Wanderthread Redux (Part 2)

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

The status quo funding is so far beyond the pale that arguing that it is inadequate is nonsense on a “the sky is made of marzipan” level.

People's City Council - Los Angeles (PplsCityCouncil)

[Wanderfound]

NPR (NPR)

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

read a fucking book.

Pavel Mayer (pavel23)

Hitler's Money and How He Stole It - WW2 Special

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

given the nationalities of the speakers involved it shows a stunning lack of self-reflection.

John Sipher (john_sipher)

Rizdach (Rizdach)

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

read a fucking book.

Maddow Blog (MaddowBlog)

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

read a fucking book.

The festival of Hitler apologia continues:

Anders Åslund (anders_aslund)

[Lucy_Gothro1]

Hah? Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons?

That wasn’t water coming out of those damned shower heads.

[Wanderfound]

AD Magic Serple公式 (atothe_d)

[Wanderfound]

Skimming through some Libyan history…

An in depth investigation into the Libyan intervention and its aftermath was started in July 2015 by the U.K. Parliament’s House of Commons’ cross-party Foreign Affairs Committee, the final conclusions of which were released on 14 September 2016 in a report titled Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options .[231][232] The report was strongly critical of the British government’s role in the intervention.[233][234][235] The report concluded that the government “failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element.”[236] In particular, the committee concluded that Gaddafi was not planning to massacre civilians, and that reports to the contrary were propagated by rebels and Western governments. The feared threat of the massacre of civilians was not supported by the available evidence, according to the parliamentary report. For example, on 17 March 2011 Gaddafi had given Benghazi rebels the offer of peaceful surrender and when Gaddafi had earlier retaken Ajdabiya from rebel forces there were no massacres of non-combatants.[237][231] Alison Pargeter, a freelance Middle East and North Africa (MENA) analyst, told the Committee that when Gaddafi’s forces re-took Ajdabiya they did not attack civilians, and this had taken place in February 2011, shortly before the NATO intervention.[238] She also said that Gaddafi’s approach towards the rebels had been one of “appeasement”, with the release of Islamist prisoners and promises of significant development assistance for Benghazi.[238]

According to the report, France’s motives for initiating the intervention were French national interest and President Sarkozy’s “political self-interest.”[239] In a briefing to Hillary Clinton on 2 April 2011, her adviser Sidney Blumenthal reported that, according to his conversations with French intelligence officers, France’s motives for overthrowing Gaddafi included to increase France’s share of Libya’s oil production, strengthen French influence in Africa, and improve President Sarkozy’s standing at home.[240][234] The report also found that “Intelligence on the extent to which extremist militant Islamist elements were involved in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion was inadequate.”[231]

A 2013 paper by Alan Kuperman in International Security journal argued that NATO went beyond its remit of providing protection for civilians and instead supported the rebels by engaging in regime change. It argued that NATO’s intervention likely extended the length (and thus damage) of the civil war, which Kuperman argued could have ended in less than two months without NATO intervention. The paper argued that the intervention was based on a misperception of the danger Gadaffi’s forces posed to the civilian population, which Kuperman suggests was caused by existing bias against Gadaffi due to his past actions (such as support for terrorism), sloppy and sensationalistic journalism during the early stages of the war and propaganda from anti-government forces. Kuperman suggests that this demonization of Gadaffi, which was used to justify the intervention, ended up discouraging efforts to accept a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, turning a humanitarian intervention into a dedicated regime change.[260]

Micah Zenko argues that the Obama administration deceived the public by pretending the intervention was intended to protect Libyan civilians instead of achieving regime change when “in truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start”.[261]

The total number of sorties flown by NATO numbered more than 26,000, an average of 120 sorties per day. 42% of the sorties were strike sorties, which damaged or destroyed approximately 6,000 military targets.

The US military claimed it had no knowledge of civilian casualties.[18]

[Wanderfound]

[Wanderfound]

“Assertive”.

Josie Spicer (jsspcr1)

[Wanderfound]

The master’s house, the master’s tools.

[Wanderfound]

[Wanderfound]

Dilan (dilanpcook)

[Lucy_Gothro1]

The decision not to send out more stimmies was abysmal.

[Wanderfound]

Here’s a bit of history:

Opinion | Assassinating Putin Won’t Work. It Never Has for America.

So far as is known, Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to order such assassinations. He began by targeting Premier Zhou Enlai of China. During the 1950s, Eisenhower and nearly every other policymaker in Washington considered the “Red Chinese” to be maniacal fanatics bent on world conquest. When Zhou announced in 1955 that he would travel to Bandung, Indonesia, for a momentous conference of Asian and African leaders, the CIA saw a chance to kill him. Zhou chartered an Air India jet for his flight to Bandung. It exploded in midair, killing 16 passengers. But Zhou had not boarded. China called it “murder by the special service organizations of the United States.”

[Wanderfound]

[Lucy_Gothro1]

Another reason why I don’t like Ike.

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

President Biden at #SOTU: “We should all agree, the answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police.” “Fund them with resources and training, resources and training they need they need to protect their communities.”

The Root (TheRoot)

[Wanderfound]