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Dimon Warns of 'Most Dangerous Time in Decades' (nytimes.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
JPMorgan Chase's chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is as close as Wall Street has to a statesman, and on Friday he sounded a major alarm about the global effects of the conflict in Israel and Gaza. From a report: "This may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades," he said in a statement accompanying the bank's quarterly earnings. He warned of "far-reaching impacts on energy and food markets, global trade and geopolitical relationships."

For Mr. Dimon, weighing in on geopolitics isn't new: He consistently warns of dangers from the war in Ukraine and elsewhere. On Friday, he said he was preparing the nation's largest bank for a range of scary outcomes, with other risks including high inflation and rising interest rates. But on a call with reporters, he described the Gaza conflict as "the highest and most important thing for the Western world." Otherwise, JPMorgan and other big banks appear to be operating smoothly. JPMorgan's profit rose to $13.2 billion in the third quarter, a 35 percent rise from the same period last year. Executives at the bank said the tumult of the regional banking crisis of the spring, which resulted in JPMorgan taking over First Republic, was steadily fading. "U.S. consumers and businesses generally remain healthy," Mr. Dimon said, "although, consumers are spending down their excess cash buffers."
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Dimon Warns of 'Most Dangerous Time in Decades' More

Dimon Warns of 'Most Dangerous Time in Decades'

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  • I've had enough of the banker wars. Dimon and his like should be thrown into the front lines to fight these wars, the money changers will have their due. Watch the VIX, watch all the indicators in the coming weeks for an event to happen. And then financial collapse. The big banks win, the small ones break, but it's always the banks gains and our losses. Brood of vipers.

  • Most dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bumbul ( 7920730 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:34PM (#63923077)
    "he described the Gaza conflict as "the highest and most important thing for the Western world.""

    About two thousand miles away there is a WAR ongoing with half a million people dead and over a million wounded. How come this Gaza thing would be more important, especially as Russia probably also is the mastermind organizing Gaza activities through their ally Iran.

    • Re:Most dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:40PM (#63923087)

      Indeed. Gaza is pretty much irrelevant in comparison. But each side in Gaza has their friends and they are trying to make that thing look much more important than it is to get more support for their side. In comparison to Russia on one side and NATO on the other, both sides in Gaza are small-time. And yes, that does not help the civilians stuck in any of these conflicts one bit.

      • It's far from irrelevant. It has the potential to involve Iran, which will involve the US. I know it's the internet, but it is just possible for things not to be black and white. Ukraine is important, and so is Gaza.

        But each side in Gaza has their friends and they are trying to make that thing look much more important than it is

        Israel would be happy if everyone would leave them alone to crush Hamas and Hezbollah. They don't need any help. Hamas is the one that called on other nations to attack Israel.

      • And Russia loves that it happens now.

        The methods that Hamas uses aren't that different from the Russian methods.

    • I can only assume that think this conflict will disrupt the oil industry which has serious knock-on effects for everything else. Ukraine/Russia war did a number on global food supplies and this war could hurt the global energy market. Ironically, that just means this might be a really good time to buy US energy stock because we could step in and sell if their is disruption in the Middle East.

      • Re:Most dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)

        by taustin ( 171655 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:52PM (#63923125) Homepage Journal

        Russia is - or rather, was - the second biggest oil exporter in the world, and the second biggest natural gas exporter as well. The war in Ukraine has already had a significant effect on the world energy market. Just ask all the shivering people in Germany.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zurk ( 37028 )

          germany did it to themselves by shuttering their nuclear plants and burning lignite coal for base load and exporting all their renewables insead of adding hydropower pumped storage.i dont have sympathy for people who do dumb things.

          • i dont have sympathy for people who do dumb things.

            The idea was that if you tie Russia's economy to the EU's, then it greatly reduces the chances of war. Nobody wants to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. It's a good plan, assuming everyone behaves rationally.

            The problem is the WW2 generation is gone in Europe. They forgot. Who would think Hitler would invade France? That'd be irrational. Sadly it appears the rational peoples of the world need a good war now and then to remind them. History books aren't enough.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by sjames ( 1099 )

              Too late, Putin has already behaved irrationally.

            • The idea was that if you tie Russia's economy to the EU's, then it greatly reduces the chances of war. Nobody wants to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. It's a good plan, assuming everyone behaves rationally.

              That's not how it works. Oil is fungible. If you tied your energy dependency to another country, they lose nothing by cutting you off because they can just sell to someone else. It's just dumb to put your country's entire energy security in someone else's hands. Full stop.

              • That's not how it works. Oil is fungible.

                Pipelines that stretch for thousands of miles and take decades to complete aren't fungible. Oil isn't like a burrito cart you wheel down to the next street corner. You need infrastructure to ship and receive it and a market with $ to buy and burn it. Russia is selling to China now, at a veritable loss because it's expensive and slow to ship, and China is paying bargain basement prices.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by r1348 ( 2567295 )

          Russia still is the second world exporter of oil, it simply redirected it to the Asian markets that are ignoring the oil price cap.
          China and India can buy a lot of oil.

        • It doesn't matter quite as much. Russia still needs to sell to someone and most countries have embargoed their exports. Of course China will still buy from them. But that means the countries that China previously purchased from have to find new buyers. Germany and other Eurozone countries are looking to buy. Natural gas isn't as easy to resolve because shipping large quantities requires a pipeline to be done efficiently.

          Germany will probably except a few thousand excess deaths due to heating shortages. T

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            most countries have embargoed their exports

            That's in error, most of the countries on Earth are ignoring the US-ordered embargo, representing over 2/3 of the population on the planet.

        • OPEC already had to cut production on oil to keep up the price.

          Most EU countries are heavily subsidising heat pump installations so natural gas is less and less of a problem. Germany has built 2 new large LNG terminals and other countries are finally looking at large gas pipes networks (France was holding back on a pipe from Spain till recently).

          The Russian/Ukrainian war has sped up all sorts of market changes that were due to happen anyway. That's usually the effect of wars: existing trends speed up.

        • Then ask them about inflation and their outlook on the world.

    • Re:Most dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:50PM (#63923119) Homepage Journal

      And Ukraine is actually a major food exporter. How much wheat do they grown in Gaza?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Russian war is not a religious war. The conflict in Gaza is.

      Religion counterintuitively makes people less moral and more evil (Knights Templar, anyone?). Hell bent on destruction of everything and everyone at any cost because their god says so. Not unlike Japan v America in WWII except the religious fanatics are even worse than that. You could nuke the hell out of them and it won't do anything. Even if they got everything they wanted, they will never stop terrorizing the rest of the world.

      As a victim it

      • The Russian war is not a religious war. The conflict in Gaza is.

        True. It's the same people separated by two religions.

    • Because it's really a proxy war between the Arab League + Iran with Russia and China loosely allied vs. USA, Europe, and India now beginning to loosely ally more with the West. The awkward balance of US-Pakistan relations becomes a huge question mark--a strange bedfellow of India's nuclear opponent that doesn't want to get sucked in to Islamic radicalism if it can help it, but doesn't want to concede Kashmir either and how did I get to Kashmir?

      That's the point. This conflict carries us in to places you mi

      • You think Saudi Arabia is on the same side as Iran in this? Most of the countries in the region are done with this conflict, and just want to trade. Palestine is nothing for them.

        • No, I'm aware that the Saudis are in tension with Iran. That has more to do with Sunni vs. Shia. The "arab street" OTOH, is another matter. The Saudi royal family has to maintain the theocracy. Anecdotally we know many elite Saudis board planes for the West, where the abayas come off and they party down. Then they get back on the plane, gear back up, put on their game face and cosplay fundamentalism--to preserve the regime.

          I'm pretty sure the royal family would have gone secular and traded with everybo

          • It's more than that, the Saudis can't let the Iranians get a victory through the Palestinians. To say it a different way, from the point of view of Saudi Arabia, Iran is a military threat. Israel is not.

            So yeah, the Saudis need to make happy noises in support of other Muslims, but Iran is what they worry about.

    • Suggested reading; The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. The beginning is about the web of alliances that turned an incident into WWI.

      Ukraine has other countries willing to ship in arms, but no one is willing to send in an army to help them. I thought the Poles might go in for the sake of their ethnic relatives, but it turns out Stalin evicted the Poles from Galicia. (He didn't like them either.) Poland might not mind getting Galicia back, but are they really willing to bleed all over it? They are not even

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bumbul ( 7920730 )

        Ukraine has other countries willing to ship in arms, but no one is willing to send in an army to help them.

        It's not about willingness to send in an army - I's about willingness to not to escalate the conflict. Instead, the West is boiling the frog (Russia) slowly, with shipping gradually more and more powerful weapons and tightening the sanctions bit by bit. Controversially - the bigger the conflict is, the more restraint one will have dealing with it.

    • Good call on the Russian connection. Gaza will become higher priority when Israel nukes it.

    • The Palestinian conflict isn't just Israel-Palestine. It's Israel and the U.S. versus the rest of the world. The rest of the world, for examples, deems any trespassing of Israel beyond the UN-agreed (1968?) borders of Palestine as illegal and acts of war. Maps of Israel in the US are drawn by Israel, not by any international agreement, and are wildly different from the maps of the area the rest of the planet uses.

      Yet Israel, with unconditional support of the US where reactionary Christians believe their sal

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bumbul ( 7920730 )

        On top, this conflict puts a veil on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so Putin gets away with more these days.

        Yes. Like I wrote above, this conflict is probably fueled by Russia with help from Iran. Hence, this is just a "sub-conflict" to draw attention away from the main theatre, to cause some disturbance/distraction in the western countries and in this way, to support their three-day special military operation.

    • While I agree with you, the conflict has a great potential to ignite powder kegs in surrounding fundamentalist, islamist regimes and already unstable regions. It will create even greater flows of refugees not being taken care of by their alleged Muslim brothers. It furthers the already strong divide between what we perceive as the lawful modern world versus totalitarian medieval religious fanatics. It might not be as immediately pressing as Ukraine, but it is fully intended to divide the attention of the We

  • ... for JP Morgan. (Score:3)

    by rabbirta ( 10188987 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:34PM (#63923079) Homepage
    Most Dangerous Time in Decades... for JP Morgan, perhaps.

    The value of the dollar (and thus their holdings) is plummeting, for too many reasons to count. Not really a big deal to people who don't actually have any money (read: us, you, anyone who doesn't own their home, the 99%)

    Hopefully they go under.

    • the bankers will always, always come out on top. You think they'd engineer an economic system where it's possible for them to lose?

    • Inflation is a bigger problem for poorer people, who can't move their money around effectively, than it is for richer people. However, the US dollar is doing quite well compared to most other countries and interest rates are high. This is a boom time for banks (at least the ones who aren't stuck with very long term investments like Silicon Valley Bank).

      Also, JP Morgan is the biggest bank in the world, by a large margin, with $2.5 trillion in assets and if it goes under it will bring the entire economy of

  • Every country/territory/group that embraces it is heading into life of medieval style raids and sieges within decades. If you keep raiding your more technologically advanced neighbor and killing its civilians, you will eventually be neighbors with a barbarian that has better weapons. No exceptions - Pearl Harbor resulted in Hiroshima and 9/11 resulted in Abu Ghraib. CHAZ resulted in Gaza-like conditions in US within weeks. The only way to avoid it is to embrace individualism instead of tribalism and leave i

    • Every country / territory / group that exists has already embraced identity politics. That's why they're countries / territories / groups. Your solution is a nice ideal, but it has some difficulties with implementation. I'm not going to decry it entirely, there have been a lot of anarchist thinkers who believe that they've come up with ways to address these difficulties and they probably know more about it than I do.

      However, no one has been able to make it work thus far.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      So, we all need to join the individualist tribe to get away from tribalism.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iamacat ( 583406 )

        Yes? One tribe, no fighting. The meaningful difference is that one tribe does not force you into any particular religion and so on.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          The problem is that large tribes have a tendency to fracture into multiple tribes, along with a percentage of people who tend towards authoritarianism and controlling others.

  • If humans weren't crazy, this wouldn't be risky (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:43PM (#63923097)

    The Gaza / Israel conflict occurs on a land that has essentially nothing of value for anyone to fight over: there's no oil, no precious metals, no rare earths there.

    The only reason there's a conflict in the first place there, and the only reason why it might lead to a major world crisis is... religion.

    Humanity is hopeless.

    • Re:If humans weren't crazy, this wouldn't be risky (Score:4, Informative)

      by Big Bipper ( 1120937 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @02:46PM (#63923239)
      Wrong. The sea bottom just offshore from Gaza ( i.e. Gaza territorial waters ) contains about half of the gas reserves that Israel "claims" are its. If Gaza were to become really independent Israel would loose those. Think 4-5 billion dollars worth at today's prices.

      • Think 4-5 billion dollars worth at today's prices.

        4-5 billion dollars is nothing. It's like one tenth of a Twitter. Nobody wages a war over that.

      • $4-5 billion is completely negligible towards Israel's GDP ($564 billion), and also compared to the cost of this and previous wars between Israel and Hamas.

        I think it's more that Israel doesn't like it when its citizens are massacred by invaders and when neighborhoods across the country are bombarded by missiles.

    • Gods donâ(TM)t kill people. People with Gods kill people.

    • At this point it is not even about religion anymore, there is a conflict because there have been too many conflicts and too much history.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      i have no idea, but my guess would be connections to the israeli lobby, and creating a narrative supportive of adopting a "final solution" in gaza or palestine in general.

  • Just wait JPMorgan Chase (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @01:51PM (#63923121) Homepage

    Maybe most dangerous up to now. Just wait until Global Warming really kicks in due to your company still funding the Fossil Fuel "Complex".

    When people are unable to live below the 35th parallel, then the real fun begins. Billions will migrate North, causing large wars over resources and livable land.

    • Maybe most dangerous up to now. Just wait until Global Warming really kicks in due to your company still funding the Fossil Fuel "Complex".

      Maybe closing nuclear power plants while also becoming more reliant on imported natural gas (or any fuel for that matter) wasn't wise.

      I've heard Germany's attempt to wean itself off fossil fuels as learning to fly by standing on their toes. The analogy is that people think they can fly by picking up each toe one by one. That doesn't mean one can fly, it only puts the total pressure on fewer and fewer toes. At some point toes are broken or that attempt to lift the last toe means falling over. Germany put

  • I'm starting to think that humanity was never a species that was meant to have this high level of population density. Maybe we had it too good for too long. I think about those beheaded Israeli babies and all of the people that actually celebrated that. Russia's unending war crime in the Ukraine. Venezuela's decent into a North Korea clone. EU's entire "Lets flood every nation with millions of unemployable "refugees" until we destabilize every single European nation just for fun!" Canada's 1984 plan to show

    • clown world meets kali yuga
      interesting times indeed =/

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      lets ignore how all of our politicians lie about everything

      oh, you noticed? well, meet your new friends, the media. now you know where all that nonsense you've been writing just up to that sentence came from.

      • So you're saying American politicians are honest people. Nice clown uniform.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          i didn't mean that, but actually ... politicians are definitely part of the media.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Torodung ( 31985 )

        I would suspect that they think for themselves. Only small minds blame "the media." They are a diverse pool of sources of information. None of them have secret mind control rays.

        You'd think that, looking at the results, but it's mostly because humans have indiscriminate confirmation bias and like to be told how it is. Walter Cronkite even had it in his tag line. That's what the problem is.

        You could vaguely trust Walter with that responsibility. There is literally no media outlet you can trust with it now. G

    • I also believe we're a bit past peak population.

      When you hit peaks in things, such as population (carrying capacity for a region), there are knock off effects.

      War is effective population control. A terrible approach, but very effective.

      Google lists other Causes for population reduction (includes all of your examples):

      A reduction over time in a region's population can be caused by sudden adverse events such as outbursts of infectious disease, famine, and war or by long-term trends, for example, sub-replacem

  • Everybody stop killing each other - you're hurting the banks and financial institutions! Won't somebody think of all the money?!

  • Dimon doesn't have the foggiest idea of what is happening worldwide. He's just a deluded billionaire.

  • Preparing what? (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @02:10PM (#63923167)

    ... he was preparing the nation's largest bank for a range of scary outcomes, with other risks including high inflation and rising interest rates.

    I'd be more inclined to believe that with this announcement he was "preparing the nation for its largest bank to help engineer a range of scary outcomes, with goals including high inflation and rising interest rates". Not that I'm irrationally paranoid or anything like that...

  • Gaza/Israel shows why countries like buffers (Score:3)

    by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @02:11PM (#63923173)
    It is a geopolitical fact that countries like buffer zones between their enemies or even frenemies. You can see that now with Israel, if they had a buffer zone they'd have seen the attack and taken preventive measures. Would not be surprised if they now make a buffer zone.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      It is a geopolitical fact that countries like buffer zones between their enemies or even frenemies. You can see that now with Israel, if they had a buffer zone they'd have seen the attack and taken preventive measures. Would not be surprised if they now make a buffer zone.

      you're right, except they already had lots of buffer zones. in fact they have been expanding them for 80 years now:
      https://www.palestineportal.or... [palestineportal.org]

      any new push now will be the last i guess.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by piojo ( 995934 )

        you're right, except they already had lots of buffer zones. in fact they have been expanding them for 80 years now:
        https://www.palestineportal.or... [palestineportal.org]

        any new push now will be the last i guess.

        The attack took place 5 km (3.1 miles) from the border. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        So they obviously do not have a buffer (formally, a DMZ) there. They seem to need one, since Hamas isn't going to stop trying to kill them any time soon.

        • "They seem to need one, since Hamas isn't going to stop trying to kill them any time soon."

          Why would they, when Israel kills 4-5 times as many Palestinians on average as Hamas kills Israelis?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by piojo ( 995934 )

            Do you have a neutral citation that verifies and explains that (such as an international news publication that is not a mouthpiece for a government in the region)? Otherwise there's no point in engaging because I won't take it on faith or without context. Like if someone is willingly being a human shield to protect weapons and killers, their demise is not a murder but a suicide.

            • If you were to learn to use Google you would find multiple reputable international agencies all saying the same thing. If I weren't on my phone rn I would find the links for you, but you're going to have to learn to Internet instead.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by piojo ( 995934 )

                I have no way of finding proof for something I don't think is true. How would I even begin? I don't even want to type the phrases I'd have to search for, to prevent them from going into the knowledge bases of chatbots and search engines.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              How about the UN? This is from August. They note that the death toll was higher this year than normal, but it wasn't dramatically so.

              https://news.un.org/en/story/2... [un.org]

              More than 200 Palestinians and nearly 30 Israelis have been killed so far this year in demonstrations, clashes, military operations, attacks and other incidents

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by piojo ( 995934 )

                Thank you, that is a good source... though it doesn't say whether the killings are murders, unavoidable, or something in between. What I specifically want to verify is the claim that Israel is unjustly killing or murdering a ton of Palestinians. I've known Israelis and I don't think it's credible.

                (And if that's not what drinkypoo meant, why did he bring it up? Who cares about inevitable or justified killings? You know who is responsible for those? The one that commits "suicide by cop" (or in this case "suic

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by cusco ( 717999 )

                  I've met several of the "settlers" who were vacationing in Peru, and could easily believe it. These bastards boasted about sabotaging the well of the Palestinian village next to where they built their apartment building (that's what most of the "settlements" are), and then ensuring that the IDF wouldn't give the village permission to repair it. Then they laughed uproariously about building a swimming pool where the village could see, and how one of their uncles was now making money selling the village wat

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by piojo ( 995934 )

                    Ouch. That is terrible, thank you for sharing. Though I hope they were all liars, as are so many people that brag about having power.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          well, they keep settling in their buffers to drive the arabs out and then "need" to expand them again.

        • you're right, except they already had lots of buffer zones. in fact they have been expanding them for 80 years now:
          https://www.palestineportal.or... [palestineportal.org]

          any new push now will be the last i guess.

          The attack took place 5 km (3.1 miles) from the border. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          So they obviously do not have a buffer (formally, a DMZ) there. They seem to need one, since Hamas isn't going to stop trying to kill them any time soon.

          Yes they did, they had a huge wall around Gaza and a 300m buffer that extended into Gaza.

          The Music Festival massacre didn't happen because they didn't have a buffer. It happened because for defensive fortifications to be effective they need to actually be defended.

          Instead, Netanyahu prioritized settlement expansion in the West Bank, this predictably caused violence in the West Bank so they relocated forces there in response [reuters.com].

          So even when warned that a big attack was coming [bbc.com] they didn't have enough soldiers to

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • in fact they have been expanding them for 80 years now:

        False. The West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan heights were seized in the 6-day war in 1967. The Sinai was ceded back to Egypt. The others were not.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        When you attack a nation and attempt to destroy it, and lose, there are consequences. There always have been and will be.

        It's not a buffer zone when your enemy is using it to build an army to murder you in it. Gaza is now going to be an easily monitored pile a rubble. Well done Hamas. Your followers will thank you.

    • It is a geopolitical fact that countries like buffer zones between their enemies or even frenemies. You can see that now with Israel, if they had a buffer zone they'd have seen the attack and taken preventive measures. Would not be surprised if they now make a buffer zone.

      They already created a buffer zone inside Gaza [wikipedia.org]. You keep expanding that and there's not going to be a Gaza anymore.

      Otherwise, I don't understand what you think a buffer zone is going to be? In the West Bank the military regularly expels Palestinians to create buffer zones, and then opens settlements on that land [jstreet.org]. So a buffer doesn't really work if you just expand into the buffer.

      Either way, they're surrounded by Arab Muslim nations, anytime they have a border they're going to need a buffer zone. If they don

  • I can see why they're worried (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @02:11PM (#63923175)

    The war in Gaza is likely to eventually affect oil prices and production deleteriously, which will affect Morgan Chase's bottom line - and, reading the room, they've figured out the current federal government is unlikely to come up with a huge bailout for them this time around.

    • Why would it affect oil prices or production? You think that OPEC countries will cut production in response?

      And bank profits seem to correlate positively with increases in oil prices, just like oil companies. (link [sciencedirect.com]) At least for western banks.

  • Could go nuclear (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @03:16PM (#63923297) Homepage

    Why is the situation dangerous? Because Hamas is supported by Iran, at least, and likely other countries who would like Israel gone. Israel has already counterattacked into Syria. Strategically, they really ought to attack Iran, to destroy the munitions factories that produced those thousands of missiles.

    In short, the situation could escalate rapidly. If it does, and if Israel were to start losing, they could believably use nuclear weapons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Torodung ( 31985 )

      Damn. I knew I should have gone to the Barbie movie instead of what I saw.

    • >>> and if Israel were to start losing, they could believably use nuclear weapons.

      I don't think you can tar only one side with that. Israel is the only state there currently believed to have nuclear weapons, but a losing Arab state could believably use nuclear weapons also - perhaps ones currently hidden from the world, perhaps ones borrowed from a known nuclear power who has an interest in propping up the birthplace of Islam, or who simply has an interest in watching the world burn.

      Where an excha

    • OK, now we are playing this game, what if Iran were to provide certain terrorist group with a nuclear device they could detonate or use as a dirty bomb on Israeli soil in retaliation? Is this even possible?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Iran's leading clerics have issued several fatwas against the production and use of WMD of any kind, and against nuclear attacks in particular. No one, no matter how hard they've tried to manipulate the data, has ever come up with any actual evidence that Iran was ever working on a nuclear weapon. A lot of claims, but no evidence, ever.

        Part of the reason for the claims is Iran's interest in providing nuclear reactor fuel. IIRC their second largest energy resource, after oil and before gas, is some large

  • When others are greedy, be fearful. When others are fearful, be greedy. He only gives a fuck about himself and his shareholders. Fuck him and them in the ass.

  • We are entering a new phase, RuSSia has been using the internet and social media to pour oil into the fires of dividing society and with Ukraine they put their bloody grasps on some important levers of resources for the world, trying to choke Europe, flood her with starving refugees, and further the political divide and bring additional chaos. And now they certainly helped encourage Hamas to reignite the senseless violence in the Middle East, further dividing and pushing fundamental islamists to extremes. F

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