Malazan Empire: Grief - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

I think regardless of the seniority there should be consequences for those who have blatantly committed crimes, including lying to protect their boss. There's a question of public trust, as well as trying to make sure people are incentivized to say no the next time someone asks them to follow illegal orders. I'm not holding my breath obviously.

Personally I think the most important consequences need to go wider than specific politicians. Overturn citizens united, split up the concentrated media empires, and ideally reform elements of the judicial and electoral system.

Otherwise the message is that it's totally fine to encourage, fund, and facilitate any horror you like as long as you stay one degree away.

There are good reasons that other countries have often made structural changes after getting through a governance/constitutional crisis.

The most important thing is changing structures to avoid future crises. Punishing the most recent one does matter too. The democrats managed neither thing after the first Trump administration.

Cause, on 18 April 2026 - 01:03 AM, said:

That's a very debateable (and debated) statement. The word "instigated" does a lot of lifting.

American perspectives on the coup like to blame the British, typically by arguing they took advantage of America's paranoia about the spread of communism. This glosses over the fact that the British had no meaningful ability to pull of the coup by themselves. Mossadegh expelled their staff in late 1952, almost a full year before the coup itself. The Americans on the ground were instrumental both to the build up of the operation and its success on the day.

It also glosses over US support for the oil blockade in the lead up, that the US persistently negotiated on the side of the UK when push came to shove during the crisis, the fact that US oil companies were arguably the largest beneficiaries of the coup, and continued US support for the Shah in subsequent years.

Britain absolutely wanted the coup and absolutely encouraged the Americans to do it, and obviously the nationalisation of British oil interests kicked off the crisis, but the coup itself relied on Americans and could not have happened without them. The same US administration proved perfectly capable of going against British interests when it suited them, demonstrated most obviously at Suez in the same period. It's not like the Americans had no agency over their foreign policy, and no responsibility for its aftermath.

To state the obvious: the British are not in charge of the CIA.

The coup is fundamentally an American decision.

The IRGC suck but if our standard for justifiable war is going to be "has funded terrorism" then the US doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. It's hardly been above funding what it would politely call insurgent militia groups.

There are a lot of horrible governments around the world. The more that starts being fair grounds for invasion the less hope there is to maintain a reasonable set of international norms and slow nuclear proliferation.

Mentalist, on 13 April 2026 - 12:21 AM, said:

It would fairly definitely get veto'd. Much like the sith there always seem to be at least two...

I'm not sure that problem is the only thing preventing the EU removing a Member's vote in any case. You only ever need one ally or one country that just doesn't want to strip away voting rights on principle. Article 7 proceedings have never seriously looked like they would get there.

The Eurosceptic populist camp has lost a heavy hitter with Orban and I'm hopeful it's enough to pass Ukraine aid. Slovakia has elections next year. Whether that means Fico will mess around more or less we'll see, but in any case we can't expect Orban's departure to fix the EU. Don't get me wrong though, it's far better than the scenario where he's starting a new term with no change in sight.

The Czechs had an election recently so Babis is somewhat in that position, unfortunately.

 Tiste Simeon, on 12 April 2026 - 10:06 PM, said:

It's always easy for countries to stay in the shadow while it is available but that equally makes it hard to judge how they'll behave once it's gone. I'm not very optimstic but we'll see. Slovakia remains heavily dependant on Russian energy.