Secular Humanist posted:

i still dont see how leaving saddam hussein in power was ever considered a "liberal position". removing a guy who literally has people executed and publicly tortured for owning cell phones is "interventionist" in the bad way?? really?

i mean i know iraq war 2 was lovely for lots of other reasons, but i think the whole removing an insanely brutal dictator thing was a good call all around. and liberals who sneered at that should have their liberal card revoked because they dont actually give a poo poo about liberal principles or any of the people who were living in that hellhole. That isis took over after we bailed doesn't really say anything about the goodness or badness of removing saddam, it's kind of on obama for pulling out too soon imo.

i dont know why i posted this.

Repo Man posted:

I wish we could make this young Australian's dream come true.

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

works for me and most people i know

Bulgogi Hoagie posted:

maybe you should come up with a solution then that doesn't involve autistically waving red flags around and then accidentally starving millions hth

Junk posted:

seriously though, this is a really good documentary that doesn't pull the sensationalist crap that almost every other one does

http://www.documentarytube.com/videos/welcome-to-north-korea

KomodoWagon posted:

Desperate for more brutal methods of execution than mortar fire, Kim Jong-Un has started punishing high-profile dissidents by sitting on them.

maskenfreiheit posted:

Is it possible to have a "Nordic Model" w/o outsourcing your military defense to a large country like the US?

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Don't worry, I'm sure if we try it in the US it will work out just like it does in a country populated only by 9 million rich white people.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

Counterpoint: the U.S. government is a massive, bloated and complex network of incompetence attempting to sustain a population no system could calculate for, with population, climate, economic and geological diversity greater than just about any single nation in history. For decades and decades the federal government has taken on more and more responsibilities once left up to local municipalities and state governments. Now state governments have to wait for the glacial pace of federal agencies to get around to approving their local ordinances and provisions, which slows things down to an inordinate amount. This isn't just like, passing laws and stuff, it's developing economically. The nation's largest wind power project has taken over a decade just to get approval to begin construction because of how long environmental impact analysis takes and how many different agencies have to approve on any single project. Wind power, one of the vanguards of renewable energy and something the previous Presidential administration wanted to prioritize, is being crippled by the very same entity that encouraged its growth.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

I'm arguing that socialized systems may not work in America because the people who support them seem to want to establish them at the federal level, which is the worst possible way to do so. If America is going to adopt effective social welfare, education and medical programs, they need to be established from the local level, from the state level, because entrusting them entirely to the monolithic federal entity is dooming them to failure based on...well, the past 40 years of U.S. history really.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

Who exactly are resource-starved, here? I mean, if you look at the energy market, more states than ever are entering the natural gas market thanks to the advent of fracking, adding hitherto unavailable economic options. There are poor states and there are rich states, but as such it's precisely why those states need to determine a system that works within their means, and can be supported, sustained and hopefully expanded over the years, just like any other good system.

If you had inadequacies that were so dire that they could not be alleviated by simple good governance, that might be the opportunity for the federal government to offer support to ensure that not state flagrantly lags behind.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

Access is great and all, but the ACA was all about "access" and this translated to handing everybody off to some dumb health insurance marketplace system that gave people insurance, but did nothing to address the disgustingly high cost of medical care in the first place. I think the U.S.'s needs are too varied and too broad in scope to be benefit by single system to address that.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

I agree we need affordable healthcare, but is a single payer system going to provide that? Will it provide it without the pretty serious problems that impact other systems? What if the system works well in some states and not others?

I'm saying that it doesn't seem like the federal government of the U.S. has demonstrated that it's very good at running the systems it already attempts to, I fail to see why it wouldn't be much more efficient for states to maintain and design their own systems, with the feds providing a vague set of guidelines to ensure a reasonable base quality of care.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

The fact that you're framing this as a moral issue strikes me as a touch manipulative. There are a lot of failings that come out of national healthcare systems, enough so to warrant a careful approach should we wish to establish our own. Be realistic as well: you'd have a much easier time selling this concept to red states than you would selling the notion that some guy in Maryland is going to determine how best to address the problems of a woman in Utah.

8-Bit Scholar posted:

I mean, you're talking about these things like hospital overhead is not a big part of healthcare costs, because it absolutely is. It's not the biggest, there's a lot of things that dip into every dollar spent in a hospital, but transportation gets really expensive when you're fueling helicopters and flying out hundreds of miles to transport a patient. Healthcare costs aren't just limited to purchasing scalpels and medicines or paying doctor salaries or doctor lawyers.

Piss de Bundy posted:

lol that half the thread was talking about loving Medicare what the gently caress does that have to do with North Korea


And a lot of those Tankie memes are right tho North Korea isn't a threat to us at all ?? And we are literally the only nation ever to use nukes on another country

Piss de Bundy posted:

I mean tankies are like such a minority opinion that they aren't taken seriously but saber rattling against North Korea is supremely dumb

Piss de Bundy posted:

you want to date a North Korean girl why ? You know South Koreans are the same ? Physically ? Like ..they are the same . Or do you just want the bragging rights ?

Wikkheiser posted:

There should be pro-North Korea threads in every subforum.

Kim il-Sung's Shameful Secret

The DPRK IV

The Juche Barn

Rapidly Going Hungry

Android Blues posted:

i actually want to have this discussion but it's mean to have it in the north korea thread

the story about dogs being raised like cattle and then skinned and slaughtered and the fur sent off to the government for soldiers to use in coats was wild. like, they have mandatory government dog farming and a dog fur industry. that is an amazing and terrifying fact

chernobyl kinsman posted:

Repo Man posted:

A seventeen year old who thinks he knows the answer to the world's problems.

Strategic Tea posted:

This is GBS, where people routinely defend the USSR, Mao, Chavez, the Committee of Public Safety...

Strategic Tea posted:

The eat the rich thread didn't drop off the front page that long ago

The White Dragon posted:

no one from gbs does that

tourists from d&d however

Odobenidae posted:

political extremism isn't bad you've just grown fat off of the status quo so you see no reason to change it. i'm gonna lock you back up in your pig pen you tedious oaf.

Repo Man posted:

"Beasts must be led to the pasture with blows..."