We really need to start another one. high time to clean up the apathetic shop in this world. a crusade against gang violence in developed cities would also be nice. and the best crusade really , would be against media conglomerates that perpetrate misinformation to the unwashed masses every second of every day. zero remorse to pluck them off of this planet.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 2, 2021, 01:11:

jdreyer wrote on Sep 2, 2021, 00:25:
What about the Crusades?

Which one?

All of them?

A friend said
"First thing I learned before getting my class C license in TX:

Never straddle train tracks. Wait until it is clear on the other side side of the tracks, with sufficient room for your vehicle to clear the RR right of way without stopping."

It looked to me like the truck driver was worried about making the turn without hitting something, and was discussing it with hit safety driver in the pickup in front of him. But when they saw the gates come down, he was more concerned with getting out of the way.

Classic example of human error where people get focused on one problem and ignore everything else. Someone should have been thinking about the fact that they were blocking the tracks.

There was an airliner in the 70s that crashed in Miami because all three flight crew (they had an engineer back then) were focused on a burned out light bulb on the panel, and forgot to fly the plane.

Was it a poor route or just bad driving?

Will Joe Rogan be the next conservative show host to die of COVID? There have been quite a few lately.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 2, 2021, 00:25:
What about the Crusades?

Which one?

School board doesn't realize a trick was played.

I guess Mike Hunt was overused.

Poor planning of truck route.

Best YT comment: "Thus far. Nobody has been able to stop the train in GTA V."

Granny those cookies are not for you.

No! NOOOOOO! 🤣

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 19:25:

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:34:
Afghanistan wasn't about resources. Vietnam wasn't about resources... which is why we couldn't "win" them. Military action based on ideology over pragmatism is never good policy.

And war really has changed. I doubt we will see another global conflict like the World Wars. Globalization has become so entrenched that the First World has no interest in the disruption large-scale military conflict would cause. At most we'll end up with regional conflicts like in Israel, Syria or Crimea.

Afghanistan was most definitely about resources. Poppies and lithium. They're the largest opium crop producing country in the world. Or do you think the US has suddenly gotten out of the illicit drug trade? Going after the Taliban was a secondary concern and the primary smokescreen for its invasion. The uses of lithium are self-evident.

The Vietnam War was all about political capital, another resource. At face value, we took over from the French. The reality is that we were fighting a proxy war with the USSR over whether capitalistic democracy or communism would prevail.

I absolutely believe we'll see world wars again and, yet again, it will be over resources. Climate change (which is a real thing to everyone except the GQP and its mouthbreathing adherents) has already impacted fresh water supplies in much of the globe. When it becomes scarce enough, countries will go to war for it regardless of how much shit they buy from China. The reliability of globalization has been an utter failure as the current electronics shortage painfully pointed out.

What about the Crusades?

Cutter wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 14:09:

The entry fee is reportedly set to be between 3 and 10 euros ($3.52 and $11.73), dependent on the season. Residents and their relatives, children under six and people staying in local hotels will be exempt from the measures.

That's more than fair and about time.

Up to 80,000 people a day have recently been visiting the Italian city, The Times reported. At the height of the pandemic, tourism to Venice dried up, leading to the water in the city’s famous canals becoming noticeably clearer.

80K peeps a day? That's nuckin futs! Every port of call should be doing this. Fuck the cruise industry.

Idiotic statement, the cruise industry is hardly responsible for 80k visitors a day. And with Italian math, the number is about 25% of that. At most you will have three cruise ships in port. That's on average 3k per ship and not all those people disembark. Add in another 3k for people who may be boarding a ship. But most of those come in by flights to the airport outside Venice.

They tried entry fees already and the residents quickly told the gov to remove them.

Joe Rogan has covid-19, is taking unproven deworming medicine

Is that dumbass vaccinated?

Afghanistan's mineral resources were surveyed well after we'd already invaded them.

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:34:
Afghanistan wasn't about resources. Vietnam wasn't about resources... which is why we couldn't "win" them. Military action based on ideology over pragmatism is never good policy.

And war really has changed. I doubt we will see another global conflict like the World Wars. Globalization has become so entrenched that the First World has no interest in the disruption large-scale military conflict would cause. At most we'll end up with regional conflicts like in Israel, Syria or Crimea.

Afghanistan was most definitely about resources. Poppies and lithium. They're the largest opium crop producing country in the world. Or do you think the US has suddenly gotten out of the illicit drug trade? Going after the Taliban was a secondary concern and the primary smokescreen for its invasion. The uses of lithium are self-evident.

The Vietnam War was all about political capital, another resource. At face value, we took over from the French. The reality is that we were fighting a proxy war with the USSR over whether capitalistic democracy or communism would prevail.

I absolutely believe we'll see world wars again and, yet again, it will be over resources. Climate change (which is a real thing to everyone except the GQP and its mouthbreathing adherents) has already impacted fresh water supplies in much of the globe. When it becomes scarce enough, countries will go to war for it regardless of how much shit they buy from China. The reliability of globalization has been an utter failure as the current electronics shortage painfully pointed out.

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:34:
Afghanistan wasn't about resources.

Not entirely correct.

Afghanistan was a convenient excuse to justify M.I.C. corporate welfare and Iraq. Iraq was a resource grab.

And later on Afghanistan become one too when Lithium became important for tech when surveys turned up the treasure trove of minerals, especially trillions worth of Lithium. They just couldn't pacify the region enough to begin plundering.

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:34:
Vietnam wasn't about resources

It is well known by historians that Vietnam was an ideological proxy war with Russia, that about sums it up.

PHJF wrote on Sep 1, 2021, 17:34:
which is why we couldn't "win" them.

Incorrect, it's not about resources, it's about guerilla and asymmetric warfare being something the US and its military is not trained nor equipped, nor minded to win. It requires tools that the US won't use ( yet ), like genocide ( not necessarily in terms of mass murder, but that is also an option ) and brutal repression. China would've had better luck, they seem to have less scruples to use those tools.

Note: I don't advocate using those tools, as a matter of fact, I condemn them and anyone who tries to use them.

Give the US a traditional army to fight and they'll ( most likely ) win, but determined and patient guerillas in treacherous wild terrain? Nope. Not the right tool for the job.

Purdue Pharma Is Dissolved and Sacklers Pay $4.5 Billion to Settle Opioid Claims
Paywall free http://archive.today/4gkzi
Judge Drain explained that he was incredibly frustrated that so much of the Sackler money was parked in offshore accounts. He said he had expected and wished for a higher settlement.

Afghanistan wasn't about resources. Vietnam wasn't about resources... which is why we couldn't "win" them. Military action based on ideology over pragmatism is never good policy.

And war really has changed. I doubt we will see another global conflict like the World Wars. Globalization has become so entrenched that the First World has no interest in the disruption large-scale military conflict would cause. At most we'll end up with regional conflicts like in Israel, Syria or Crimea.

Dune
Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

- Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis

Blue, those wars were inevitable as all wars are for one reason alone:

Population pressure caused by a scarcity of resources.

Let's take WW2, for example. We, the Allies and the Treaty of Versailles, directly caused World War 2. We bankrupted Germany. So you had mass unemployment, mass hunger, a weak central government, uncontrolled inflation, and a loss of national pride. The only way to fix those things is go to war and start hoovering up resources as fast as possible. That keeps the mob from hanging you, the leader, and allows you to win political points by saying "See? We're fixing things!"

Literally every single war is about resources when boiled down to their purest form.

The Civil War? Lack of cheap, human labor that an entire agrarian industry was built upon. So much so that it was mentioned 23 times in the Articles of Secession. I'll leave the moral and ethical debates about slavery out of it.

The Second Sino-Japanese War? Rubber, oil, and iron.

The Iraq War? Oil. It was always about securing continued oil production from OPEC nations and we took the initiative to keep OPEC's hands clean.

So long as humans breed in an uncontrolled fashion, inefficiently produce goods, and value convenience over sustainability, there will always be war.

Or, as Ron Perlman likes to say:

War. War never changes.