Current Events Thread: Lifting the Bar off the Floor

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Current Events Thread: Lifting the Bar off the Floor

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Courthouse posted:

Looks like Hagel is getting the boot

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/u...v=top-news&_r=0

Good loving luck finding someone with a good idea of how to handle IS and the rest of the current generation islamists though. Can't think of anyone who has voiced anything aproaching concrete and workable plan, much less a doctrine. Not to mention all the conventional regional power wannabes in to keep in check.

E: Was this the last republican in the top executive? Obummer!

Another casualty of #GamerGate.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2014 22:40

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 18:39

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/iamsakuma/status/537091278199357440

# ¿ Nov 25, 2014 19:31

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

ManMythLegend posted:

Circling back around to DnD, but a few years ago there were a bunch of dudes in there saying it was racist to try and force Western culture on Afgahnistan, and that their real culture was nothing but warring tribes and religous fundamentalism.

I brought up pictures like these and dudes like this to say that in fact perhaps there was more to the country that their weird racist talking points they heard in their freshman POLYSCI classes.

According to them I was wrong and it was racist for me to assume there was more to Afganistan then shooting women in the head in soccer stadiums for learning how to read.

kabul 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRcjhibtQz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxyLH7R8sms

(^ he's got beats headphones!)

there are worse cities in the third world than kabul. and this stuff is what people do. they buy and sell goods and services (call it capitalism if you want). they wear clothes that make them feel good. they make shlocky music that's fun to dance to. and none of that is "western" despite what D&D says. people only *don't* do these things when you have a regime that thinks it knows better and forcibly prevents them.

of course it'll be interesting to see what happens when the U.S. reconstruction money runs out.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Dec 11, 2014

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 07:06

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Courthouse posted:

Or just leave it alone in it's entirety. This war will crystallize into a proxy sunni v shia fight puppeteered by the local powers of either side, and guest staring Kurds, Jews plus the occasional minority nobody's heard about prior. Whatever the outcome the fight will be ugly, and the outcome will be bad regardless. Better to have it a bad outcome not involving the west for once and letting the locals clean up their own mess.

The CIA and other services can drone and assassinate all they want, I have little to no confidence they will actually achieve any benefit to the west for it. At worst we'll end up fighting whoever we trained, a decade or two from now.

Friendship is a virtue, the Kurds are our friends, and ISIS hosed with the Kurds. You back up your friends, right?

One positive development out of this is that we're working with Iran and moving towards detente. Fighting on the same side in a war helps. Neocons hate it. But if people are concerned about the U.S. getting involved in another major war in the Middle East, the priority should be on avoiding war with Iran.

Equine Don posted:

If you want to read a good article that makes a mockery of the US Army's obsession with uniforms and appearance, click the link

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/breaking-starch-the-paradox-of-modern-military-uniforms

Gonna read this. Looks good.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 22:20

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

There's some IR theory out there measuring just how dangerous various authoritarian regimes are. Under this theory, Iran and China are some of the least dangerous because they have authoritarian-bureaucratic regimes that have to respond to public pressure.

Normally they just use economic growth to buy off dissent. But when times get bad, they are less likely to resort to military adventurism, because there's checks and balances within the bureaucracy. Iran has hardliners, but they're checked by the reformists. (This is why I think Iran prefers relying on the Quds Force for its overseas business.) China is the same way. There are some hardliners in the Party bureaucracy, but most of them just want to make money. They check themselves before they wreck themselves. Iran is run by clerics, but they're really religious businessmen.

The regimes that are the most dangerous? Authoritarian regimes run by single strongmen and their small cohorts who also have to respond to public pressure, to stave off revolution. Saddam's Iraq. Hitler's Germany. Putin's Russia. They are more likely to use war as a means of mobilizing public support, as there's no one to tell them no.

Military-led regimes are somewhere in the middle. Like the Argentinian colonels who invaded the Falklands after an economic crisis.

So IF I WAS PRESIDENT my grandmaster plan would be detente with Iran, continue building relations with China, and massive military containment of Russia starting yesterday.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Dec 13, 2014

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 22:33

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Bolow posted:

I'm picturing Rambo 5 having some message about the movie being dedicated to the brave kurdish fighters opposing tyranny and it suddenly being really awkward 20 years later

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLop82LjV48

throw some A-10s in there for kicks (and by kicks i mean erections)

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Dec 14, 2014

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 07:36

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Full Battle Rattle posted:

Yeah, I mean, I'm as 'stick it to the loving Russians' as any (reasonable) man, but I don't think anyone intended to totally bottom out their economy in a week.

I think Obama is way more stone-cold and ruthless than people think he is. Right-wingers think he's a beta-male wimp and left-wingers think he's kind of a brainy diplomat. But his foreign policy tools are assassination and wrecking rival economies. He's into waiting and solving practical problems.

Oh and he's really into basketball where coaches talk about needing to have that kind of mentality

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Dec 17, 2014

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 01:56

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

ded posted:

Cuba would have a huge economic boom if we re-established ties and opened up trade & travel there.

In the long run, but in the short-term I don't think much will change on the trade front. Cuba's main exports are sugar, tobacco, nickel, hard liquor and oil. Problem for Havana is that the U.S. govt heavily subsidizes the sugar industry and is moving away from dependence on foreign oil. That leaves nickel, tobacco and liquor.

Thing a lot of people don't know: The U.S. is one of Cuba's largest trading partners. But it's all U.S. food going in to keep the island from starving.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 01:59

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Also Marxgoons upset at normalization as it means Cuba will start liberalizing its economy. Meaning people will be allowed to buy and sell things without permission from the government. Shock horror.

gfanikf posted:

Arc light everything.

They like to debate what Cuba did in the 1960s because it's up for debate and post-hoc rationalization. It distracts from the fact that Cuba is a rotten, totalitarian hole in the ground right now. There's an enclosed tourist-resort Cuba and there's the Cuba-for-Cubans everything else that looks as if a capricious and destructive 11-year-old played Tropico for a few hours after a bad day at school.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 03:40

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Burt posted:

Boats full of guns for hire

I saw this on the BBC and thought, wow, that must be so cool, then thought, HAHAHAHA no.... maybe not the best idea to have shipping containers of hi-tech military gear floating about in pirate infested waters.

http://marsec-union.com/

"4 Nigerian teams, Armed with AK47 � Insured Lagos, Police navy in Nigerian waters $12500 weekly ! Best MarSec deal in West Africa"

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 13:45

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:

Shooting guns is fun but not really fun enough to get all bent out of shape over laws. Cool thing to do every few months or so with a range rental I guess

yeah. i think the main reason people buy guns (or at least AR and AK type rifles) is because they're fun, grown-up bang-bang toys. you get to customize it and do nerd poo poo. you learn to take it apart and put it back together. but it's hard to justify spending a whole lot of money on a toy, so people bring in self-defense or political reasons.

but odds are, if you have the money to spend on one of these things, dropping $1,000 for a toy you won't play with very often, you probably have a good degree of personal security in your life. and a lot of people with guns who think they're going to fight the government are neckbearded fatsos, with bad knees and so on.

you're not going to be fighting anyone but the buffet manager when he's trying to kick you out for eating all the restaurant's food, let alone fight off 19-year-old marines or whoever. you're beyond fighting age, homie.

but what's wrong with it just being a toy? that's how hunter s. thompson treated them. he was a gun freak but never into the right-wing agenda thing. but if you say that, people think you're giving up the argument to the anti-gun side, or they think you're a psycho for being attracted to these things. well, i am attracted to guns! they're awesome as gently caress.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Dec 21, 2014

# ¿ Dec 21, 2014 09:34

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Honestly, the biggest obstacle to me owning guns is the price of gun ownership. I've got a .22lr and a Mosin Nagant. Because those are cheap guns. What's the NRA doing about that? If I join them, all I get is a very unfashionable hat with the NRA logo and a subscription to the godawful American Rifleman. They could at least subsidize my next gun purchase, or give me some free ammo.

If guns are a right, like education and healthcare and housing are rights, then affordable guns should be a political priority. But the idea of cheap guns in the hands of the poor isn't something that either the left or right is interested in. No loving way that's going to happen. No siree.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2014 09:45

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

VikingSkull posted:

English language RT is the greatest news network going, even the people at MSNBC and Fox can point at them and call them ridiculous. Like, that poo poo flies when you're in a country where the state can be influential, like in Russia, but as bad as the media is in the US, you still have choices and one of the networks is gonna be saying ludicrous poo poo that isn't popular with the government.

RT just looks at that and says "gently caress it, just print anything Moscow wants even if it's incredibly obvious what the slant is and why it's slanted"

The way it works in Russia is you have a bunch of different state-owned (either directly or indirectly) networks that promote different ludicrous conspiracy theories. Lots of different pro-government messages works better than a single one. Fewer people have internet, too. Russia has a lower internet penetration rate than Morocco.

RT is particularly great because it's directed at foreign audiences so you get a mishmash of crazy. You'll see some fish-eyed Maoist propagandist, or a bipolar neo-Nazi promoted as a "human rights expert" who'd later get sentenced to three years in prison for an anti-Semitic hate crime. The point isn't to promote a particular ideological vision but to confuse and disorient people.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 03:48

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Some fun sleuthing to do is to watch RT and look at the various experts and analysts they regularly have on. It'll be some dude from a think-tank with a generic name like the Institute for Geopolitical and International Studies (just making that up). Then you Google it and it's based in Italy or France. Or it barely has a website at all. Or it's sponsored by another think-tank that is partnered with the Russian Foreign Ministry. It's not just RT but a whole ecosystem.

This is a fun one:

http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.com/2014/12/center-for-eurasian-strategic.html

The website went dark after this post. But it was another one of these think-tanks except that it was extremely anti-Putin. Except it was anti-Putin in a way that tried to convince people that Russia is powerful and scary, and that you shouldn't try to antagonize it. Their "experts" were also fake people with stock photos.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 04:01

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

psydude posted:

lol people on Facebook are asserting that Sony was a false flag operation and that the US is picking on poor old little North Korea by illegally attacking their infrastructure. This, despite the fact that a) It's impossible to attribute the DDoS attack to the US, since DDoS attacks are insanely easy to pull off and effectively impossible to trace and b) If the US indeed has evidence to corroborate its claim that Best Korea is behind the attacks, the UN provides for it to respond with a proportional response.

i have no idea who is doing what, but i want to believe it's just hacker groups doing it for lols

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 02:04

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

So this NYPD thing. Count me as someone who is sympathetic to the police reform protesters. But even I went to a protest in November and heard the DEAD COPS NOW chant. The guy who killed those cops marched in one of those protests. And now people on my Facebook are outraged because cops and right-wingers are accusing them of inciting violence? You were demanding violence. I heard it with my own ears.

All I can say is that if you're demanding violence against the police, and a war with the police, then don't be surprised when you get one. I don't have any truck with the shitshow that is the NYPD. But these activists really don't seem like they really ever thought through the implications of what they were doing. No surprise.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 02:13

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Nostalgia4Infinity posted:

I think going "well that dude shot those cops therefore all discussion of police reform is moot, suck it libtards " is disingenuous as gently caress. Wasn't that couple that shot those cops in Vegas inspired by right wing media? Why aren't folks trying to get Rush et. all shut down to protect police?

Because that won't score points for their team.

Oh I agree totally. But the right-wing sites are also having a field day finding left-of-center writers who wrote articles when that happened blaming a climate of violent rhetoric and then making the exact opposite argument right now. But there's another similarity. The right-wing media ran in the opposite direction from Bundy after that and the racist stuff came out, like liberals are doing now with the protest thing. I'm betting it's over as a movement, but I'm often wrong about these things.

GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:

Mike Rowe wrote a long letter in response to someone asking him what he thought about the protests in SF, and he said "sure, root out bad cops and reform the police but maybe stop being an idiot and resisting arrest too" and "my black friend said he's sick of getting dragged into some 'controversy' because of two petty criminals like he's the same as them" so I just know it's going to make the rounds on tumblr/D&D within days

But yeah the demanding violence thing is pretty scary at times. Whenever I've pointed it out (goons going 'loving kill McCulloch, lynch him in the street') the response is typically "that's just hyperbole, please don't get concerned" in an extremely snotty tone.

One of the things I take a stand on these days is death/rape threats over the internet, which are gross and need to stop but won't stop until there's actually consequences for saying those things. In this case people condemn it except when it's about something they're e-angry over.

Yeah I don't like the snottiness. It's like, you better mean it when you say it. Be careful what you wish for, etc. At the same time, not much you can do about it, and the generic calls for violence is protected speech because it's not specific. Laws against it have a high burden of specificity and imminence. The last time I remember someone getting jailed for it was a white supremacist radio guy who agitated for killing a specific federal judge. Like he named him and everything. But what I'm saying is: Don't forget this is what y'all wanted.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Dec 24, 2014

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 03:05

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 18:39

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

gfanikf posted:

So drone everyone?

Spicy Guacamole posted:

Kill whiny protesters now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgk-lA12FBk

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 07:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Current Events Thread: Lifting the Bar off the Floor