Bingo.

Never forget:

https://twitter.com/_SJPeace_/...

https://twitter.com/_SJPeace_/...

Whatevs.

None Dare Call It Kitsch:
https://twitter.com/ExileGrimm...

GREAT THREAD LINKED:

Post 9/11 thread for people to post the wildest shit they remember from 01 to 06
I'll start:
People thought Osama had an entire mountain hollowed out that he was using as his base and that's why AQ was hard to find and that somehow a group of like 30 dudes arranged this.

https://twitter.com/ExileGrimm...

Thanks for some clarity here. I appreciate it.

There's a number of simplifications in these histories of the US and covert involvement with Afghanistan and Iran, but pretty much right.

The US never wanted to get rid of Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi. He himself, thought of giving up more than once - in fact having abdicated and returned once, 23 years earlier - but "The Good President", Jimmy Carter pressed him to stay —even offering US support for using the Iran military to violently suppress demonstrations, as early as 1976-77.

The US support of the revolution goes to the covert CIA network, tied to arms and heroin trade, which surfaced as the Iran-Contra scandals, and pitched the 1979 "October Surprise". One effect of this illegal alliance was to strengthen the Islamic clerical part of the Iranian revolution, versus the popular element led by University students, the actual embassy captors, who were more decisively leftist and communist.

Masks worked, with lock-downs, for New Zealand.
Contrast their success with "Herd Immunity" experiments in Sweden, and a 100% vaccination strategy by Israel.

The numbers and results speak for themselves. They also indicate a Darwinian, failure-of-fitness test for ideological libertarian doctrines and policy.

Of course. Then the "underpants bomber". LOL

The Taliban, reprehensible as they are, offered to deliver Osama Bin Laden to the US, and were rebuffed in favor of an illegal invasion, bloody war, and 20 years of slaughtering over 200,000 Afghans.

It was NEVER a "righteous war", as advertised at the time, and desperately pronounced by so many, still today. Words like these offend any sensibilities - under any circumstances.

Afghanistan was a war of illegal, elective and convenient adventure. The United States — typically — elected for atrocity, and referred to its elective behavior as a tragedy.

Wiping tears while whingeing about 9/11 doesn't make anything about the 20-year, illegal adventure by the US in Afghanistan justified. 20 months cannot be justified. Not 20 days or even hours.

"Al Qaeda" got nothing. OBL wanted the complete withdrawal of the US from Saudi Arabia, and the disengagement of of the Saudi government from the US as sponsor and ally. He threw in some nearly generic points about the liberation of Palestine, as a bid to attract common cause with the wider Muslim world who were less politically interested in the OBL core issue: how KSA managed a country containing Makkah and Madina.

"Al Qaeda" itself is a bit of a bogeyman, other than the attacks of 9/11. Despite the frenzied imagination of propagandists, and the overblown threat mongering by the US military and intelligence establishments. Al Qaeda consisted of a handful of Saudi die-hard ideologues, with a few Egyptian and Syrian sympathizers. Add to these 1,600 mujahedin fighters, isolated in Afghanistan. That's it. That's "Al Qaeda". With the 2003 US invasion of Afghanistan, the 1,600 strong Al Qaeda contingent was reduced by losses of 1,300 - from combat losses, desertion and eve losses to fights with local Taliban groups.

I take my shoes off at the airport response to an attack that happened 20 years ago with 3,000 fatalities, and this dude on the bus won't wear a mask to help stop a disease that killed 10,000 people yesterday.

Ultimately, the events of 9/11/01 were entirely predictable — in fact they WERE predicted — as an almost natural response to the behavior of the United States domination and sponsorship of atrocity, worldwide. The attacks with airliners were spectacular in a visual sense, but microscopic next to the United States' casual commission of atrocities, from year-to-year —Before the events of that day and as accelerated since then.

A return of those tactics has not been because of US success in a military mission of suppression and disruption of "terrorist" networks. In fact, both directly and through proxy agency, the US has funded and equipped more armed radical militia than ever before - dwarfing efforts with Mujaheddin groups in the 1980's.

Rather, 9/11 was insignificant and ineffectual as a tactic. An overblown bloody-nose, delivered at great effort and waste of expense, largely produced by the delusions of Osama Bin Laden, who became nearly abandoned by Jihadist/Salafi movements, almost immediately.

Anyway, happy 20th birthday, USA. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks.

With a Blu-ray copy of Blomkamp's 2013 tour-de-force, Elysium, starring Matt Damon?

I didn't THINK I did...

I don't remember what these buttons do, anymore. I'm over the 200 limit on relationships, so I click things and get only error messages.