621–630 of 730 posts
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Sure, I won't even dispute that. What I'm disputing is that the parent poster said that ISIS did not use terrorist tactics. That is blatantly a false statement. I can't believe the negative reaction towards pointing that out.
What they said was ISIS "were fighting a conventional land war using conventional (not terrorist/guerilla) tactics" You are summarising that as "ISIS did not use terrorist tactics" I think that is a misleading summary. I don't think the poster meant to dispute that ISIS was behind terrorist attacks, both in the Middle East and also in other parts of the world. What they were saying, is that ISIS was engaging in conve…
If they wanted to say that ISIS was using conventional _AND_ terrorist tactics that would be one thing. They specifically said "not". You even quoted.
If my options are either to stay silent or charitably read someone's claim that ISIS' tactics don't meet their definition of the word terrorism, because they're a state, then honestly I don't want an account on this site anymore.
I feel the need to inject some perspective here. Every country imposes requirements on manufacturers of devices or service providers that some person(s) might object to. If you choose to do business in that country, you play ball, or you leave. How you pick which ones that are tolerable enough to live with is the question -- and don't imagine that it's moral principles that define it. It's how much a company wants to…
This is actually pretty cool, I'm always paranoid that I'll end up on someone else's photo without knowing.
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I do not support the atrocities that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committing against the people of Yemen (civilian death toll closing in on 100,000 [0]) with American purchased F-35 jets manufactured by Lockheed Martin. How can I, as a person, talk with my money to prevent this? How can Lockheed Martin, a corporation whose fiduciary obligation is to generate profit for its shareholders, prevent this? How can the US…
> How can I, as a person, talk with my money to prevent this? With your personal money? You can't. Can you convince extremely wealthy people to spend their money in a way that will ultimately lose them money? Possible, but still losing odds. See Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins for an example of what this fight looks like. (he was one of the guys who paved way for the original deals between the US an…
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> How can I, as a person, talk with my money to prevent this? With your personal money? You can't. Can you convince extremely wealthy people to spend their money in a way that will ultimately lose them money? Possible, but still losing odds. See Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins for an example of what this fight looks like. (he was one of the guys who paved way for the original deals between the US an…
Thanks for that book recommendation - really appreciate it. I have been looking for a solid critical reference regarding the World Bank (and IMF, for that matter) for some time now. There were some allusions in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine that set me down this rabbit hole.
Or, for a far less conspiratorial take on the same phenomenon, read "Globalization and its Discontents" by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
In it you'll learn how institutions like the IMF treated open markets and no currency flow restrictions as a religion regardless of whether they made sense for the stage of development of the countries on which they imposed those as terms of their loans.
Between this and the NBA's capitulation to making the Rockets' GM retract his statements on Hong Kong, at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior? Sure, from the individual business' perspective they don't want to risk alienating the Chinese government and losing the Chinese market, but if China sees that they can get their way by simply threatening foreign companies then it will just e…
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If no one paid taxes, then the governments capacity to do bad things would certainly go down. However, then there also probably would be no government and everyone would be worse off. I'm sure lots of tax money is wasted, or used for bad things, but also a lot of good as well. Roads, police (that keep the peace), firefighters, education, foreign aid, etc.
Given all those other countries we've been bombing based on false pretenses I'd say a lack of US government funding would be a net positive. I'll take lawless anarchy over a relatively well organized state that bombs children to secure foreign oil production facilities and prop up the petro-dollar.
Those are hardly the only two options.
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> at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior? This seems to be US policy since Nixon's visit to China. The difference is now we're just more open about it.
Someday we may regard those "achievements" as the worst strategic mistake by any sitting US president.
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> Can any amount of money even make up for what happened? maybe not, but that is hardly a reason to do nothing instead
I wasn't trying to say do nothing, but that just giving a bunch of money just seems somewhat patronizing and wouldn't really make that big of a difference.
This is why I laugh when Apple tried to paint themselves as champions of anything more than their share price
They are, loosely, the champions of their customers at least, unlike most of the tech world. They have to do a good enough job to get you to spend $1k on the next year's device. Google just has to not-suck enough that you won't stop using it for free . But yes, any true moral posturing they make is baloney.