randomquery

At least as far as I understand these 12 countries are starting to implement these measures immediately, and on 20 September they will invite more UN states to join the initiative. It's likely that potential states that will be willing to join are among the ones that attended the meeting, but there doesn't seem to be a commitment from participants that they will also implement the measures come September.

I found this article that mentions Portugal:

Hague Group members Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, and Senegal will attend the summit. Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela will also take part.

Notably, so will NATO members and U.S. allies Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey.

Though, it's unclear how much any of these countries will do, seems so far they just participated in the meeting.

Not sure how relevant most of these are to most of the countries participating. The first three are important, for sure, but who in this list is providing arms to Israel? The last two just seem like international law magical thinking.

Yes, I agree completely, doesn't sound like much, unless other countries join this shouldn't be much of a deterrent for Israel.

The "Hague Group" announced measures against Israel at Bogotá conference.

To kickstart that process, 12 states from across the world — Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Africa — committed to implementing the six measures immediately through their domestic legal and administrative systems to break the ties of complicity with Israel’s campaign of devastation in Palestine — and set a date of 20th September, to coincide with the 80th UN General Assembly, for additional states to join them. Consultations with capitals across the world are now ongoing.

Around 30 countries participated at the meeting (including, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and China), though it's unclear which states are willing to join this initiative in September.

Can you explain to me your disappointment? To me, at least for now, this seems like a neutral or slightly positive outcome given the last few weeks. Isreal (in agreement with the USA) tried to perform a surprise decapitating strike to Iran hoping to lead to regime change. Iran was able to absorb and consolidate and responded by bombing Israel. Iran didn't attack Israel to stop the genocide but only to defend its sovereignty. I understand for people to wish that Iran continues to bomb Israel until the genocide stops, but this was not the reason they started bombing to begin with.

Of course the final analysis depends on what happens to Iran's nuclear program, and what will happen to the resistance in the future but a stop in the aggression between Iran and Israel doesn't give us information about this. For now, Iran managed to withstand an attempt to overthrow its government, and persuaded the USA not to start a bombing campaign of its own.

I understand that you are from the region, have family there, and I would genuinely like to understand your perspective here.

For once I would be happy with the nothing ever happens gank getting a W here.

I think their criticism is based on idealism. They claim (unsure whether sincerely or not) that we categorically consider western powers as uniquely evil (or that we axiomatically consider that). They fail to see that we recognize the western powers as uniquely evil in the particular historical context of actual existing capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

In the comment I reply to, you say:

We literally have Trump on the brink of pulling the trigger. The nightmare scenario that has haunted me since before the election is already happening.

If you agree that Harris would pull the trigger without hesitation what is the nightmare scenario here? That Trump wouldn't pull the trigger? I doubt there is is even a chance the US will not go through with this war. Trump is not the one making the calls, Trump is just making the show. The unfortunate reality is that it's a possibility that Trump's instincts are at times less genocidal than the calculations of the US establishment.

Harris would have pulled the trigger with 0 hesitation. Once October 7 happened, the war with Iran was already extremely likely and with how things developed it was becoming certain. Harris said in her campaign that Iran is the greatest adversary of the USA and that "preventing Iran form acquiring a nuclear weapon" was her "top priority". Trump is senile so the people actually in power (led by Rubio probably here, very much like Blinken was with Biden) have to coax him to press the button. The foreign policy of the American empire, especially when it comes to matters of war, is not affected by whatever clown they put at the head. Democrats and Republics are in perfect unison. Schumer was the one who castigated Trump on being too soft to Iran.

"Axios": Trump wants to ensure that the attack on Iran is "necessary" and that it will not lead to the United States being drawn into a prolonged war in the region

https://xcancel.com/ME_Observer_/status/1935474379409731979

In this article I gave that introduces this metric, it has some explanations as to why they think this is a reasonable metric, though I don't think that it directly corresponds to "net resources". I think the point is that having a larger population to take care of requires more resources, hence making it more difficult to project global power, when comparing 2 countries with similar resources.

As far as I understand, It is the GDP (of a country) times the GDP of that country per capita, and then normalized. For example ChinaGDP * ChinaGDP/Chinapopulation is 10 times smaller than USGDP * USGDP/ USpopulation. This paper argues this is a better predictor of power projection.