime came into power, Iran had good relations to Israel.
So no, there's nothing 'defensive' when it comes to Iran's actions.
Actually, after the regime came into power they also had good relations with Israel. As long as they thought they could win the Iran-Iraq war they kept good relations (Iran-Iraq war: 2 years of Iraq attacking Iran, 7 years of Iran attempting to conquer Iraq). In fact Israel saved many high ranking Iranian officials from Iraqi assassination.
Just shows: dictators will show no loyalty or gratitude. The second they can use you as a cheap excuse to stay in power and abuse that power, you better believe it will happen that very second.
Iran has shown they will abuse everyone every way they can. This is the regime that is SO pure in their religious beliefs they distributed "plastic keys to heaven" to their cheapest demining equipment (primary school children, to the point that one problem was sometimes the kids weren't yet heavy enough that they wouldn't trigger an anti-personnel mine that an adult soldier coming later would still not be safe)
Greed and laziness are both motivating forces for humans. Sometimes they motivate people to productive ends, but not always; eg. all too often the "greater efficiency" of the lazy is achieved through cutting corners rather than optimizing processes. It seems to me that the character and principles of the actor matter a lot more in determining whether any action taken will be positive than their motivations.
Successful military spending always appears to be "wasted" if you think the point is to use weapons. War means that your defense strategy has failed, peace means that it has succeeded. Never having to use what was stored in those bunkers means that they served their purpose.
By this logic people can justify almost anything. I can say that we should’ve sent dinosaur clones to the moon because otherwise something bad is going to happen. Then we send the dinosaurs to the moon and nothing bad happens, and it justifies the action.
It’s the same insanity gun owners use justifying bringing weapons everywhere they go.
I simply don’t buy the argument, though I do see your point about deterrence
Might you have heard the old saw "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands"?
Military spending is similar - you want security at the minimum cost.
Unfortunately, military conflicts (real and potential) have vastly more complexity and uncertainty than the gravity, wind, traffic loads, etc. that a bridge has to withstand. And even a nation's best experts (generally its senior military officers) generally have motives at odds with minimum-cost security for their nation.
Professional robbers aren't really a thing. It's more a lifestyle, and it tends to be quite short. Many people who would consider robbing others would kill for 50k, because most robbers and thieves are not rational profit maximizers, to say the least. 50k is the kind of money that makes normal people start getting ideas, let alone criminals.
It's also commonly used in the US. I've never heard it of it being associated with the commonwealth at all - based on the vulgarity I always assumed it was a native production.
Some of the most beautiful English-language writing I've read is describing the interplay of light and shadow under a canopy. This is an area where I think having a single word description is a linguistic loss.
I find having the word "komorebi" to be a conceptual gain. I can more-readily notice this beautiful occurrence because I have this easy-to-grasp concept in my mind.
ps - the existence of this word does not prevent authors from using more words to describe the situation ;)
Petrichor isn't very evocative though? It sounds more like it should be a description of a scab or something than a smell, and I guess maybe it rains too much where I live but the smell of rain isn't something I have a strong feeling about, it's just a warning to get inside.
Wealth imbalances are bad largely because many assets have upper limits on available quantity, ie. the amount of land in most countries is relatively stable. If those assets are hoarded by a relatively small number of people, it's much harder for less wealthy people to become more wealthy. Our entire socioeconomic system is based on the premise that one can work hard and change their lot, so making sure that's actually possible is important for societal stability even if you don't have any religous/moral/ethical qualms about hoarding wealth.
First the premise of our socioeconomic system. I disagree entirely. Our system is premised on the thesis that if you are useful to others, they are willing to reward you for the utility you bring them; and that it is advantageous for us collectively to preserve a rule of law whereby people might interact safely in this way.
One might work hard and fail or one might work lightly and succeed. Bulletball guy certainly worked a lot harder than many product managers I know.
Now the question of assets of limited supply. That’s sound. But that’s a distribution of assets of limited supply problem. It is entirely possible to have great wealth inequality with low land ownership concentration - in the US 67% of people live in owner-occupied housing. Scotland has much higher land ownership concentration - but lower wealth inequality.
So fixed supply asset concentration can exist without wealth inequality - which, to be clear, is the form of inequality I was talking about considering the original post is about it.
That's representative democracy. There's not really any practical ways to delegate power without enabling corruption, so corruption is more or less inevitable without radical levels of transparency and public oversight.
As an aside, I read articles about Finland out of personal interest, being of Finnish descent, usually trying to pronounce the places and names for practice. Näkkäläjärvi is a hell of a name, at least for my Americanized palate.
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