Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
There's a lot of interesting anomalies about Jesus the historical figure as opposed to Jesus the religious figure.

The carpenter thing is a much later addition to the canon. The word used to describe Joseph in earlier texts is usually translated as 'rabbi' or 'teacher'.

Nazareth is also a point of confusion. As noted above, he is often referred to as Jesus of Nazareth despite the fact that he wasn't born there. However. there was at the time a Judean insurgent group called the Nazarenes who were pretty much down on the whole 'kick the Romans out of Judea' gig.

The account of the trial and crucifixion also doesn't mesh with what we know (which is a lot) about contemporary Roman justice in the provinces. For a start, the Pharisees absolutely had authority over charges of heresy and blasphemy. They didn't need to get the Romans involved. The Romans equally weren't interested in enforcing Jewish religious rules, they only cared about public order. Crucifixion at that time wasn't a common punishment, it wasn't used for religious executions (those were mostly stonings) or for common criminals (who were usually beheaded or sent to the Circus), it was used for enemies of the state and traitors - Spartacus was crucified for example. It's interesting to note that Jesus the domestic terrorist freedom fighter, would have been subject to Roman justice and would have been crucified but Jesus the heretic preacher would not.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

e_angst posted:

GMO labeling laws are pretty much crap, though. It's getting all products on the shelves to have a label purely for the purpose of helping the marketing of a few of their competitors, implying that they are not as healthy despite absolutely no scientific evidence of that.

Like, hundreds of years ago people were scared that iron plows would poison the soil and produce toxic crops. Imagine if they had corporate brands and marketing back then, and some of those brands decided to start capitalizing on that fear and promote that their products were iron-plow free. Kinda ridiculous, right? But then imagine if they started massive campaigns to legally require every other produce to put on a label saying that it was grown in iron plow fields. It's legally-mandating some companies' marketing and feeding into the populations' false fears.

Food labelling laws in general are hilariously arbitrary and hosed up. Not to say that companies shouldn't have to label stuff, but anyone who thinks that feel-good labels like fair trade, organic, GMO free etc are anything but gimmicks is delusional.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

The Larch posted:

How about a fat goony sitcom character who moonlights as a gay porn star?

A fat goony sitcom character having sex with anyone would destroy my suspension of disbelief.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Tias posted:

I've asked this thread before, but never got an answer:

We know the NVA specifically trained its soldiers to lay AK-47 fire in front of where helicopters advanced as a personal AA measure. Did this actually work, or were most helicopters brought low with machine guns or the situations where a billion AK-wielding guys could surround them?


E: Doh, thought I was in the milhist thread :histdowns: If anyone knows I'd be happy to hear about it, though.

Helicopters are not all made equally. Transport helicopters like Hueys and Chinooks, have less armour so that they can carry more. UH-1s didn't come with armour from the factory but some were retrofitted with armoured pilot seats. The glass canopy though wasn't armoured and neither was the skin. Attack helicopters on the other hand such as Apaches, Hinds, etc are designed to be survivable in the face of return fire. They have armoured glass canopies, armoured crew compartments and plating over critical components such as electrical and fuel systems. Even the rotor blades are able to take direct hits from anything smaller than cannon fire. Boeing says the Apache is designed so that every part of the helicopter can survive hits from .50 calibre rounds.
There's footage of (IIRC) a Blackhawk getting hit by an anti-tank missile, and it just punches in one side and out the other without exploding because the fuselage is too soft to trigger the detonator.

Helen Highwater fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Jan 19, 2016

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

C.M. Kruger posted:

On the other hand a bunch of Iraqis with AK's hosed up a entire AH-64 regiment in 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala

They shot up 30 AH-64s with "cannon fire, RPGs, and small-arms all combining from multiple camouflaged fireteams" and brought down 1. The other 29 made it home despite having an average of 15-20 holes in each of them. There are very few combat aircraft where the pilots aren't the most expensive component.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Popular Thug Drink posted:

i don't see how it's so controversial to say that things changed more rapidly in the past than they did in the present. i also don't see how this constitutes an attack on the sanctity or usefulness of computers. i'm just saying that most of the things you do today is stuff that people would have done forty or sixty or seventy years ago, and wouldn't be that alien to someone from that time. but to someone from 1850 the concept of refigerated food, moving faster than 50mph, talking electronically to someone at a distance, or even buying premade clothes in a store - all things that were commonplace by 1920 - would be a huge leap in lifestyle and technology. someone who is familiar with television, telephones, and radio would pretty quickly understand a smartphone, as impressive as it may be

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced" - Asimov's Corrollary to Clarke's Law.

My loving BB-8 mobile phone powered toy would blow the mind of a guy from the 1970s. my smartphone would be unbelievable to someone from 1980. We can do stuff like launch an unmanned spacecraft that performs multiple complex orbits of other planets so that it will be in precisely the right place at exactly the right time to land on a loving comet millions of kilometres from Earth. We can create circuitry so complex that a human being literally can't understand it on a chip that's nanometres thick.

Clarke and Asimov by the way wrote science fiction that easily foretold men flying to the stars and creating very complex machines but both of them completely failed to see the communications revolution that miniaturised and exponentially more powerful computing ability would allow.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
So, in TYOOL 2016, apparently some people still think the earth is flat and that the 'globe theory' is a Masonic conspiracy.

quote:

Bobby Ray Simmons Jr, better known as BoB, American rapper and music producer, believes that the Earth is flat, according to recent tweets from his account.

The rapper – who has released hits Nothin’ on You, Airplanes and Magic – posted dozens of tweets, presenting a variety of arguments as to why modern science is wrong.

“A lot of people are turned off by the phrase ‘flat earth’ ... but there’s no way u can see all the evidence and not know... grow up,” he tweeted.

He argued that if the Earth were indeed curved, evidence of that would be apparent when looking at the horizon in the distance and distant cities would be hidden from view because of curvature.

“No matter how high in elevation you are... the horizon is always eye level ... sorry cadets... I didn’t wanna believe it either,” the rapper tweeted.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

The Larch posted:

But... distant cities are hidden from view due to the curvature.

That's just what they want you to believe. Who do you trust, BoB or your own lying eyes?

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Prester Jane posted:

Thanks you, I really appreciate hearing that you enjoyed my posts in that thread.

To answer your question, basically David Icke has popularized this theory that the Earth is in fact a slave colony for a super advanced race of 4th dimensional aliens (that happen to be Reptilian in appearence) and these aliens survive off the energy of negative human emotions. (Basically they keep us all miserable so that they can feed more.) These aliens are unable to take physical form for more than short periods of time, so in order to maintain control of the planet they have created a giant network of either willing or mind controlled accomplices.

In order to control their accomplices, thesee aliens need to be able to "tune in" to the "vibrational frequency" of our race. This is facilitated by certain genetic markers that make people more susceptible to control by the aliens. These genetic markers are most concentrated in the 13 bloodlines that make up the Illuminati ruling class, and your rank and job within the Illuminati is heavily influenced by how "pure" your bloodline is.

I believed it because I thought the "enemy" that the human race was being oppressed by must be so incredibly intelligent and so shockingly malicious that there was just no way it could be human.

I realise that when we're talking about 'evidence' for something as far out as this, there aren't exactly going to be peer researched papers in Nature or something, but what specifically leads people to settle on 4th dimensional reptilian aliens as an antagonist rather than something more mundane and credible. Where is the evidence for aliens specifically rather than say, "it's all Masons|Jews|Bilderbergers|etc"?

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

GWBBQ posted:

The moon is faked. Not the moon landings, the moon itself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3axPn65MGM

Yes because projecting a hologram over the entire surface of the moon is a far better way of covering up a secret moonbase than, for example, moon coloured tarpaulins.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
Also to be fair, he was paranoid about something and was then found dead of stab wounds inside a burning house. Sounds like his paranoia was justified, even if it was possibly misdirected.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

olin posted:

A huge part of the 9/11 truth movement is that the 3 buildings were brought down in a controlled demolition. What I'm wondering is why would they do this? Why demolish the buildings? Why not just have planes fly into the towers and let the fire in WTC 7 do whatever damage it does? Why publicly demolish these buildings? What purpose does it serve?

Also, the WTC towers were big buildings. It takes quite a lot to demolish buildings that size. Not just in 'hey that's a lot of C4' terms, but also in time and effort to get it all in place. It takes demolition teams weeks to prep tower blocks for demolition, supporting columns have to be drilled into at various heights and large amounts of explosives have to be packed in. All of that then needs to be wired up and prepared. Better hope no random janitor or facilities manager starts to wonder what that structural work is about.
So, ok, you're going to do all of that and it's going to go undetected somehow. Because conspiracy I guess. And then you're going to fly a couple of planes into the building anyhow. Even the nutbaggiest conspiracy theorists don't deny that two airliners actually hit the towers. Why then do you need the towers to be rigged to fall down to get your cassus belli? Each of those planes had ~300 people on board. Even if the towers hadn't collapsed from the impact, even if the airliners had somehow missed the towers completely, you could still confidently expect at least a few hundred fatalities on the ground when you fly a jetliner into pretty much anywhere in Manhattan. A thousand dead people in New York City isn't a materially weaker case for Eternal War than four thousand dead people in New York City.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
And I guess everyone living and working in one of the most densely populated locations on the planet, completely failed to notice any discrepancy between the CNN feed and what they could plainly see out of their windows?

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Tias posted:

Truth with modification. Nearly all organized asatru in the US are nazi twats because of the Asatruar Folk Association, and it's happening some places in Europe too, but definitely not everywhere. Also, as a non-fascist heathen, I'd argue that a lot of these people are bacon-for-brains thrill seekers who need a spiritual excuse for being racists, because their ritual and mythology is sloppy at best.

There's most definitely two kinds of pagans in Europe. There's the reconstructed-Goth/hippy types on the one hand and then there are a bunch of totally-loving-white dudes on the other who are super into Sig runes and Tyr runes for ~reasons~ and who not-entirely-coincidentally hold weird opinions about a mythical golden-age when Nordic races ran everything.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Quift posted:

Modern "science" claims that life emerged spontaneously from some sort of pri-mordial goo. This imagined process never been replicated. So I am to believe in the existence of an unknown process that can create life from non-life despite there being no evidence of such a process existing.

How is this not faith?

Dude.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Quift posted:

I didn't wish to draw further insults but I'll abide by the rules if needed.

In short. I'm not that surprised. These 28 pages were obviously redacted due to their sensitive content. From my understanding of events there was a US government cover up of the potential KSA involvement in the 9/11 attacks. This potential involvement might have been "private" or officially sanctioned (unknown). The cover up was probably motivated by importance of the KSA- USA "strategic alliance."

The allegations leveled against the KSA in the report are quite serious and plenty of the circumstances reported do raise plenty of flags. It does say that these allegations were investigated further to no avail but in my opinion it is just as likely that higher ups wished to cover up any potential KSA connection due to the risk to the USA-KSA strategic partnership.

What is most interesting to me is the timing of their release. My guess is that the very same alliance that used to be protected is now viewed as a liability.

The relationship between the USA and the KSA has deteriorated rather quickly since the Iran nuclear deal. I think Obama has worked very hard to make the US independent of Oil from the middle east and if he succeeds (which seems very likely) the KSA alliance is probably high on the list of foreign entanglements that the State Department would like to extradite itself form. This would lead to a significant geopolitical shift in the middle east.

Given the absolutely horrifying policies of the KSA the time were the USA cuts their support of the Royal family cannot come to quickly in my book.

The KSA isn't some monolithic bloc and the way that it is structured means that parts of it are effectively independent and possibly even at odds with other parts.Power is vested in the House of Saud and supreme executive power is in the King. However the princes (of which there are hundreds) have their own little fiefdoms and power-bases within that. That's why pinning blame on 'the KSA' for clandestine stuff like this is very difficult (moreso than for other nations). There are very likely factions within the KSA who were materially supporting Bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. But that's not at all the same thing as 'the KSA' providing support and there's enough difference to make it impossible to hang that kind of accusation on the KSA as a whole unless you can prove a link to the King himself.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Skinty McEdger posted:

How would you reconcile the great number of scientific discoveries that have been made as a result of conflict and especially in times of war with the belief of a "christ potential"?

I'd reconcile it by pointing out that it's not actually true.

Wartime R&D is mostly focused on incremental improvements to existing systems and finding ways to make greater amounts of stuff more reliably. In the context of existential warfare, you can't afford to divert too many resources away from stuff that's actually working in order to chase lofty ideas that might come to nothing.

The technology available at the end of WWII was still, largely the same technology available at the beginning of it; just iterated on. Even things like nuclear weapons or jet aircraft were based on pre-war developments and science. The same basic designs of frontline aircraft in 1939 were still serving in frontline squadrons in 1945. By contrast, in the late 1940s and 1950s, new fighter jets were often obsolete by the time the production lines had begun as central resources swung away from maximal production to R&D.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

QuarkJets posted:

Bingo. It's impossible to predict how technological progress would have proceeded without any defense research, and it would be a serious mistake to suggest that military research has not had peaceful benefits.
The point that was under discussion was whether or not there was more technological advancement during wartime than otherwise. Not whether military research in general has ever benefitted peacetime endeavours (which I don't expect you'd get much debate over as there are a lot of very obvious examples that can be cited).

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Quift posted:

Most governments in the world spend their money sensibly. Since most countries do not have a large arms industry they don't spend anything on military research. Instead they soend their RDN money on their universities or stuff like CERN, civil space programs etc. See, I live in the actual world. You seem to live in a world where Donald Trump and his rambling hate-speech could be seen as a rational choice.

I'm starting to get the impression that being a ignorant, stupid narcissist with neither the talent for, nor the inclination towards coherent thought might not be just a "schtick" for you; it may be a reflection of who you truly are. if that is the case I feel very strongly that we should celebrate your strong sense of self. I was taught of the importance of not degrading the mentally retarded but instead work to make them feel good about themselves in an world that is often intellectually overwhelming.

I would thus like to give you a pat on the back and a participation trophy!
This trophy is hereby given to you as a proof that you can (almost) participate in a discussion with adults. No need to thank me.



There is no ironicat emote big enough.

It's astonishing how you can be so unaware and still allowed out by yourself.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

SteelMentor posted:

The ultimate irony in all this recent wave of nonsense is that we have an actual, massive conspiracy with dangerous ramifications in the form of the Russian Hackings just sitting there in the open, but these nuts will happily pretend it never happened because it helped them in the short-term.

Funny you should say that!

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Raxivace posted:

I've always felt this is one of those sayings that should be changed slightly, perhaps to something more like "correlation does not always imply causation".

Taken as a more absolute statement it confuses me because if correlation does not imply (As opposed to outright prove) causation, then what the hell else does?

Because there needs to be additional evidence that links the correlated events to the caused event. People are really good at spotting patterns. So good in fact that we spot patterns even when they don't exist. It used to be a survival trait, the guy who was good at figuring out if the big shadow at the back of the cave was actually bear-shaped or if the moving lines in the grass were actually a tiger was less likely to get eaten. These days though it mostly manifests as a propensity to see Jesus in poptarts and evidence of massive conspiracies from lines in the sky.

If you see a correlation then that's a data point, it's not proof.

Spurious correlations.

Helen Highwater fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jan 19, 2017

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Shbobdb posted:

If these people want child sex why wouldn't they stay in positions where they can have access to it? Why go into politics or industry when you could become a teacher or a priest. I agree that true pedophiles are drawn to certain positions because it gives them access to children. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense are all the conservative businessmen and politicians who keep loving children in satanic rituals. It seems like the kid loving isn't the goal in those scenarios.

The Skull and Bones society isn't an underground gay group.

Because people aren't completely defined by their sexual preferences. I like sex with adults but I'm not limiting my employment prospects to environments where I can be around naked people.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Shbobdb posted:

I'm assuming Cushing was involved in some man boy action, as per the rules of English gentry.

Peter Cushing was a Warham. So the chances of him having sex with anything were low.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEC7dsFlvIE

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
There's also the point that, if the affairs of the world are actually being co-ordinated by a shadowy cabal, then they are doing an absolutely poo poo job. I mean the sort of poo poo job where consulting a magic 8 ball rather than some kind of long term blueprint would be more effective.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Lightning Lord posted:

Alan Moore once said


and that's always stuck with me.

When Alan 'Chaos Magician Who Worships A Roman Snake God' Moore is the most sensible person in the room, then maybe it's time to step back and re-evaluate your life.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

BENGHAZI 2 posted:

South American I think, also there's a distinct possibility that the god wasn't actually worshipped and was basically just their way of trolling people

Apparently it was originally Ancient Greek.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

Ashcans posted:

You could try giving them TB, or maybe polio. This probably won't actually change their mind at all, but on the plus side if they die from a terrible disease that can be prevented through a simple vaccine, it might motivate people in their social circle to change their mind.

I'm only barely joking, the only thing that seems to effectively change these people's minds is when they gently caress it all up and get to see what bouts of measles or some poo poo sweeping a population looks like.

Not so much actualy

Naturopathic 'doctor's kids - including a baby - get whooping cough. Possible complications include broken ribs, aneurysms and death. Antibiotics clear it up within about ten days.

quote:

Madilyn had been coughing for 60+ days. We hadn’t slept longer than 2 hours in months. UGGGGGH. Sleep, it’s for the select few parents who probably drug their kids or lock them in their rooms. That is not us. We read and cuddle to sleep every night. OH, how I just wanted to sleep for six hours straight for just one night, it would have been miraculous. The term “walking dead” described the new me. It was during this time, the first week in December that my husband sat me down, looked me in the eyes and said, “I trust you, but I am scared that one of our kids is going to die. You know it is just a matter of time before Millie develops whatever it is that Madilyn and Lucien have. It’s going to be bad, Heather. I think we need to go to the hospital. What are you thinking?”

Part of me felt blind-sided and hurt, unsupported and ready to blow…that was the exhausted me. I took a deep breath and looked away, thinking before I spoke. I knew he had always been and still is the logical one. I react emotionally, instinctively, often times before my mind has fully connected with my words. My truth just seems to spill easily from my mouth, a lot of times without the sweetness of being sugar-coated… just bluntness, pure honesty. However, I have learned that my truth does not belong to all of humanity. Each person is entitled to their beliefs and logic or training.
[...]
It took a good 120-150 days from the start of the coughing for each of them to eliminate the bronchial damage and lung weakness caused by the bacterial infection, Pertussis. We spent hundreds of dollars on natural health products and consultations with various Naturopathic Professionals. It was a living HELL. Every day. It had an intense effect on my marriage and relationship with my husband. It caused me to question everything I knew about Natural Health.
[...]
I called my mentor and the founder of my Naturopathy school to gain yet another naturopathic perspective. She had nothing but good things to say. She once again boosted my morale. It was all I needed to hold strong over the holiday season.

I just want you to ask yourself… How did people make it through for thousands of years? How did they get through the Spanish Influenza, the Black Plague, fevers and other ailments?

People, your ancestors have used natural remedies since the dawn of time to heal all things. Pharmaceutical creations have only been around for about 150 years. Most prescriptions have spent somewhere around 10 years from start to finish, including testing phases, before being allowed on the market to be used in experimentation on your family. We have no idea what the long term effects are going to be for all of these quick fix medications on our kids.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
Or maybe there isn't an 'explosion' of autism, but rather a better understanding of mental issues and diagnoses that allow us to better classify children who would previously have just been written off as 'lazy' or 'stupid'.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
I'm 100% sure that bringing him back to the US alive was never part of the mission. There are two things they can do with him in that situation. Put him on trial (which would have been a clusterfuck) or throw him in Guantanamo forever. Both of those outcomes have much the same set of downsides and create a continuing problem for as long as OBL is still alive. Even if he was captured alive, I'd be willing to bet that the mission parameters were 'shoot him as soon as expedient'.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

RagnarokAngel posted:

They probably would have given him a show trial like saddam.

Saddam was tried by the Iraqi government not by the US. The two situations are not remotely comparable.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

smoke sumthin bitch posted:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40719743

but but but chemtrails/gmos/fluoride/vaccines are harmless!!!

A bad thing might be happening or it might not and the reasons for it potentially happening are unknown but probably down to a complex and diverse mix of factors. Therefore all conspiracy theories are true.

Checks out.

Regarding the Bush did 9/11 stuff, why would they need to create such a complex and fragile plot if they just wanted a causus belli for a forever war? OBL and AQ were already on the naughty list following the first WTC bombing, the USS Cole attack plus a bunch of bombings at US embassies. If the Bush admin had such a hard-on for rolling over brown people they didn't need co-ordinated airline hijackings. A bunch of bombs in the US or another Lockerbie-style aircraft bombing would have been enough. In fact, as we discovered with Iraq, it was entirely possible to go to war over nothing at all.

Bush could have gone on TV a month after his inauguration warning about the grave threat that international terrorism poses to the US homeland so now we're going to flatten <$*stan>. They didn't need to hit the WTC, they didn't need for it to fall over after it was hit and they didn't need such a complex plot. Literally anything would have been enough.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
An Afghan war even absent a 9/11 attack would probably have been a fairly easy sell. Afghanistan was politically isolated with no significant allies, they were definitely training terrorists and the country was run by a cartoonishly evil regime. Have some noise about the new threat to international stability and peace, bring up the history of AQ and their steadily increasing capabilities plus the massive opium fields and you probably have everything you need there to get an AUMF. There are very few people in Congress who don't get all swoony at the thought of using some of that sweet defence budget for realsies. The hawks would go for because USA! USA! and the less hawkish members could be brought on board with arguments from the humanitarian and drug interdiction angles.

Also American foreign incursions in the previous decade or so had been limited to kicking the poo poo out of something then declaring victory and going home.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
The other problem with the super contractor theory is that it's still absolutely unnecessary. If we allow that Bush and co. wanted an excuse to launch a war, then there was a 100% chance that they'd get that opportunity without having to do anything at all. As I mentioned above, there was already a strong enough causus belli for Afghanistan and it was inevitable that AQ were going to keep blowing up embassies or trying to kill deployed US troops overseas. Additional reasons could easily be ginned up by sexing up intelligence reports about the AQ camps that were there in the same way that the WH editorialised the WMD reports from Iraq. The administration had nothing to gain from arranging or contracting the arrangement of a big attack on US civilians and everything to lose if any details about the operation get exposed.

Also, from a more subjective angle, I honestly don't think that Bush would have gone for it. I am the liberallest liberal who ever liberalled and I hate Bush and every loving thing that he did, but I don't believe he's a cynical monster that would allow US civilian casualties on that scale just to get a stronger case for war.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

QuarkJets posted:

please forgive me goons
The prosecution would like to enter into the record the accused's posting history.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

boner confessor posted:

you can tell people who get anxious about their car dependent lifestyle because they also get real mad if you say that self driving cars aren't going to magically fix all of our traffic problems (because the problem itself is caused by the use of cars)

I'm 44 years old and have a well paying career. I've lived in 8 different countries in everything from massive metropolises to tiny mediaeval market towns in the middle of the forest. In all of that time, I've never learnt to drive or thought to own a car because I've never needed one (and in some places, owning a car is more of a liability than a benefit anyhow - looking at you central Paris). My ex-wife is from Colorado Springs and we would go out there once a year or so to visit her parents. When I told them I couldn't drive, they looked at me like I'd just grown a second head.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

smoke sumthin bitch posted:

LMAO taking public transport drastically increases your chances of suffering from major depression and committing suicide. FACT! Im going to make a post about agenda 21 a little bit later cause none of you sheeps seem to know the sinister truth of what its really about.

You know what else increases your chances of suffering from major depression and committing suicide?

Your posting

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
How is know ing how to drive likely to save my life? I know how to swim because, alongside the fact that swimming is pretty fun, there's a good chance that at some point I could accidentally fall into water and drown. Am I likely to accidentally fall into a moving, driverless car? If I (or someone near me) is having a medical emergency, I'll call an ambulance. If I need to get somewhere local urgently, I'll call a taxi. Given the accident statistics for personal vehicles versus public transport, a strong argument could be made that I'm doing more to save my life by not driving.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

RagnarokAngel posted:

While I can absolutely understand why some people would never learn to drive because they didn't need to, it's weird to be proud to not know something.

I wasn't expressing pride, I was just disagreeing with the notion that learning to drive was a lifesaving skill in the same way that learning to swim is. In very many parts of the world it is completely optional. Sorry that you live in a place where people aren't free to have choices.

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Icke's weirdly endearing and I hope he hasn't faced too many negative consequences from his insanity.
Well he lost his job as a BBC sports commentator for being too crazy. At least his brand of crazy was just weird rather than horribly offensive unlike his BBC sports colleague Glenn Hoddle

Bonus shade:

quote:

Sports Minister Tony Banks said Hoddle was 'from another world. 'I have listened carefully to Glen Hoddle's views as expressed on the tape obtained by The Observer. They are totally unacceptable. If his theory is correct, he is in for real problems in the next life. He will probably be doomed to come back as Glenn Hoddle.'

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Helen Highwater
Feb 19, 2014

And furthermore
Grimey Drawer
When you ask the question, "How do Flat-Earthers explain...", you've already put more thought into the topic than a Flat-Earther has.

  • Locked thread