The door on the closet this guy is trapped in is shaking on its hinges…

So your contention is that Nation A considering joining an alliance that Nation B doesn’t like - not actually joining, just considering - is a provocation worthy of military invasion?

Jesus what a world that would be.

I think we’re gonna have to agree to disagree as I see a fundamental difference between a multi national joint military operation targeting international terrorists and a unilateral military operation aimed at reconstituting the USSR.

Updated

What on earth are you talking about occupying Syria?

Edit: they’re misconstruing the 32-country military coalition that’s been trying to degrade Da’esh since 2014 as the US military by itself occupying sovereign territory.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State

Some may remember the breathless daily & weekly map updates on the news showing areas controlled by Da’esh changing. Might remember the coalition partnering with various groups of differing militancy & reliability. I think including us (the coalition) fucking over Iraqi Kurds…? I believe because Syria hated them? Or loved them?

So, y’know, absolutely nothing like Russia’s completely unprovoked, unilateral decision to invade Ukraine because Putin was afraid of Ukraine getting too chummy with NATO countries, possibility even considering joining NATO.

If the point of supporting Ukraine is to support the international order of respecting borders, then an absolutist interpretation would mean you stop at your border when repelling invaders.

On the other hand, that would certainly result in invaders loading up on personnel and materiel on their side of the border until they reached some critical mass for a re invasion.

A lot of people might not remember the first Gulf War where the international community defending Kuwait stopped at the Iraq border. I think it could be argued that was a mistake on multiple levels, even ignoring everything we know that came after.

Ok sure but if Person U from a large city comes to the city council meeting and asks for help because their neighbor, Person R, is building a new garage on Person U’s property, it’s understandable that people from around the city - no matter how far afield - might express support for Person U.

At the same time, if Person T or Person I or Person M from far across the city don’t express support, so what? What does it matter? Maybe they’re afraid of Person R. Maybe they truly don’t care. Maybe they hate person U.

Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates,

None of these “attenders” are in the same region as Ukraine.

I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …

I dunno I think there’s probably been one or two “honest” inflations where a vendor has seen her costs increase and has only raised her prices just enough to cover those increases.

But yeah, I bet the majority of inflation has been rooted in avarice by shareholders and owners.

It just occurred to me that there are probably people who look at those bombings - after the war was effectively over BTW - not as evil (my view), nor as a regrettable but necessary way to avert American deaths, but as an actual heroic act.

Jesus, how do I live in a world where there are people like that running around having normal lives…?

It’s fascinating that this isn’t something that is always thrown back in the so called “pro life” person’s face. They’re only pro birth. They don’t care if the baby that comes out is fed, clothed, housed, eventually educated, etc. Or at least, they don’t believe there’s any collective responsibility to take care of that baby.

I’d suggest guns, missiles, and militarized drones. Maybe some tanks and stuff. I’m just spit balling here though.

What’s frustrating to me as a person who’s generally against violence is that Israel has a pretty elite secret police force and pretty elite special forces that they (apparently) haven’t used at all to deal with the actual perpetrators of the October 7th massacre & kidnapping.

They just started bombing thousands of civilians to kill dozens, maybe hundreds of Hamas militants.

Like, surely they could have cut the head off the Hamas Snake with surgical strike teams infiltrating Gaza, probably the West Bank, and international locations in Qatar or wherever the leadership is.

Reasonable people could conclude that Israel had to respond to Oct 7th, and that the best target would be Hamas. I can’t fathom how any reasonable people could conclude that bombing groups of people with 90% or more innocent civilians and the rest possible militants is a good response.

I can imagine that UNreasonable people might conclude that all Palestinians are guilty by association (because Hamas is their Netanyahu-supported elected government) and they’re all militants (even the babies). Or those unreasonable people might believe that Palestinians aren’t people worthy of protection.

So goddamned frustrating.

The First Peoples of North America definitely didn’t have such sharp, well defined border lines. It’s not as of they had a bunch of written treaties establishing hard borders.

You’re exspecially not supposed to fart in front of girls!

Imagine being such a good communicator that between sitting down to talk to your semi estranged daughter or buying a tech platform, you choose the latter.

I didn’t know Truthout was a CCP propaganda outlet. Glad to know.

I like the Action Lab guy going through the explanation for this https://youtu.be/ezUmSO_OAxY