Perhaps some day a random house will just happen to burn down with the refrain “Actions have consequences.” sprayed on the wall.

It would have been much worse if the Iraqi Army had stood and fought. Lots of stories came out from guys at the front who would roll up in Humvees on heavily armoured outposts that were straight up abandoned, where they say there would have been a massacre of us troops if the have stayed. It was such a ubiquitous experience that even ‘Generation Kill’ has it happen to the protagonists. There was really only one large engagement, and the U.S. Marines absolutely wiped a bunch of Iraqi tanks that were out in the desert, many of whom didn’t even get a shot off. All other stuff ended up being insurgency, much of which at the beginning were local militia forces.

What Generation Kill doesn’t get into is the theory that the Iraqi commanders and some of the actual troops had been paid off, and also given promises of leniency, which immediately fell through when all former members of the Baathist party were banned from holding government jobs, which put pretty much all the best and brightest of Iraq (including the entire officer corp, most of whom had survived the war) into the position of having to resort to gangsterism (in this form jihadi militia work) to survive in post-war Iraq. While it does make sense that the army wouldn’t really want to fight naturally, the rapidity and professionalism of general insurgency only really took off after the Baathists were put completely out of power and points to a broken agreement imo.

If you don’t mind people being a dick and kicking you for not having the meta load-out about 20% of the time yes.

The game is infinitely better with even one other friend.

It was in Wisconsin.

I do find it funny that the engineers are blaming each other more than the absolute tragedy of fuck-ups by corporate management. How do you go into Arizona not understanding that the whole state is literally just a series of real-estate and construction grifts? It’s a city in a desert, it has to be that! Just bribe the motherfuckers with those subsides you received and be done with it!

As I keep telling people, the call is always coming from inside the house when it comes to the U.S. and drugs.

So they pay us for weapons with money that we gave them? Yup, this is a real economy!

The big difference here is that if your competition can out-compete you using Chinese infrastructure, you will be forced into at least figuring out a way to dual-use it.

Ultimately, this is a Microsoft/Apple situation. It’s just who will be Microsoft and who will be Apple. I think that, over time, most of the cutting edge tech will migrate over to Chinese tech, even if the rest of the world doesn’t exactly. That said, Africa and Asia (outside of the colonial outposts) will mostly be in the Chinese tech sphere.

Holy shit. When are we bringing back political assassinations in Minecraft?

It is wild how many poli sci and economists have never talked to someone who deals with supply.

It was out in the open in the 60’s too, though. It only led to a more bleak era of repression. We just have to hope that another 90’s doesn’t come in to save the powers that be

There are stories of people’s that eat parts of their enemies, but it’s never been observed directly, is almost always told by the enemies and rivals of those tribes, and never consumption of the whole body. Usually it would just be a desecration ritual.

I haven’t read anything about it in TeleSur, but I highly doubt it. Maduro isn’t as popular as Chavez was, but the opposition is extremely unpopular outside of their own party because they are (correctly) seen as American running dogs.

The situation in Venezuela would be much different if there was an active ComIntern, but, for now, the socdems rule the roost and are demonstrating why they are the left-wing of fascism. A consistent nationalist chauvinism is still generally seen as preferable to people than the ever changing political situations in Panama, Brazil, Peru or Columbia.

Even if that was true, what sane person would let your opposition run after they were literally just involved in a coup attempt 4 years ago. I am far more critical of the Maduro government’s treatment of the Venezuelan Communist party, whom it has also banned, but let’s be clear, that is not why the U.S. is acting this way towards Venezuela.

Classic lib, thinking that if they spend more money on weapons, more weapons will just magically appear.

Idk how she is now, I should clarify that I am just referencing how she was nearly a decade ago. My guess would be that internet punditry has fried her brain like so many before her.

Rebecca Watson, while having good and correct points about the toxic masculinity and lack of intersectionality within the new atheist movement, was always piss poor at actually arguing for a rational, political, atheism or understanding a real philosophical grounding for atheism outside of skepticism and (and I hate saying this) scientism. She is a good science communicator, but as soon as she steps outside of that sphere her reasoning is usually dodgy and her ability to parse bullshit from quality is poor. It is such a shame that so many in the movement were grifters, but expecting anything good or anybody good to really arise from American internet-driven culture-movements is a fool’s game.

No no, don’t you understand, if we don’t vote for Biden, trans lives will be in danger!

Their knee jerk is literally “Oh they’re just jealous of us.”

Hell they don’t even need to merc them, capitalist development requires catastrophes, and you just move in to actually clean up the mess and take over ownership. It’s only in backwards ass countries like the U.S. that you bail them out and let them maintain ownership. Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie indeed.