International Politics Thread - Disease and Disaster

[Phoenix Dark]

https://twitter.com/ostadjaan/status/492428125045669888/photo/1

[doctavius bonbon]

Fantastic.

[benjipwns]

Why can't we just have peace 
Fucking extremists on both sides

That's loser talk. And weak leadership.

[Phoenix Dark]

Palestinians need some veteran leadership to teach them how to play the right way.

[Joe Molotov]

https://twitter.com/ostadjaan/status/492428125045669888/photo/1

I bet the middle of that demonstration would be a good place to hide some missiles, nawhatmean?

[benjipwns]

Palestinians need some veteran leadership to teach them how to play the right way.

Larry Brown did just lose his star recruit to an overseas team...

[DCharlieJP]

"Because John Kerry showed up in Israel, gave $47 million to Hamas in Gaza..."

Oh god , this is almost the same as that 3.1 BILLION that Israel - weakest president on Israel had no problem pushing through 3.1 bigones through the budget process it would appear. Don't recall anyone calling him weak on Israel back then

What would GOPpers have him do? Join in the bombing? Laugh at dead kids? People man... fucking people.

[toku]

=/

[Great Rumbler]

We really shouldn't be sending any money to Israel.

[AdmiralViscen]

How is it possible that Israel is safe enough for tourists flying in but dangerous enough that hundreds of civilians need to be blown away to preserve their security

[Kara]

How is it possible that Israel is safe enough for tourists flying in but dangerous enough that hundreds of civilians need to be blown away to preserve their security

There's a #thedualities post to be made in response to this, but I can't make it.

[Himu]

We really shouldn't be sending any money to Israel.

Good lord, I wish I could like this post twice.

[Himu]

supporting this POS country with my tax dollars

This is surely going to result in my south pacific cousins calling me up in a week or two on some "how can you live in a country that backs such terrible garbage, and is hypocritical at every turn when another country does it"

#thedualities (Image removed from quote.)

I said the same thing on twitter a second ago. You beat me to it, I see.

[Great Rumbler]

We really shouldn't be sending any money to Israel.

Good lord, I wish I could like this post twice.

I saw a commercial on Fox News recently that was urging people to donate money to send care packages to Israel.

[Rufus]

Yeah, this was on the news yesterday. There are heaps of foods in Japanese supermarkets which are imported from China. They are overwhelmingly less expensive than the Japanese-farmed versions of the same item. Chinese garlic, for one, is 1/4th the price of Japanese garlic. But Chinese food is suspect in Japan, fairly or not. This article reinforces for me that it's not an unfair assessment.

I've been reading Chinasmack.com for a while and the translated comments from Chinese netizens seem to suggest that they too are keenly aware of the lack of food safety. I went to see if they covered this story and found one more food scandal on the front page.

http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/stories/expired-moldy-bread-given-to-hainan-typhoon-disaster-victims.html

http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/videos/mcdonalds-kfc-meat-supplier-exposed-reusing-expired-meat.html

Chinese people’s bodies are already immune to all poisons/toxins!

[DCharlieJP]

man, the fun thing about the digital age is how funny some of the bullshit is.

Israel recon couldn't tell 4 boys playing on a beach weren't terrorists - but they are able to tell that a hospital has no people in it before they bombed it because a rocket was fired from it.

Couple of problems here :

1) bullshit - no way to know
2) I thought Hamas were firing from civilian areas to stop reprisals .... but now the hospitals are empty! Oh i see
and last but not least
3) damn, looks like there were people in there... Hamas at blame again for the death of their children.


Seriously run out of patience on all this - any dissenting voice is ANTISEMITISM and the top of bottom is that the Israel side KNOW by tacit admission that the are killing women, children etc via the "well, Hamas are hiding out there" - the idea that they give people a heads up looks in stark contrast to the reports coming out of the area. Ultimately the parroting of "Hamas are hiding amongst the civilians" is somehow some green light to just shell the bejebus out of everything and if kids/whoever die? #shrug #hamas !

The rest of the world has no balls - the top and bottom of it is that no one wants to get involved unless it's a big country going to smash a small country.
And to top it all - "Qatar should be stripped of the World Cup because they fund Hamas" ....

Do one.

[Rufus]

I'm most annoyed by how coy news media are about calling them on this bullshit. There's always a hint of critique, but they make sure to end with some permutation of "well, if Hamas would just...".

[DCharlieJP]

yes, Israel wants a cease fire (with terms that let them stay in Gaza and host of other perks) but Hamas don't want it (Because the situation for their side doesn't change - infact, it gets worse!)

[Squiddy]

It's pretty darn obvious that ultimately Israel will win, rewrite history, while the rest of the world does nothing.
Israel might as well level Gaza and be done with it, instead of cruelly prolonging these land grabs and giving the palestinians & their supporters false hope.

[Atramental]

Whoops.

[benjipwns]

We really shouldn't be sending any money to Israel.

Dangerous talk. How about we just send more to everybody?

[Squiddy]

Also, this is awesome:

Israel has announced it will pay university students to circulate pro-Israeli information on social media networks, without having to identify themselves as working for the government.

The move was publicised in a statement from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, the Associated Press reported. Students will receive scholarships to "engage international audiences online" and combat anti-Semitism and calls to boycott Israel, it was alleged.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/14/israel-pay-students-propaganda_n_3755782.html

I would probably take their money 

[Himu]

USA Libya embassy evacuated.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/26/libyan-embassy-evacuated/13195671/

[doctavius bonbon]

can't believe i missed this:



Israeli soldiers claimed to be using only rubber bullets, but multiple time stamped camera angles and a recovery of the bullet used in the killing says otherwise.  ~whoops~

[Kara]

I would probably take their money 

One of the dumb personality questions on the dating site I use asks if you would be willing to work a year in a country that's an unfriendly international relation of the United States for $ 400,000 of tax free income.

Easiest question to answer in my life.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'd do that shit for $ 250,000 of taxable income.

[close]

[benjipwns]

How good or consistent does the work have to be for this Israel thing?

Do they need references, because unfortunately I don't have any evidence I can present them of parroting talking points or arguments I don't believe.

[Kara]

How good or consistent does the work have to be for this Israel thing?

Are you really going to try and hock shoddy work off on the Tribe?

[Great Rumbler]

Kinda speaks volumes of the ineptitude, or just a complete lack of caring, of the people that Bush surrounded himself with. And also that the Obama administration didn't want to put in the time, effort, money, and blood that it would take to "fix" the problems left behind, which I can kinda tip my hat to because continuing to throw more soldiers down that well comes across as someone who got scammed but keeps paying more money in the hope that somehow, someway they finally get all of it back.

[Mandark]

It's amazing to me that the US could fail so spectacularly in Afghanistan, especially with such a wealth of information available about other superpowers that have operated there and our own lessons from Vietnam still fresh on the minds of many living veterans and academics.

For me it's the opposite, since the overriding lesson of those past conflicts seems to be "lol good luck with that buddy."

[Kara]

Maybe imperialism is always doomed to fail.

[Joe Molotov]

Maybe imperialism is always doomed to fail. (Image removed from quote.)

Maybe we just need to give it a few dozen more shots.

[brob]

pertinent: http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/one-in-three-adults-wishes-britain-still-had-an-empire--e1MFGRfZzg

[Kara]

pertinent: http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/one-in-three-adults-wishes-britain-still-had-an-empire--e1MFGRfZzg

They have one still, it's just the City's and not the Crown's.

[Joe Molotov]

"If you let us bomb 'em over here, you don't have to worry about them immigrating to your free-thinking, post-racial European cities over there."

[doctavius bonbon]

the next battleground between israel and gaza takes place in this one direction dude's twitter

https://twitter.com/zaynmalik/status/493554275071836160

fangirls annihilated

[doctavius bonbon]

Israel Leadership Event

http://www.politico.com/livestream/

5 seconds after tuning and I'm already hearing the usual memes.

[Broseidon]

ISIS baby



oh dear I just reached the end and this one has video of all those mass executions at the end.

[Joe Molotov]

Who you gonna believe, an official IDF tweet or an antisemitic NBC reporter?

[Great Rumbler]

Well, according to one US Senator [hint: it's Lindsey Graham], suggesting that Israel might have committed war crimes is anti-semitism:

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/07/sen-lindsey-graham-accusses-un-becoming

Oh, and bomb Iran:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/23/rep-louie-gohmert-israels-invasion-of-gaza-means-it-is-time-to-bomb-iran/

[doctavius bonbon]

Jesus Christ, I wish I could unwatch that.

[brawndolicious]

No I don't think there's anything more to the video besides glorifying the violence (non-Arab speaker though). Most videos of modern combat are shot on cell phones or by journalists, which if you're a little sociopath might have gotten boring by now. These are well-edited and extremely stylized to give a certain bias and to also make them more entertaining. It's not until 13 minutes in when they start blowing  up Shia mosques that you start to get into any of their differences of opinions and whatever, but the whole video is basically killing heretics and destroying their holy sites. I don't think there's any sort of sophisticated message or anything.

At the end you see them forcing crying prisoners to swear allegiance at gunpoint before mass slaughtering them. I don't think they're appealing to young men who actually want to fix the country but just those who want to  destroy a bunch of shit because it looks cool.

[Rufus]

Jesus Christ, I wish I could unwatch that.

Seriously. Don't know why I watched the slaughter at the end.

[benjipwns]

I'm not gonna lie, I don't see the appeal of these orgiastic ISIS kill highlights as propaganda.  When I see them, I don't particularly think of justice or an effective attempt to control public opinion.  If anything I guess it might work as a form of fear inspiration, but other than that I'm struggling to ascertain what the overall tone and message of the videos are besides 'don't fuck with us/we buss our guns'. I guess most of that is due to the language gap.

I'd need to see other gang produced recruiting/highlight videos to compare. Los Zetas, MS-13, Mungiki, D-Company, etc.

I love Allah SWT :)1 hour ago
 
May Allah the Most Merciful help the mujahideen. May Allah The Most Gracious forgive us. May Allah Azawajjal give victory to the Islamic State. May Allah the Most Loving help Caliph Ibrahim (Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi) and protect him from the munafeeq and the kuffar. May Allah the Almighty make us from the mujahideen who fights Fi Sabillillah. Ameen Ya Rabbil allameen.

Dawlatul Islam! Baqiyah Bi'iznillah!!

tuke4111 hour ago
 
Well let us pray that before you die, you realise that you are praying to Satan and repent your evil ways. May God have mercy upon your soul and those in this video that are demonically possessed. As Avi Lipkin such eloquently states, "Islam is not a religion, it is a psychosis." I go one step further... it is a psychosis spawned in Hell.

[Joe Molotov]

Youtube didn't like that vid.

[Kara]

This is the most highly polished video of combat footage, drive bys, shrine demolitions, sniper video, and mass executions I have ever seen.

Quite the connoisseur.

[naff]

I was surprised it lasted as long as it did - shit was messed up. Scarily well produced piece of propaganda and fear mongering. Hollywood can put together shit like zero dark thirty these fuckers just film it for real - join us otherwise we'll bury you in a mass grave. Some of it really didn't make sense either - when supposedly "out hunting for rafidi'' how did they identify the people in those cars were Shia or Maliki supporters? Just looked like indiscriminate drive bys, i guess there's some other defining trait i missed. Kinda disgusted i found that so compelling 

[benjipwns]

Some of it really didn't make sense either - when supposedly "out hunting for rafidi'' how did they identify the people in those cars were Shia or Maliki supporters? Just looked like indiscriminate drive bys, i guess there's some other defining trait i missed.

I'm sure they conducted an internal investigation that ruled it a good shoot.

[Great Rumbler]

A Palestinian health official says at least 100 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting in Gaza on Tuesday.

The Palestinian death toll in more than three weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting has surpassed 1,100.

[Broseidon]

[Great Rumbler]

That's pretty horrifying.

[Brehvolution]

I'm guessing the terror tunnels are under those houses?

[Rufus]

Sow the wind, reap the justified military action and whatever else.

[Steve Contra]

I'm guessing the terror tunnels are under those houses?

That's where the human shields are protecting human shields on their days off.

[Kara]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to establish an international framework for demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, supervising entry of people and goods into the enclave and preventing smuggling, a senior Israeli official said Monday. This mechanism will oversee the use of funds, building materials and arms in Gaza, in order to ensure that they are not used for terror.

(Haaretz is a paywall site, so not worth linking the article.)

I've been wondering what (or even if) any consideration was being made for the aftermath of this in Israeli leadership.

Outsourcing occupation is one way around the whole "you can't fight a war against people you're occupying" thing, I guess.

[toku]

https://vine.co/v/M0lp0nnLBU0
https://vine.co/v/M0lIW7IpvPH

[doctavius bonbon]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/as-israel-enforces-its-buffer-zone-gaza-shrinks-by-40-per-cent.html



 

[toku]

How do you ever get to the point where this shit is okay?

[chronovore]

How do you ever get to the point where this shit is okay?

Sociopathy?

[Rufus]

On a lighter note, Australia continues its cavalcade of comedy.

Jobseekers' payments will be cut if they spam employers, ministers warn

Unemployed people face the loss of payments as a punishment for spamming employers with unsatisfactory applications to meet tough job search rules, the Abbott government has warned.

Business groups have raised concerns that employers could be inundated with poorly targeted applications as a result of a requirement for job seekers to make 40 attempts each month from July next year.
[...]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/jobseekers-payments-will-be-cut-if-they-spam-employers-ministers-warn

Force people to send out 40 applications a month to get their benefits, then try to punish them for "spamming" employers.

[Himu]

And we're one of those friends.