🇵🇸Martin “Doomsday” Pfeiffer🖖🏳️‍🌈

Dower’s (1999) “Embracing Defeat” has outstanding discussions of the efforts the USA expended to protect Hirohito from his war responsibility during the occupation & set up of Tokyo Trials.

Incidentally…

….Japanese surrender offer (w/condition of retaining emperor) post-Soviet entry into war & atomic attacks on the cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki took Truman and USA leadership by surprise.

USA didn’t decide on a policy about the Emperor until into the occupation.

a penguin with a red white and blue headband is holding a stick ALT: a penguin with a red white and blue headband is holding a stick

All tools shape their users.

a cartoon of spongebob with a bucket on his head that says cb Alt: spongebob squarepants an anthropomorphic square yellow undersea sponge with a bucket on his head that says cb and it’s mouth open and making a “blah blah” gesture with hand as though it is a mouth.

5/5

unconditional surrender & invasion & occupation are regime change (or colonization) demands.

for Trump et al Regime, likely that maximalist demands partly papers over a lack of clearly defined strategic goals & rational articulation of force to those goals

4/n

Along with slaughtering everybody the USA might negotiate with, the USA maximalist demand of “unconditional surrender” further enables desperate, rigid, & existentially driven resistance.

What are the incentives to end the war for Iranian decision makers?

Anti-thesis: humans use shape their tools to their need

Synthesis: tools and users co-construct each other

an older woman says it 's a bad idea in front of a tv land logo Alt: an older white woman with a bouffant hairdo and glasses wearing a red jacket says “it’s s a bad idea”

3/n

Would you surrender unconditionally to Donald Trump & his Regime?

A demand of “unconditional surrender,” if maintained, virtually guarantees the necessity & use of large scale ground forces to invade and occupy Iran to achieve that “stated goal.”

2/n

FURTHERMORE, as was well recognized then & now, the “unconditional surrender” formula was a Problem for everyone in ending the Pacific-Asia wars of WWII.

For the Potsdam Declaration “Proclamation of terms for Japanese surrender” see:

www.ndl.go.jp/constitution...

Four images of my cat with a blank stare. Each one zooms in more

Middle East crisis live: Israel bombs Tehran and Beirut as Trump says no deal with Iran ‘except unconditional surrender’ Israel launched huge attacks on Iran and Lebanon overnight

I *really* dislike the deployment of World War II, USA on Japan rhetoric, here, for reasons obvious (nukes, maximalist, not helpful) & otherwise.

Esp given USA did not in fact demand unconditional surrender (as indicated by Potsdam Declaration “Here are our terms…” & Byrnes note”).

1/n

Humanity heating planet faster than ever before, study finds Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño

And then horrors awake:

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Fucking. Nightmares.

Good night Bluesky.

Together is the only way we build liveable todays and tomorrows.

“Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne remains a brilliant, and brilliantly written, presentation of self-destructive streak of paranoia & self-righteousness larded through USA social life.

“We destroyed 30 ships.” Does that mean ships can pass through the strait of Hormuz? “We dropped dozens of 2K bombs on underground launchers.” Does that mean commercial airliners can fly through?

This is misleading because it compares to the opening surge, not Iran’s total capability. Early barrages are usually the peak; declines reflect expended salvos, dispersal, pause, etc not necessarily destroyed stockpiles or production capacity. It measures tempo, not long-term military capability

It would be premature to conclude x, y, z. Given Regime boasting of use of “Gen AI” for strike planning it is a reasonable line of speculation at prima facie level.

And, irrespective of use of LLM/LIM/“gen ai”, a human is responsible.

a war of chosen aggression is by definition bad policy.

3/3

Yes yes assuming “gen AI” involved as the Regime has boasted etc etc.

Also it is known whose munition it was ffs.

And yeah this…this is all bad.

Irrespective, a human is ultimately responsible, WOPR target choice or not.

2/2

*opportunity to debate how many civilians it is acceptable to slaughter to keep using the WOPR machine which will keep telling us to slaughter civilians as seen in Israel attacks on Gaza.

At least Omelas was just one child.

*presses hand to ear*

Oh no.

"The US hasn't killed this many civilians in the Middle East before."
Stares in Iraq what the fuck are you talking about?

Leaving aside the position that this is a war of aggression and of choice & all the killing by the USA is murder to begin with…

…this seems like a prima facie hard fail* of integrating LLM/LIM “generative AI” into strike planning (as USA has boasted of doing).

1/2

What has happened is what one could expect to happen if one was observing what went wrong with how Israeli has been prosecuting its war against Hamas: the programs produce so much output so swiftly that it functionally takes the humans out of the process. I did a 🧵 on this back on 18 FEB. 7/

Thread.

Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say Military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday, two U.S. officials told Reu...

Reuters Exclusive

"U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school."

"The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the ​Middle East."

Worse than the worst War on Terror drone strikes. By innocents killed, worse than multiple of the worst drone strike errors combined.

I mean.

Well done on the cheese devouring. I am proud.

I was wondering if you knew where the bathrooms are. That would require the immediate removal of all military assets, which would make our American service members, our bases, and our allies very vulnerable. Ours requires the President to get a vote within thirty days if this thing were to continue or move beyond the very targeted strikes on military assets

criterion edition of the tweet: the same questions, but with the answer of the actual interview left intact

There are important lessons here regarding biosecurity & pandemic preparedness here.

But there is no public health so long as we leave the Trump Regime & RFK Jr et al in power.

Congress can end this tomorrow.
Will they?

Almost certainly not.

A diversity of tactics is all the more important.