#2121
[account deactivated]
#2122
Post rating: ~
even the name of the movie sounds like "iraq"
#2123
Post rating: ~
looking from the outside, it s hard for me to understand the state of amerikkkan foreign policy. all these vacillations, are they just a smokescreen? if they are real, what s the reason behind them? is there some sort of split inside the american establishment? what would be the basis of this division? economic sectors (like finance, industrial sectors relying on a big domestic base, MIC, etc)? or is it something else?
#2124
Post rating: +++++
It's an easy mistake to conflate the broader driving force behind a state's actions for that state's internal ideological justification. The United States government isn't a monolithic entity that moves in perfect rational coordinated lockstep, like any social structure it's full of messy personal and organizational friction. (Most) US policy makers don't just sit down at a table and say "now on to the agenda item where we eliminate obstacles to our empire's forceful extraction of wealth," they earnestly pursue individual objectives relevant to the state: "protecting US sovereignty," "supporting our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia," "curtailing the influence of Russia and China," "assuring access to strategic resources," and these quasi-naive surface level objectives add up to an imperialist campaign of dominance. Some of the people making decisions about these objectives don't think of them as fitting into a harmonious whole, and might even see them as contradictory or at least in friction with each other.

The US government is full of individual independent people that all have their own ideas about how to best accomplish the above objectives, some of them (particularly in the Pentagon) might have a more cynically realist take that closely resembles how an anti-imperialist would describe US actions but many don't, they take stated US goals and justifications at face value. All these people talk to each other and debate and order each other around until a consensus of action boils out of the conflicting personalities and factions.

These personal and organizational frictions are particularly exacerbated in the Trump white house because of his flailing resistance against the internal bureaucracy's status quo and the revolving door of wack jobs in leadership that don't have enough time to get settled into their position. This doesn't mean that the Trump white house will actually break with deep state objectives, they're still rabid white supremacists eager to ravage the globe and they're still "leading" an entire state apparatus oriented around accomplishing that objective, but it does create more internal dissonance and vacillation on the execution of policy objectives.
#2125
[account deactivated]
#2126
Post rating: +
Good point, once you get outside the purely internal divisions the spoils of empire aren't exactly distributed equally and there's a multitude of interests constantly jockeying for a bigger share of the plunder who have different vested interests in the particulars of how the pillaging happens
#2127
Post rating: ~
yeah, that s what i was asking about, especially given how the method of pillaging determines who ll get more prominent roles and more of the spoils in return. but who defends which particulars and which interests do these particulars reflect specifically? trump s trade war and anti-china drive vs the anti-russia drive of hillary and her ilk correspond to what exactly?

edit: on second thought i think i m either derailing this thread or on the verge of derailing it

Edited by sovnarkoman ()

#2128
[account deactivated]
#2129
Post rating: +


It's always funny to me when the news accidentally cuts straight to the truth of the matter without understanding how it got there
#2130
Post rating: +


Security Council arguments over Syria suddenly began to name drop Marx and Lenin today.
#2131
Post rating: +
Holy shit the UK's fucking diplomat to the UN claiming modern Russia was founded on Marxist precepts. 1991 never fucking happened I guess

Plus repeating the grandma chain email tier "quality has a quantity all its own," and not even getting it right (it is usually attributed to Stalin, she attributes it to Lenin)

Truth is dead, history is dead, facts are dead
#2132
Post rating: +
We are all fucking dead
#2133
Post rating: +
Hey at least Bolivia’s ambassador continues to own.
#2134
Post rating: +
Bolivia's ambassador is like Rich Homie Quan. He goes in on every speech.
#2135
Post rating: ~
lol german social demoncraps are yelling at merkel for not bombing syria
#2136
[account deactivated]
#2137
Post rating: ~
eh nm
#2138
Post rating: +
Seems like West is backing down. Pretty big diplomatic victory for Russia and Syria if that ends up being the case, considering they went from imminent air strike campaign and “all options” being on the table wrt Russian assets being targets to “we don’t know who did the chemical attacks”. Pretty stark contrast to 2011!
#2139
Online
Post rating: ~
Yeah I still think we're on the razor's edge but it's starting to sound more like some token missiles will be fired than a serious onslaught. Of course still seeing things in the press desperately breathlessly begging for all-out war.
#2140
Post rating: ~

shriekingviolet posted:

It's an easy mistake to conflate the broader driving force behind a state's actions for that state's internal ideological justification. The United States government isn't a monolithic entity that moves in perfect rational coordinated lockstep, like any social structure it's full of messy personal and organizational friction. (Most) US policy makers don't just sit down at a table and say "now on to the agenda item where we eliminate obstacles to our empire's forceful extraction of wealth," they earnestly pursue individual objectives relevant to the state: "protecting US sovereignty," "supporting our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia," "curtailing the influence of Russia and China," "assuring access to strategic resources," and these quasi-naive surface level objectives add up to an imperialist campaign of dominance. Some of the people making decisions about these objectives don't think of them as fitting into a harmonious whole, and might even see them as contradictory or at least in friction with each other.

The US government is full of individual independent people that all have their own ideas about how to best accomplish the above objectives, some of them (particularly in the Pentagon) might have a more cynically realist take that closely resembles how an anti-imperialist would describe US actions but many don't, they take stated US goals and justifications at face value. All these people talk to each other and debate and order each other around until a consensus of action boils out of the conflicting personalities and factions.

These personal and organizational frictions are particularly exacerbated in the Trump white house because of his flailing resistance against the internal bureaucracy's status quo and the revolving door of wack jobs in leadership that don't have enough time to get settled into their position. This doesn't mean that the Trump white house will actually break with deep state objectives, they're still rabid white supremacists eager to ravage the globe and they're still "leading" an entire state apparatus oriented around accomplishing that objective, but it does create more internal dissonance and vacillation on the execution of policy objectives.


I don see the word "capital" or "capitalist" in any of this, epic fail

Edited by animedad ()

#2141
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~
Even with US waffling, Theresa May and Manny Macron are pretty openly masturbating over a map of syrian hospitals to be bombed
#2142
Post rating: ~
if you were an "individual" in the state department you'd be hauled off to the asylum. or at best, fired.
#2143
Post rating: +
Lol the Facebook page of the Russian embassy in DC just posted a Soviet anti-imperialist propaganda poster.

https://www.facebook.com/RusEmbUSA/posts/771480799728979
#2144
Post rating: +
Imagine what the Soviet Union would’ve been like in the age of social media.
#2145
Post rating: ~

colddays posted:

Lol the Facebook page of the Russian embassy in DC just posted a Soviet anti-imperialist propaganda poster.

https://www.facebook.com/RusEmbUSA/posts/771480799728979


hahaha

#2146
Online
Post rating: ~
russia now also has ""proof"" re the chemical attack
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/04/13/russia-syria-chemical-attack-fabrication-foreign-intelligence-agency/514039002/
#2147
Post rating: +++++
#2148
Post rating: +
hahaha they didnt even pretend to have breaking news to cut to
#2149
[account deactivated]
#2150
Post rating: ~
If you've seen THIS dangerous radical, report him to the State Hygiene Office NOW. He is unarmed and dangerous.
#2151
Online
Post rating: +
So this seems potentially reliable: the Russians put up a video with two guys who say they were present at the "chemical" attack. These two guys are able to point themselves out in the original video that went around, so it looks like that's likely true. This is the original video the rebels released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpwcV0sup_o

And the interview with a couple guys from that vid can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBmWe5FnSCc

Apparently, these two witnesses basically say there was a bombing and they were treating people for smoke inhalation, when someone ran in and started saying it was a chemical attack, causing panic, and then people then came in and started filming. The two guys say they did not find anyone showing symptoms of any chemical attack.
#2152
Online
Post rating: ~
trump wants big bombs as does bolton, mattis is saying no

#2153
Post rating: ~
Gofundme Mattis' pension in 3, 2,
#2154
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~

Parenti posted:

Gofundme Mattis' pension in 3, 2,


YOu can go make a US generals performance review threard if you want

#2155
Post rating: ~
Sir, I am "riffin'" on the McCabe Gofundme, sir.
#2156
Post rating: +
Moderate Dog Mattis
#2157
Post rating: ~
It's happening.gif
#2158
Post rating: ~
:-/
#2159
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
It is not enough to talk about the general Mattis without also bringing up the specific Mattis. Lol. Humor in uniform. And then the first sergeant quipped, "Women on the front lines? We should make their body armor out of the circle of mid-ranking gang rapists I cover for, because they can't be pried off with a crowbar." What's the hardest part about digging a latrine for a tiny military outpost? Making it eight feet deep and sixty feet long to hide dozens of civilian corpses. Yesterday the Pentagon unexpectedly found a new recruitment pool for the demonic work of piloting predator drones: Guys whose ex girlfriends dumped them and moved to Yemen. How many military contractors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to be broken and stuck glass end first in the face of a kid who looks like the kid who threw a rock at their Humvee. The other day two Army privates were out for their morning run when they saw a group of devout Muslims at prayer. One Army private exclaimed, "It's a terrorist cell! They've come to invade our land and steal our democracy!" and used his automatic shotgun to shred the praying Muslims into unrecognizable hunks of flesh. The other cried, "You fool! We never get stationed on American soil - in fact we're in a mosque in Iraq right now!" The first replied, "So what?" to which his friend retorted, "So, my Klan brothers at home pay top dollar for these Iraqi scalp lampshades, and you've peppered them all through with buckshot!" What do you get when you cross an F-35 with a penguin? You get a flightless bird that costs $406.5 billion to develop and procure
#2160
Post rating: ~
f