The parent disagreement between the US and Russia is staying the hands of all parties involved. Russia can't react like they want to, given the current political climate, and Iran will not act without Russia's blessing, being outmatched by the US, and a Russian Ally. But they can't let this go without posturing; they have to show a solidarity of sorts, and to allow the US to strike an ally on their soil, near your assets without saying anything is craven. So, now that the ball is in play, everyone will do the little dance they have to do, and this may escalate to a full blown conflict. Russia will help Syria from the shadows, as they are currently. The enemy of n enemy is in this case, at least, a friend.

This is where I have been at the entire thread..the last time I checked, dropping bombs was enough. Sarin is just icing on the asshole cake. I will concur it's odd he would do this, but, somebody did this, and somebody with a plane, and access to copious amounts of sarin. That we cannot dispute; and those are all features of state actors. At the very least, not publically denouncing responsibility and denouncing this is bad optics.

This is indeed a start, but does little to address the root issue, the cultural attitudes toward women that are prominent in Indian society. How much of a deterrent will this be, when punishment for rape is so haphazardly enforced, and sporadically reported because of this? And then the cultural stigma of being raped is seemingly worse than getting raped; you might get fucking killed by your own family.

While you can't globally assign these attitudes to the whole population, the population would do well to rid itself of these attitudes/behaviors.

I laughed ass off, BAD, thank you good sir 

Then, replace Muslim with 'crazy motherfucker' and you have a completely correct statement

See what I did there?

I'm black, and this is pretty fucking disgusting man. Any cop that feels this threatened by a sub 150 pound young female in a cocktail dress, probably shouldn't be a cop. This life matters just as much as a Black one   and this happens to blacks on a daily basis, it doesnt make the news. You may think the liberal media sensationalizes police brutality against blacks, but, it's just that there is so.much more.interaction with law enforcement that this happens more, statistically. It's shitty, whoever it happens to. If this were my sister, or my mom, I can tell you one life that certainly wouldn't matter to me, at that moment.

You should read the comments on Breitbart about this one. It's surprising people with daughters, have so little empathy. I thought it was just for.minorities, was unpleasantly surprised

Russia could be complicit through non action, that is specifically, being aware of the military action and not voicing an objection. Follow my logic. We had both Syrian and Russian military assets at the base that got struck. With the coordination between these two forces, I would hope that either one wouldn't pull something like this, without saying anything to the other. So, they almost definitely knew about the gas attacks before they happened.

And, although the signs seem to point to Assad, these actions make little sense. To try and execute himself in the court of global opinion would be pretty stupid, thats exactly the fallout from this. Assad isn't stupid, this isn't the first time we have been here with chemical weapons. Why lose his chill now? And why the determination (multiple strikes) to eradicate this particular target?

Well, the punks didn't seem to be listening. There were subsequent gas attacks AFTER Trumps surgical strike, hours after, to be exact. Whoever perpetrated the gas attacks, they wanted to make sure they certainly finished the job.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/08/assad-trying-kill-everyone-survived-chemical-attack-says-resident/

I know you are all weird about mainstream media sources, so let me just pull content:


On Friday night and into Saturday morning, the northern rebel-held town was pummelled once again by Syrian warplanes.
The Sukhoi jets had taken off from al-Shayrat airbase, which just a matter of hours earlier was hit by 59 American Tomahawk cruise missiles, making apparent the limited nature of US President Donald Trump’s intervention.

@Sith I agree, but I don't think this had the desired effect. The more traditional of Trumps followers seemingly didn't like our little first into Syria. And, this would have been way more effective if we hadn't, you, know, told Russia about it (who would have been bound to tell Syria as an ally,). But, I understand this, given they weren't a target. That would have actually been an act of war.

@Spend agree also. This is an act of war, no doubt. But said act of war should not need a declaration of war. Shooting off a gang of missiles is the way you blow shit up, this is functioning as intended LOL.

Consumerism 101


On point. All corporate sponsored media is intended to deceive you in a small way. Be that buying a product or service, or voting for something; they only spent time and money crafting said message because they want something from you. Usually, your time, money, or both.

The world is ruled by rhetoric. We are much less sensitive to it as humans now; we have distracted ourselves so long we forgot how to pay attention to our surroundings, stay aware. We have been too safe. And so, we have relinquished some of the drive to discover, to question. That has been replaced by consensus. If enough people say something is a way, then that's just gotta be the way it is, no?

And all this, after communication technology advances to its pinnacle. Go figure.

From what I have read on this, this is a result of a regulatory change pushed by the new chief minister in a fairly right wing administration. The right would like to see beef slaughtering completely banned, as cows are sacred to the religious right in India. This has resulted in a campaign of small cuts; the regulatory bar is being raised to price many meat producers out of the market. This is overwhelmingly affecting Muslims, as they do eat beef, and are one of the few over there that would process an edible cow carcass (non edible is a completely different discussion). A lot of vigilantism has cropped up; and is being used to reinforce caste. Because only the lower castes would touch a dead cow. So easy to mob and harass these guys, who are just doing a pretty shitty job to get paid.

LMAO, when the eggs cost a few million a piece, I'd at least make an omelette for the dog to enjoy, rather than simply throw them into the street.

Im more at, we should have been chill in this, or at least waited a little to act. Preempting the investigation (although I'm pretty sure our intelligence will know more about it than the investigators) seemed brash in the court of global public opinion. Passing this by Congress might have softened the optics on this, but, ultimately would not have changed the outcome, I think.

Under a legalisation scheme, these guys would no longer be criminals. Hence the simply beauty of drug law reform. Drug law, however, is too profitable to let go for Big Prison.

Also, alcohol is one of the most damaging drugs that has been known to society (the contemporary opium epidemic will be the one to go down in history however, mark my words). Do you feel alcohol should be legal?

I agree that not all drugs should be legal, but we would do well to decriminalize, at least, some of the less addictive, mostly natural substances. If you can buy a quadruple expresso, you should be able to buy pot/fungi.

Which makes me wonder about something. With this being the most funded military in the world, where is all this money going? We haven't had a major full scale boots on the ground effort since Iraq. Do we really give that much money to contractors and other private industries, to develop new technology for defense? It doesn't cost that much to pay the troops. Or feed them.

Why do we spend so much money with defense contractors? Why do we simply not create a new agency, and staff it with directly hired government employees? We could have avoided much of wikileaks with this strategy.

And now we are increasing defense spending under this administration by almost a quarter.

This is another thing that wouldn't make sense if you assigned motivations to the actors. One, I doubt Trump would authorize a clandestine strike given the state of the administration. He loves his followers, and you can simply read the board to see the Trump sentiment among the harder right is rapidly fading with his airfield strike. His red meat eating voters aren't digging this Syria shit at all. So, for them to orchestrate this attack, then execute it, then respond with an additional false retaliatory attack, seems a bit far fetched.

But I will admit, all is not as it seems.

I don't even care if this is true. That thread title is fucking hilarious, and the concept of this, while disgusting, is equally laugh inducing.


You can have your shit and eat it too, kids.

I dunno. This strike, though highly publicized (this dominated the news cycle) was largely ineffectual. Struck a largely empty airfield, after giving them an advanced notice. Essentially, it seems like we paid many millions of dolkars to give Assad some free construction work. This kind of feels like a misdirection, a media event with a feel good component to distract from Russia.

It's not so much that he is undermining the military, in fact he intends to bolster spending. It's more that, as Big Brother to the entire world, we've had to straddle a fine diplomatic line with certain issues. We put out our position, but it's very vague, to allow wiggle room retroactively. Trump doesn't do so good with shades of grey. His tendency to commit, and then not budge is too stubborn/indelicate for American foreign politics. We have made an art of playing both sides of the fence, but the current administration seems to be departing from that. So all these bold positions coming out of America suddenly, about old things, must be a tad annoying for the rest of global leadership.

Its not just Israel, it's the money. But there has been a certain pandering to Israel that is a bit over the top this administration (Obama's administration did the same, but did this odd little dance of doesn't support/doesn't condemn). Now we have clear, unabashed support (with a bit of the same finger wagging). Now, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding why Assad would do this, now. This seems like the literal surefire way to garner instant global notoriety. To what avail would he have to order this attack? Although the evidence does seem to point to his involvement.

LOL this sums it up. People already know their real life identities are attached to Facebook, yet people still put up pictures of stolen property, the commission of crimes, and other wonderfully bright shit such as this. I would get this for the point of tying each profile to a public identity, but, it would be pretty hurtful if someone stole your identity and did this under this scheme. People would assume it was you, since it was verified with your credentials, and it would be hard to present evidence otherwise. Unless they are going to go the Twitter verified way, they don't have the resources to implement something like this.