First, despite the Millennium challenge being "debunked", it still played out in the same direction.
Second, and this is a big one, after the Church committee when the CIA was put under congressional oversight, a big majority of the clandestine work was put under Special Ops type groups, ie the Army Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.
When we were in Afghanistan, we would do the "target the leader" game, but it was far more dark in reality. Since we were going against a distributed insurgent force, we would send the special ops guys to targets intelligence deemed important. There'd be an op tempo of 2-3 a week. Years passed, and we didn't make any headway, so the op tempo was increased.
A target would be chosen, and the operators sent out. They'd kill the target, and look for any papers/documentation with other names. If you were this guy's dentist, you could be caught up in this. Since a majority of the operators didn't speak the language, they had no context to the names. It was more like the metadata network of connections exposed by Snowden.
Since we needed more operations(2-3 a night instead of a week), we'd go after less and less important targets, tangentially related to another target. We effectively turned the special ops groups into clandestine death squads with nearly zero accountability.
In addition, we were supporting warlords in the area that were pro-poppy cultivation and anti-Taliban. We'd protect the poppy plants that would go on to supply a large majority of the world's Heroin supply.
Where is this going? Well the cynic in me says it's simply a scam. We spend more on fancy military hardware that allows us to kill more effectively while barely pushing the needle on our goals. The mass amount of death we drop on populations creates new generations of "terrorist/freedom fighters" who rightfully have a grudge against the US war machine.
The money spent doesn't move the needle materially, but it provides propaganda in the form of "look at our death machines, we have the most in the world", which is a double edged sword of "hoorah" at home and "don't fuck with the crazy guy holding the gun" outside of home. The expensive weapons taxpayers buy from defense contractors are too expensive and complicated to build in bulk, so we run out quickly the second we have an enemy that can shoot back with more than an AK.
We're still trying to fight the war of 2-3 wars ago. We also learned from Vietnam that by no means should the general public easily learn the reality of the war. That worked until recently when the victim of a proxy war was able to upload daily videos onto tiktok and break the decades long good will between the US and an unnamed vassal.
Anyway, tl;dr, the ole military industrial complex is still at it, lobbying our government to spend money we don't have on wars we cannot afford as a public works program that only excels in death, rather than public works in healthcare, infrastructure, science, etc.
Sure the crank on the ratchet of fascism is bad, but have you thought about the pawl?
Yes the previous admins were also bad. Obama drone striked weddings, Biden continued immigrant detention policies.
This is why the actual Left denounce the Dem politicians for never fixing the damage done by previous admins. The Democratic party is widely considered controlled opposition by the forces who wish to push the country further right. They are controlled by donations, from the same corporations and individuals who wish to have an even more abusive free-market. Without deregulation and a steady stream of desperate underclass, they cannot continue to make good on the "profit increases forever" promise.
I've seen multiple stories of people buying phones from Fi, the phones never arriving, google refusing a refund, and on a chargeback, their entire google account gets shut down.
It's not the tech but who sees the benefits. The issue at play is the monopolization and concentration of power.
Ie, why can one guy who is insanely wealthy due to stock valuations take loans against that to pull various levers of power. We didn't elect him, we need a way to control that outsized influence.
The important thing to note here, is because it's not a real organization, but treated like one, they can simply tie anyone against the admin to a "designated terrorist organization" and put them away for decades with little evidence. As they did here.
The person you're replying to made a case that a person with outsized influence is creating media to stir resentment for attention and your conclusion is "political reasons".
The word "political" always ends up meaning "don't talk about reactionaries throwing rocks"
> Has it been proved in a court of law that it is a copyright violation?
God I'm so tired of this.
The billion dollar companies have the ability to hire an army of lawyers to DDOS the legal system. They at most pay a slap-on-the-wrist fine as the cost of doing business.
I'm in a similar boat and I find it really hard to talk watches with folks who are experienced in the way of the Rolex AD.
I really enjoy cheaper vintage watches that call back to when everyone had one of them on their wrist.
Something about a semi-autonomous machine ticking away on your wrist, whether you're looking at it or not, using no electricity, is just intrinsically satisfying to me.
I got into watch servicing pre-covid, but never got into actual fabrication of parts. I mention pre-covid because it really got popular when everyone was stuck inside and there was a sudden loss of cheap ebay parts watches to pick from.
First, despite the Millennium challenge being "debunked", it still played out in the same direction.
Second, and this is a big one, after the Church committee when the CIA was put under congressional oversight, a big majority of the clandestine work was put under Special Ops type groups, ie the Army Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.
When we were in Afghanistan, we would do the "target the leader" game, but it was far more dark in reality. Since we were going against a distributed insurgent force, we would send the special ops guys to targets intelligence deemed important. There'd be an op tempo of 2-3 a week. Years passed, and we didn't make any headway, so the op tempo was increased.
A target would be chosen, and the operators sent out. They'd kill the target, and look for any papers/documentation with other names. If you were this guy's dentist, you could be caught up in this. Since a majority of the operators didn't speak the language, they had no context to the names. It was more like the metadata network of connections exposed by Snowden.
Since we needed more operations(2-3 a night instead of a week), we'd go after less and less important targets, tangentially related to another target. We effectively turned the special ops groups into clandestine death squads with nearly zero accountability.
In addition, we were supporting warlords in the area that were pro-poppy cultivation and anti-Taliban. We'd protect the poppy plants that would go on to supply a large majority of the world's Heroin supply.
Where is this going? Well the cynic in me says it's simply a scam. We spend more on fancy military hardware that allows us to kill more effectively while barely pushing the needle on our goals. The mass amount of death we drop on populations creates new generations of "terrorist/freedom fighters" who rightfully have a grudge against the US war machine.
The money spent doesn't move the needle materially, but it provides propaganda in the form of "look at our death machines, we have the most in the world", which is a double edged sword of "hoorah" at home and "don't fuck with the crazy guy holding the gun" outside of home. The expensive weapons taxpayers buy from defense contractors are too expensive and complicated to build in bulk, so we run out quickly the second we have an enemy that can shoot back with more than an AK.
We're still trying to fight the war of 2-3 wars ago. We also learned from Vietnam that by no means should the general public easily learn the reality of the war. That worked until recently when the victim of a proxy war was able to upload daily videos onto tiktok and break the decades long good will between the US and an unnamed vassal.
Anyway, tl;dr, the ole military industrial complex is still at it, lobbying our government to spend money we don't have on wars we cannot afford as a public works program that only excels in death, rather than public works in healthcare, infrastructure, science, etc.