barrbaric [he/him]

The invasion of Afghanistan began with a wave of bombings/air strikes that killed thousands of civilians and destroyed infrastructure because the Taliban/Al Qaeda were located in areas in which other people lived. Especially the Taliban, as they were the ruling government. A decent analogy is actually 9/11: sure, they targeted the white house and pentagon, but also the WTC which were civilians. Given what we know of US intel, I would actually wager that 2/3 of the hijackerss targets being military installations makes them more precise than the US forces. There are then second-order deaths, such as from starvation and disease, due to disruption of infrastructure, power being cut, factories shutting down, etc.

Likewise, the “Shock and Awe” phase of the invasion of Iraq was a terror bombing campaign that aimed (and failed) to cause Saddam’s government to be overthrown by popular uprising due to mass civilian death and destruction of infrastructure. IIRC Iraq’s power grid still hasn’t been repaired to pre-war levels over 20 years later.

We can get semantic about what the phrase “bombing to pieces” means, but come on. The invasions kill over a million people, primarily due to second-order deaths from the initial and ongoing bombing campaigns. Seriously, look at the history of how the US wages war. It always relies on having air superiority and bombing the shit out of the countries it invades and then following up with special forces. Nowadays, that’d be JSOC because that branch of the special forces are directly controlled by the president.

As far as ground invasion, that depends on what their goals are. If they want to use the playbook from Venezuela and kidnap (or assassinate) all leadership then “no” because while they’ll have special forces on the ground they won’t be staying long-term. If they want to use the playbook from Iraq and Afghanistan, then yes, they will have to do a ground invasion as strategic terror bombings never actually succeed at causing the popular uprisings (see: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc). The only place it allegedly ever worked was Japan in WWII, but that seems to have been largely incorrect and their surrender was much more due to the soviets declaring war on them.

I can remember what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan?

If you weren’t fairly online and/or in fringe left-wing or right-wing spaces, you probably wouldn’t have heard about him because he wasn’t really that important. Most of my coworkers (and this is in the US) had never heard of him before his neck just did that.

Thank you comrade bee

I once had windows quarantine the download files, claiming they were viruses. Had to manually add an exception and then it worked fine.

In the US transit mostly doesn’t exist beyond buses that barely ever run.

Sure, there’s a two-way relationship, but the US is the global hegemon (or at least was until very recently), while Israel is a regional power. They may both influence each other, but the US has more say in the relationship.

For Interstellar, at least, I’d say it’s incredibly low-brow. The resolution is just “the power of wuv saves humanity!”, which is extremely simplistic and easily understood by the masses.

Reading the wikipedia article on Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and thinking it looks good until I get to this:

One could argue that anyone paying taxes to the US (or any US-allied states) are “part of the problem” in that they’re partly paying for a state that is dead set on exterminating all life on the planet by accelerating climate change and embracing fascism (or, at the bare minimum, doing nothing major to oppose it). But the people paying those taxes are only doing so under threat of violence, imprisonment, or death. I think anyone who opposes this state of affairs is not part of the problem. They might not be part of the solution, which imo would require engaging in activism to attempt to overthrow the current state of affairs, but they’re neutral at worst. I’d like to think I do enough to fall under the former umbrella, and so would not think of myself as “part of the problem”.

The people who are “part of the problem” in my mind are three groups:

1. Those who willingly go along with the fascist project but do not meaningfully contribute to it. In america, these are your typical Trump voters who happily go along with everything he says but aren’t doing anything beyond that. It also includes many liberals who still believe in american exceptionalism and, for example, don’t see anything wrong with committing genocide so long as the person doing it is polite and pretends to be trying to stop it.
2. Those who contribute to the fascist project but are following orders. These are the kind of people who will go to Jan 6th, or scream about woke teachers at a schoolboard meeting. They might even run for small-time local office.
3. Those who are orchestrating the fascist project. These are the billionaires, high-level politicians, media personalities, and right-wing think tanks who have been actively pushing and/or masterminding the fascist movement for decades.

Clearly it’s one point three-twenty em-bee.

It might be simplistic, but I’m always going to go with Occam’s Razor on this: Trump and Elon are just that stupid.

Posting this is a war crime.

Nyaa.si still up, all is well

IIRC rent and food are relatively cheap compared to the US, and you don’t have to own a car which is a pretty big savings.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will, AKA “Might as well try my best in case I’m wrong and we manage to pull it off”.

Hey someone help me out, how many people could Biden have freed from prison for drug possession charges if he just pardoned as many as he could? Assuming he was a good person, I mean.

By this analogy, where does Biden, the American Paul von Hindenburg, land? Like obviously it’s worse to actually abolish democracy, but surely working with those doing it and doing nothing to stop them is also evil?

E: As a disclaimer about my political views, I believe that Trump and every other US president should be executed for crimes against humanity.

If it’s about domestic damage, then every president who owned slaves or supported segregation still beats him.

E: Also every president who was involved in the genocide of the indigenous peoples of America to an extent more than Trump (IE he probably ties Biden and Obama on this).

They’re low risk unless you ingest them, because then they’re hitting internal organs directly.