The Mother of All Threads: Global War on Terror Year 16

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Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Lawman 0 posted:

Nationalize all that poo poo imo immediately

That would be the natural solution to the problem, but first you have to get over the hurdle of inherited wisdom that the government workforce should be capped at around 2 million, which it has been since the 1950s.

http://historyinpieces.com/research/federal-personnel-numbers-1962

I had to go to a JFK history site just to find somebody who had graphed both Federal & military employment together but it's all there. The federal employment level has been roughly the same size since 1960 at 2 million employees, despite the country's population growing by 72% since then. What has been downsized since then is military personnel in two big waves, during the drawdown from Vietnam and the end of the Cold War when Bush & Clinton thought it was appropriate to downsize the military - in terms of personnel. Even after 16 years of a global war on terror, military employment has barely gone up at all. All of those functions have either been outsourced to contractors or sunk into more R&D.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2017 16:04

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 01:18

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Can't wait for Bellingcat's vicious expose on the cholera epidemic in Yemen. Any day now.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2017 18:48

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

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

"344,000 people are infected or suspected to be infected with cholera... 42% are children" :nsa:

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 05:27

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Man Musk posted:

https://twitter.com/ericbradner/status/889714761725865984

"Firearms experts tell us that there's nothing tying these weapons to Russia, but American military officials say 'YUH-HUH!'"

# ¿ Jul 25, 2017 13:45

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

It's probably true I guess, but the truth of the thing isn't really what matters.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2017 14:29

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6rFJnKYPNU

https://youtu.be/S3TH5bj55rs

# ¿ Aug 8, 2017 23:45

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Darkman Fanpage posted:

good news! we're gonna hire erik prince's mercs to take over the forever war!!!

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/erik-princes-afghanistan-plan-could-boost-his-company-china-2576492

The greatest plan to date for making the Taliban seem sympathetic.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 07:12

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Squalid posted:

What is the thing what really matters

The war.

Whether or not the Russians are supplying weapons to the Taliban isn't really important, because if they are it's being done with enough plausible deniability that there's not really anything America could do about it. What matters is that the Taliban is apparently capable of fighting the occupation indefinitely.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 17:09

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/Conflicts/status/904630748765966336

https://twitter.com/Conflicts/status/904631221057183744

Pener Kropoopkin has issued a correction as of 10:12 on Sep 4, 2017

# ¿ Sep 4, 2017 10:05

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

imo they're taking advantage of the Trump administration to see how much ethnic cleansing they can get away with, when it's against Muslims.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2017 13:50

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_z_pG7x8T0

Real News just did a half hour interview and Q&A with Lawrence Wilkerson on North Korea, our bad faith efforts at negotiating with them, and all the reasons they're not actually an existential threat.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 00:35

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/telesurenglish/status/905407738846564352

at least somebody cares :shrug:

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 14:57

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/906861612295970818

# ¿ Sep 10, 2017 15:56

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Larry Parrish posted:

Has the CIA ever done anything that wasn't evil and also backfired and hurt the USA more than doing nothing would have

IIRC it's actually the State Department that does more to discredit NGOs by using them to infiltrate spies.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2017 17:13

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Dreylad posted:

whatever you do, never, ever talk to another human being

I need some photographic analysis to determine if this post has any Iranian influence

# ¿ Sep 10, 2017 18:00

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/2flamesburning1/status/910217557885505538

# ¿ Sep 24, 2017 09:42

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/912101521197846528

Love to kick 'em while they're down.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 03:31

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

KiteAuraan posted:

Is the rational for Chad because it borders Libya? Because so do Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.

There's an active Islamist insurgency in Chad, so of course we can't risk the chance of one of them taking a plane to the United States and attacking us here for our freedoms.

Sudan was also going to be on the list, but the Saudis had us remove them because they're trying to get the Sudanese to help them in Yemen.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 10:49

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

KiteAuraan posted:

I notice Nigeria is not on the list, despite you know, Boko Haram existing.

Goddammit you racist fucks just admit it's a Muslim Ban and take your beating.

Not a Muslim ban, not a Muslim ban, North Korea and Venezuela are on there too. :smugdon:

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 10:53

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

ISIS just claimed responsibility for the Las Vegas shooting.

https://twitter.com/laylasafavi/status/915003723939594241

# ¿ Oct 3, 2017 01:46

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/troops-killed-ambush-joint-niger-patrol-171005041922809.html

quote:

Five Nigerien and three US special forces were killed and others wounded in an ambush on a joint patrol in southwest Niger.

The attack, which occurred on Wednesday night, marks the first US combat casualties in Niger, where Washington provides training and security assistance in the fight against armed groups in the Sahel region.

"We can confirm reports that a joint US and Nigerien patrol came under hostile fire in southwest Niger," a spokesperson of the US Africa Command told Radio France International (RFI) by telephone.

According to RFI, the ambush took place after fighters from Mali attacked the village of Tongo Tongo in Tillaberi. A counter-operation was launched, but the US and Niger soldiers fell into a trap, according to the radio report.

Namatta Abubacar, an official for the region of Tillaberi, told Niger TV that five Nigerian soldiers were among the dead.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but the area is largely controlled by fighters, including members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 20:48

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Plutonis posted:

I hope I can live to see Trump misspell that country's name on TV

For a very long time, we have been working to fight Al Qaeda - and ISIS - with the government of Kneegair.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 21:27

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/yemen-war-unconstitutional.html

Ro Khanna, Marc Pocan, and Walter Jones are calling for an end to America's involvement in the illegal war on Yemen.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-yemen-fp-57231dc0-adcf-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb-20171010-story.html

quote:

In a matter of days, the deadly cholera epidemic in Yemen will set a world record.

The outbreak is entirely man-made. Two-and-a-half years of civil war have decimated Yemen's water sanitation system and its hospitals. Without access to clean water, doctors or medical supplies, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have contracted cholera, which spreads through fecal bacteria in water.

Aid organizations blame both sides in the conflict, which pits a Saudi-led coalition armed by the United States against Houthi rebels supported by Iran.

At last count on Oct. 2, Yemen had 777, 229 suspected cases of cholera, with the death toll at 2,134 people, according to the World Health Organization. Soon, Yemen will surpass Haiti, which has documented about 815,000 cholera cases. In Haiti, however, the outbreak began in 2010, and has taken seven years to reach that figure. In Yemen, it has taken only about six months to reach those alarmingly high numbers.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 01:53

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

The United States is a greater threat to the stability of global capitalism than Communist China

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 02:16

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/scotty9k/status/918704303757340672

:thunk:

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 06:06

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 01:18

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

There isn't even any certainty that an EMP from a nuclear detonation would actually knock out cellular networks or even your phone.

Popular Mechanics just issued a response lmao

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25883/north-korea-cant-kill-ninety-percent-of-americans/

quote:

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control scholar, wrote in Foreign Policy in 2013, "(the) EMP Commission exposed 37 cars and 18 trucks to EMP effects in a laboratory environment. While EMP advocates claim the results of an EMP attack would be "planes falling from the sky, cars stalling on the roadways, electrical networks failing, food rotting," the actual results were much more modest. Of the 55 vehicles exposed to EMP, six at the highest levels of exposure needed to be restarted. A few more showed "nuisance" damage to electronics, such as blinking dashboard displays."

Back to The Hill article, which claims an EMP attack by North Korea would kill "9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse." The first clue that something is amiss with this claim is that, if you trace the link provided in the article, it cites the words of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, who describes a novel he had read called One Second After. Bartlett says:

"I read a prepublication copy of a book called One Second After. I hope it does get published; I think the American people need to read it. It was the story of a ballistic missile EMP attack on our country. The weapon was launched from a ship off our shore, and then the ship was sunk so that there were no fingerprints. The weapon was launched about 300 miles high over Nebraska, and it shut down our infrastructure countrywide. The story runs for a year. It is set in the hills of North Carolina. At the end of the year, 90 percent of our population is dead; there are 25,000 people only still alive in New York City. The communities in the hills of North Carolina are more lucky: only 80 percent of their population is dead at the end of a year."

Bartlett was so spooked by this novel that after he left Congress he moved into the woods and became a survivalist, where he spends his days "cutting logs, tending gardens and painting walls." And just to be clear, the claim that North Korea could kill 90 percent of the American people was directly pulled from a science fiction novel.

There are even more problems with this claim. Nobody knows how large of a nuclear weapon it would take to destroy the U.S. electrical grid. Five megatons? Five hundred megatons? A gigaton? North Korea would only have one shot at this, because any such attack would result in a U.S. retaliatory nuclear strike that would leave everything from the DMZ to the Chinese border one smoking, radioactive crater. America's nuclear arsenal and command and control is hardened against EMP and would survive to dish out a ruthless counterstrike. That in and of itself would deter the North Korean leadership from committing what would amount to societal suicide just to watch Americans eat grass before they ultimately starve.

Furthermore, North Korea does not have thermonuclear weapons. It claims to have tested a thermonuclear device last year but the device was not large enough to actually have been so. North Korea wants nuclear weapons and indeed may some day have them, but that is generally seen as being somewhere down the road. Even then, it would have to develop a rocket capable of delivering an extremely large warhead.

Warning against the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons is a public service. Warning that North Korea could kill 90 percent of the American people with EMP is not. It's even a good idea to warn, broadly, against the threat of EMP: in 1859, a solar storm sent a pulse of energy hurting toward Earth, sending electrical surges through those electrical systems in use at the time, telegraph networks. Telegraph operators received shocks from their equipment and telegraph pylons threw sparks. If it occurred today, the so-called "Carrington Event" could indeed have serious consequences for satellites, electrical grids, and electronic devices worldwide. Tying such a real problem to a fantasy involving North Korea does a disservice to the larger issue.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 06:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > The Mother of All Threads: Global War on Terror Year 16

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