UnderpantsWeevil @ UnderpantsWeevil @lemmy.world

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125

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8,778

Joined

2 yr. ago

Can't raise prices if nobody has any money

😎

I gotta say, if a police officer looked in my window, pointed to the person in the passenger seat, and said "Whore", I'd grab for his service weapon.

Because last I checked when the Sahel states wanted them gone they packed up and left.

Check again.

Operation Barkhane dragged on for eight years. It sparked domestic protests within the first two years. By the end, the Sahel states were in full revolt against French occupation.

France never shied away from throwing down with them, where they were reluctant is stomping Tuaregs, instead opting for endless negotiations and mediating.

The problem is with your language. You seem to think dropping 200 lb bombs on a city to wipe whole neighborhoods off the map constitutes "throwing down", like its a bar room brawl everyone will walk away from in the morning. You don't seem to want to acknowledge that they killed thousands of civilians. A 9/11s worth of people, to put it in a parlance you might appreciate.

And much like in Israel and the US occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan, the response from French allies was always "those civilians had it coming".

That is what spurred widespread opposition to Françafrique policy.

I don't know how we got from exploding pagers to space lasers.

I feel bad for them because they’re supposed father says there’s no difference between them and sperm donations

I think you're conflating distribution of family wealth with the duties of fatherhood. And I'm not sure what this guy is doing to be an actual father figure for anyone. If he's just doing a math exercise, with the expectation that distributing $13M to each of his children improves their collective survival rates and propagates his genes most efficiently into the future, this has nothing to do with the actual job of child rearing. It really is just a narcissistic obsession over his magic sperm.

I would feel bad for anyone who has to count him as a father, as he's clearly a patriarchal pos.

Well, in that case, how about you pay me that $10 you owe me?

Or is there a possibility they’re moving towards something more nefarious?

The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

The cutthroat scheming within the House of Saud over the following years matches anything in the fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” The fallout extended to the United States, China, Switzerland and other countries, as the two most powerful clans of the royal family jockeyed for power. As the tension increased, the royal court around Mohammed bin Salman, the new king’s favorite son, even dared to try to kidnap a member of the Abdullah faction in Beijing in a brazen operation in August 2016 that reads like a chapter in a spy thriller.

MBS, as Salman’s son is known, became increasingly anxious and aggressive toward those he considered enemies. Starting in the spring of 2017, a team of Saudi intelligence operatives, under the control of the royal court, began organizing kidnappings of dissidents abroad and at home, according to U.S. and Saudi experts. Detainees were held at covert sites. The Saudis used harsh enhanced interrogation techniques, a euphemism for torture, to make the captives talk. They were forced to sign oaths that if they disclosed any of what happened, they would pay a severe price.

This real-life drama was described to me in a series of interviews by prominent Saudis and U.S. and European experts, in the United States and abroad, in the weeks since Khashoggi’s death. These sources had firsthand knowledge of events but asked not to be identified because they involve sensitive international matters. The information was checked with knowledgeable U.S. sources to confirm its accuracy. It helps explain the vortex of rage and lawlessness that ultimately sucked in Khashoggi, a Post Global Opinions columnist, when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

Here’s the bottom line, for U.S. and Saudi experts who have reviewed the intelligence findings: Khashoggi was murdered by a team sent from the royal court in Riyadh, which was part of the rapid-action capability that had been organized 18 months before. Khashoggi’s provocative journalism and his ties to Qatar and Turkey had offended the increasingly autocratic crown prince, who issued a “bring him back” order in July 2018, one that wasn’t understood by U.S. intelligence until three months later, after Khashoggi’s disappearance in Istanbul.

They literally think they are part of a Master Race and that their magic jizz will create a future line of ubermensch.

It's esoteric fascism.

In a 100 years, we're going to have wars between the scions of the various Sacred Houses of Silicon Valley, as people kill one another for being part of a heretical bloodline.

his six real children

I mean, he fathered them. They're his biological children. And he's a billionaire, so its not like he doesn't have enough cash to spread around. No one is going hungry.

I guess his Nanny’s raised I don’t know

Right. The dude just wanted to maximize his baby-making rate. He didn't want to be a father. He just wanted to have offspring because he's in a Quiverfull cult in Silicon Valley that considers your number of children some kind of high score.

What a bizarre way of looking at the world.

That's billionaires for you. Abolish them.

Why does Trump need an actual terrorist attack. He can just show up on TV, flash an AI generated face-melting re-edit of a scene from the TV show 24, announce "We are under attack and must respond immediately", and fire up the bombers.

At this point, I bet you that you could show Trump a deep fried still-image meme and convince him that we need to strike back.

Why not?

Because Trump doesn't like losing. Iran has already shot down four F-35Is, plus dropping bombs all over Tel Aviv to the horror of the Israelis who thought Iron Dome made them impervious to consequences. The 2002 Millennium Challenge already taught us that an invasion of Iran would be a bloodbath far in excess of our Iraqi Adventure. And Trump fucking knows it, because he was one of the most public critics of Bush's War back when popular opinion soured in 2008.

He needs someone in the room who can convince him that Iran will be a quick and easy win. Alternatively, someone willing to hand him a truly prodigious new bribe. And if he sees Israelis getting their teeth kicked in? While MBS and the Qatars are sitting on the sidelines making the "stop fucking our shit up, we don't need this right now" hand gestures?

Like, that's the whole thing about Donnie. He's a mercenary, not a Cheney-style Neocon with delusions of global domination. If this were Costa Rica or Tunisia or Cyprus? A country that couldn't hit back? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. Same reason he was so eager to drop bombs over Yemen (until they hit back and he got annoyed at his Beautiful Generals pooching it).

But he doesn't want to go down as The President Who Lost An Aircraft Carrier. When he's got a liquored up fuckboi as his Secretary of Defense and he routinely disses his own commanders for incompetence, he doesn't need this right now. Less actual wars, more sending in the Marine Corps Gestapo to gun down rioters in LA.

He doesn't want to do this on his own.

But he'll happily let Congress do a big vote to take the blame.

Europe has not been aggresive at all.

France is no stranger to military intervention in Africa. Indeed, a cornerstone of Françafrique, France’s sphere of influence over its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, was France’s permanent military presence on the continent. Since decolonization in 1960, the French military has intervened over fifty times in Africa. These interventions have ranged from brief counter-insurgency missions and evacuations to longer-term peacekeeping operations. While France would scale back the scope of its operations in Africa following it’s failure to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it nevertheless maintained a force of 5,500 troops on the continent.

Over Fifty Times.

Truly, a master of his craft.

I await with interest your explanation as to how and why private gun ownership “caused and supported” the current unlawful government

Dollars to Donuts half those badgeless, masked vigilantes kidnapping people from immigration courts are members of the NRA.

Furthermore, gun laws are deliberately structured such that the police and various government forces throughout the country enjoy considerably less restriction (or even none) on the type, number, and nature of guns that they’re allowed to own and use.

Mulford Act, etc. Sure. The disarming of the public is always at the expense of the working class progressive. It never seems to come for the right-wing reactionaries, the domestic terrorists, or the conservative-aligned militia movements.

But that's where things get sticky, because "Gun Rights" has become synonymous with "Fascist Politics" as a result. Guns are regularly touted as the tools to overthrow liberal politicians. And as a result liberal politicians champion gun control out of a sense of self-preservation. Meanwhile conservative politicians champion more money spent on the security state, because it allows them to arm and organize far-right police, private security, and paramilitary groups.

What becomes extra frustrating is when liberal politicians give conservative paramilitary groups the weapons and funds they need to organize, on the grounds that these conservative paramilitaries will protect the liberals from the Lone Wolf / Rogue Agent. Rather than guarding them, these police agencies effectively take the liberal political class hostage.

"Resisting Unlawful Government" is when you need to fight a Ranger who is trying to keep your stray cows from grazing in a public park.

"Stop Breaking the Law, Asshole!" is when you need to throw on a mask, wave a gun, and snatch someone into a van after they showed up to court for a green card hearing.

FOX News had it wall-to-wall all day. But the spectacle was lame, so it was mostly talking heads standing over the front talking about how amazing it was, while the parade was fully obscured in the background.

I'm sure the roads were still proper fucked by the end of it. And I fully expect to see Congressional hearings over why the DC city government allowed potholes to get this bad.

You don't. You have lots of conscription to supplant your front lines. You do all sorts of corruption in the middle-ranks of the military, so junior officers can generate income off the desperation of their greener soldiers. You create an industry around the war, such that everyone hates it but someone is always profiting off the misery of others.

And then the machine grinds on.