Let's pretend for one moment that he does die before the election, just for the funsies. What happens then? Will the nomination revert to option number 2, aka Bernie Sanders? Or will his running mate automatically replace him just the way Vice-President is supposted to step in after the Big Man in the White House chokes on a piece of matzo? Does he even have a running mate yet?
US Joe Biden News Megathread - The Other Biden Derangement Syndrome Thread (with a side order of Fauci Derangement Syndrome)
- Thread starter Borscht
- Start date
Oxous
kiwifarms.net
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- Aug 3, 2021
Maybe Biden actually intends to run over the governors with a tank or something and he isn't just talking sternly. I'd pay to see that.
Garm
kiwifarms.net
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- Jun 5, 2019
Always remember to never forget.
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- May 25, 2020
Holy shit is Afghanistan making the move? are they really going to nuke the golden calf of the world?
Oxous
kiwifarms.net
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- Aug 3, 2021
What? No that's just Hamas they do this shit every week or month it feels like.
Oxous
kiwifarms.net
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- Aug 3, 2021
"I get calls all the time, people say, 'I've already had COVID, I'm protected.' And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine?" - CNN's resident doctor
"I don't have a really firm answer for you on that." - Fauci
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- Mar 30, 2019
Agreed, 1950's urban renewal and hyper-suburbanization was one of the worst things to happen to American cities. Now the Texan countryside is nothing but tacky, sprawling McMansion subdivisions and strip malls populated by lefty white housewives driving oversized pavement princess pickup trucks. They're already tearing up hill country west of I-35 for new highways. Seeing a fucking Walmart and fast food joints popping up around the historic hill country German and Spanish villages was soul-crushing.
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- Feb 21, 2018
@Vyse Inglebard
My governor is the same way, with the vaccine as well as the mask mandate. He is allowing parents to opt out of having their child wear a mask in school. Honestly, that's what I prefer. While maybe not as based as banning masks entirely, banning mandates is certainly good in my book. He, in his tweets, said he was also strongly against the vaccine mandate. He encouraged people to get the vaccine, but he was completely against the mandate.
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- Mar 16, 2019
I'm packing right now.
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- Jul 25, 2019
Nobody has banned masks in schools. The guys they're attacking have banned REQUIREING masks in schools.
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- Jun 24, 2020
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- Jul 7, 2020
They literally blew up a random person whose conduct fit the barest requirements and said it was ISIS, so we're all good now.
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- Oct 2, 2020
The Rockefeller Foundation "Operation Lock Step" 2010 document is now being discussed on Fox News.
This document discuses plans of an endless pandemic, used to disrupt the economy to a halt, institute biometric ID systems and perpetuate government control.
View attachment 2526388
This document was getting popular in June after a foreign politician read the document.
View attachment 2526394
Richard Kayvan - The house of cards is collapsing. This...
The house of cards is collapsing. This Dutch politician reads excerpts from the 2010 Rockefeller report and shows us clearly that this entire shit-show...www.facebook.com
Rockefeller Foundation Head Quarters
420 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York, U.S.
Say hi to the current poster boy of the foundation.
"He is a former American government official, physician and health economist who served as the 16th Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2010–2015." He also worked closely with Clinton who was Secretary of State at the time.
Of course the Rockefeller Foundation is but part of a whole network of entities involved. The Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and the Tony Blair Institute are two of the more recognizable NGOs working together with this one. I'm not aware of any NGO that isn't evil, really.
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- Joined
- May 6, 2019
This is part of what makes me so certain this was a desperate attempt to keep the Establishment in the Cabal. Outside of the Federal Establishment, the policy is -reviled-. Even Democrat governors balk at the very idea of it. Its nothing short of a usurpation of state power and a total disregard for the constitution. This doesn't make sense on a State level since it alienates a massive chunk of their -own state-level powerbase-. It has to be aimed at the federal level, but that doesn't begin to make sense unless something massive occurred behind the scenes and that massive thing has to do with the faction most in favor.
My running theory is that ironically we can blame Chipman. The man's nomination was always going to be hard to pass, the Establishment didn't like it because they already had too much going on, adding the gun debate was just increasingly irrelevant. The Businessmen faction didn't like it, because increased regulation on industries can cut both ways. The only side in full favor was the Progressives. What seems likely is that after threatening people to get behind the infrastructure plan, a few congressmen from both those factions stuck their heels in and refused to budge on Chipman. And so with that officially fallen through, the progressives got hostile, and when they got hostile it basically was the last straw for everyone else.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2019
Never forgive, never forget, and look at this photograph.....
grump
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2016
A virus so deadly we have to roll back the liberties of citizens nationwide, but not deadly enough to inconvenience migrants on the border.
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
A very interesting article re the US failure in Afghanistan.
Mullahs in Qom, Iran, image via Wikipedia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,150, September 10, 2021
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Afghanistan has proved once again that even a superpower cannot win a war against a proxy as long as it refuses to confront the power that supports it. This is of vital importance to Israel, which is facing a proxy war being waged against it by Iran via its regional proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.
The seeds of the humiliating American withdrawal from Afghanistan were laid shortly after the post 9/11 US invasion of the country, when it refrained from confronting Pakistan over its continued support of its Taliban proxy.
The Taliban was founded in 1980 as a joint US-Pakistani-Saudi effort to combat Soviet troops in Afghanistan shortly after the USSR invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.
Pakistan provided the geographical base and an almost endless supply of manpower, primarily Pashtuns, who comprise about 40-45% of Afghanistan and approximately 20% of Pakistan. About 85% of them live in “Pashtunistan,” which straddles the Durand line. The US provided the weapons while Saudi Arabia provided the funding to buy those weapons and cover the costs of maintaining Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.
The Pashtun-dominated Taliban rapidly emerged as the biggest and best-armed component of the mujahedeen, the umbrella organization of Afghan rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
After the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) continued to support the Taliban in the Afghani civil war that followed, despite the fact that the Taliban had already begun cooperating with al-Qaeda. Pakistani aid proved vital in ensuring the Taliban victory over its former less radical mujahedeen partners.
Pakistan made a great show of abandoning the Taliban after 9/11, but in reality never turned its back on its Afghani proxy. Realizing that any attempt to confront US forces would be suicidal and could spell the end of Pakistan’s vital alliance with the US, the Pakistan military convinced the Taliban to retreat without a fight to Pakistan, where, under ISI supervision, they were allowed to set up camps and training facilities.
Pakistan, with Saudi financial backing, continued to maintain the Taliban as a viable force to be deployed when, in the fullness of time, the US would tire of the neverending war in the country and begin extricating itself. In addition, Pakistan continued to play a double game with the US by allowing the ISI-backed Haqqani network to continue to operate in Pakistan. Khalil Haqqani, who, despite having a $5 million bounty on his head as a wanted terrorist, had long been a regular visitor to ISI HQ, is now is one of the new rulers of Afghanistan.
It is clear that even as late as June 2021, had the US made clear to Pakistan that if it didn’t ensure that the Taliban would permit a peaceful and orderly withdrawal of all US personnel and their Afghan allies who wished to leave the country there would be hell to pay, this debacle would never have happened. The US has almost unlimited leverage over Pakistan, from applying crippling sanctions to broadly hinting it would give India a green light to retake the parts of Kashmir (Gilgit-Baltistan) that have been under unrecognized Pakistani occupation since 1948. Given the huge disparity between Pakistani and American capabilities, Pakistan’s limited nuclear capabilities would have been irrelevant, because 165 warheads mounted on relatively short range (2,650 kilometers) Shaheen-3 missiles do not compose an actual threat to the US. Pakistan’s generals might have chutzpah but are competent professionals, not suicidal maniacs. In the face of a credible US threat, they would seek a diplomatic solution.
This is not the first time the US has lost a war against a proxy by refraining to take any meaningful action against the power behind it. The most obvious case is Vietnam, which was a Soviet proxy. Despite several years of directly assaulting North Vietnam, it was unable to force Hanoi to stop assisting the Vietcong. Only the cessation of Soviet aid could have achieved that, and because the US was justifiably unwilling to risk a crisis with its rival nuclear superpower, Vietnam was able to eventually force the US to realize that short of a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam, it would never decisively defeat the Vietcong. The result was a humiliating American withdrawal followed by a North Vietnamese victory.
The lesson for Israel is clear and ominous. For almost two decades, Iran has been conducting a two-front proxy war against Israel. Hezbollah is a total proxy of Iran and Hamas a partial one, as it also has to take into account the interests of the Turkish-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood axis which do not always align with those of Iran.
Despite ongoing Israeli efforts, including significant attacks against Iranian forces in Syria, the threat posed by Iran’s proxies continues to evolve into an ever more menacing one. Though clearly incapable of defeating Israel, their ability to exact an increasingly dear price from Israel continues to grow, with Iranian assistance. This will not change as long as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei knows he can fight Israel to the last drop of Lebanese blood and be confident of his and his regime’s safety in Tehran. Indeed, despite enjoying a significant conventional weapons qualitative edge over an Iranian military that has been hobbled by decades of tight international sanctions, Israel has so far refrained from actions aimed at decisively defeating either of the proxies or exacting a high enough price from Iran to force it to reconsider its proxy war against Israel.
Militarily, the main reason has been the Iranian missile program, which, though still equipped entirely with conventional warheads, has seemingly succeeded in sufficiently deterring Israel. This is despite the fact that Israel possesses the world’s only fully operational multi-layer missile defense system (Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome).
This is not, however, the only reason, as militarily, Israel has the capacity to defeat both Iranian proxies. In order to destroy Hamas, Israel would have to resume the status of Gaza’s occupying power, or ensure in advance that a multinational force of some kind would be available and capable of assuming responsibility for Gaza. No such force is likely to come into existence any time soon. A unilateral Israeli occupation of Gaza is possible, but would exact a prohibitive price economically, diplomatically, and in terms of public opinion.
Destroying Hezbollah would require Israel to destroy half of Lebanon, since Hezbollah is a state within a state that is more powerful than the legitimate state itself. Militarily it can be done, but would create a humanitarian and public relations disaster. Israel has therefore based its policy on containment and management, having concluded that the economic, diplomatic, and military sacrifices and ramifications the alternative would entail are too expensive.
Afghanistan provides a compelling reminder of the futility of fighting a proxy war while refraining from confronting the power supporting the proxy, even if you are the preeminent global power, which the US still is.
Israel’s priority must be to ensure it does not reach a situation where it ends up facing a proxy backed by a nuclear-armed power. In order to achieve that, it must, without delay, reassess its current containment policy. It must formulate a new policy based not on threat containment but threat neutralization. That means confronting Iran.
As heavy as the costs of such a policy might be, it is clear that the costs of not adopting such a policy will, very possibly and unfortunately in the not too distant future, be much higher. The question Israel’s strategic policymakers should be asking themselves is not whether it can afford to bear the costs of threat elimination, but whether it can afford not to.
besacenter.org
The Real Lesson of the Afghanistan Debacle
By Jonathan ArielSeptember 10, 2021
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,150, September 10, 2021
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Afghanistan has proved once again that even a superpower cannot win a war against a proxy as long as it refuses to confront the power that supports it. This is of vital importance to Israel, which is facing a proxy war being waged against it by Iran via its regional proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.
The seeds of the humiliating American withdrawal from Afghanistan were laid shortly after the post 9/11 US invasion of the country, when it refrained from confronting Pakistan over its continued support of its Taliban proxy.
The Taliban was founded in 1980 as a joint US-Pakistani-Saudi effort to combat Soviet troops in Afghanistan shortly after the USSR invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.
Pakistan provided the geographical base and an almost endless supply of manpower, primarily Pashtuns, who comprise about 40-45% of Afghanistan and approximately 20% of Pakistan. About 85% of them live in “Pashtunistan,” which straddles the Durand line. The US provided the weapons while Saudi Arabia provided the funding to buy those weapons and cover the costs of maintaining Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.
The Pashtun-dominated Taliban rapidly emerged as the biggest and best-armed component of the mujahedeen, the umbrella organization of Afghan rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
After the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) continued to support the Taliban in the Afghani civil war that followed, despite the fact that the Taliban had already begun cooperating with al-Qaeda. Pakistani aid proved vital in ensuring the Taliban victory over its former less radical mujahedeen partners.
Pakistan made a great show of abandoning the Taliban after 9/11, but in reality never turned its back on its Afghani proxy. Realizing that any attempt to confront US forces would be suicidal and could spell the end of Pakistan’s vital alliance with the US, the Pakistan military convinced the Taliban to retreat without a fight to Pakistan, where, under ISI supervision, they were allowed to set up camps and training facilities.
Pakistan, with Saudi financial backing, continued to maintain the Taliban as a viable force to be deployed when, in the fullness of time, the US would tire of the neverending war in the country and begin extricating itself. In addition, Pakistan continued to play a double game with the US by allowing the ISI-backed Haqqani network to continue to operate in Pakistan. Khalil Haqqani, who, despite having a $5 million bounty on his head as a wanted terrorist, had long been a regular visitor to ISI HQ, is now is one of the new rulers of Afghanistan.
It is clear that even as late as June 2021, had the US made clear to Pakistan that if it didn’t ensure that the Taliban would permit a peaceful and orderly withdrawal of all US personnel and their Afghan allies who wished to leave the country there would be hell to pay, this debacle would never have happened. The US has almost unlimited leverage over Pakistan, from applying crippling sanctions to broadly hinting it would give India a green light to retake the parts of Kashmir (Gilgit-Baltistan) that have been under unrecognized Pakistani occupation since 1948. Given the huge disparity between Pakistani and American capabilities, Pakistan’s limited nuclear capabilities would have been irrelevant, because 165 warheads mounted on relatively short range (2,650 kilometers) Shaheen-3 missiles do not compose an actual threat to the US. Pakistan’s generals might have chutzpah but are competent professionals, not suicidal maniacs. In the face of a credible US threat, they would seek a diplomatic solution.
This is not the first time the US has lost a war against a proxy by refraining to take any meaningful action against the power behind it. The most obvious case is Vietnam, which was a Soviet proxy. Despite several years of directly assaulting North Vietnam, it was unable to force Hanoi to stop assisting the Vietcong. Only the cessation of Soviet aid could have achieved that, and because the US was justifiably unwilling to risk a crisis with its rival nuclear superpower, Vietnam was able to eventually force the US to realize that short of a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam, it would never decisively defeat the Vietcong. The result was a humiliating American withdrawal followed by a North Vietnamese victory.
The lesson for Israel is clear and ominous. For almost two decades, Iran has been conducting a two-front proxy war against Israel. Hezbollah is a total proxy of Iran and Hamas a partial one, as it also has to take into account the interests of the Turkish-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood axis which do not always align with those of Iran.
Despite ongoing Israeli efforts, including significant attacks against Iranian forces in Syria, the threat posed by Iran’s proxies continues to evolve into an ever more menacing one. Though clearly incapable of defeating Israel, their ability to exact an increasingly dear price from Israel continues to grow, with Iranian assistance. This will not change as long as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei knows he can fight Israel to the last drop of Lebanese blood and be confident of his and his regime’s safety in Tehran. Indeed, despite enjoying a significant conventional weapons qualitative edge over an Iranian military that has been hobbled by decades of tight international sanctions, Israel has so far refrained from actions aimed at decisively defeating either of the proxies or exacting a high enough price from Iran to force it to reconsider its proxy war against Israel.
Militarily, the main reason has been the Iranian missile program, which, though still equipped entirely with conventional warheads, has seemingly succeeded in sufficiently deterring Israel. This is despite the fact that Israel possesses the world’s only fully operational multi-layer missile defense system (Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome).
This is not, however, the only reason, as militarily, Israel has the capacity to defeat both Iranian proxies. In order to destroy Hamas, Israel would have to resume the status of Gaza’s occupying power, or ensure in advance that a multinational force of some kind would be available and capable of assuming responsibility for Gaza. No such force is likely to come into existence any time soon. A unilateral Israeli occupation of Gaza is possible, but would exact a prohibitive price economically, diplomatically, and in terms of public opinion.
Destroying Hezbollah would require Israel to destroy half of Lebanon, since Hezbollah is a state within a state that is more powerful than the legitimate state itself. Militarily it can be done, but would create a humanitarian and public relations disaster. Israel has therefore based its policy on containment and management, having concluded that the economic, diplomatic, and military sacrifices and ramifications the alternative would entail are too expensive.
Afghanistan provides a compelling reminder of the futility of fighting a proxy war while refraining from confronting the power supporting the proxy, even if you are the preeminent global power, which the US still is.
Israel’s priority must be to ensure it does not reach a situation where it ends up facing a proxy backed by a nuclear-armed power. In order to achieve that, it must, without delay, reassess its current containment policy. It must formulate a new policy based not on threat containment but threat neutralization. That means confronting Iran.
As heavy as the costs of such a policy might be, it is clear that the costs of not adopting such a policy will, very possibly and unfortunately in the not too distant future, be much higher. The question Israel’s strategic policymakers should be asking themselves is not whether it can afford to bear the costs of threat elimination, but whether it can afford not to.
The Real Lesson of the Afghanistan Debacle
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,150, September 10, 2021EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Afghanistan has proved once again that even a superpower cannot win a war against a proxy as long as it refuses to co
besacenter.org
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- Oct 24, 2020
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
You know, it's still kind of annoying that the Taliban gets an M4 and some body armor and the fucking US Government won't even let me have a mortar or a fucking M203 grenade launcher.
Then, to top it off, they just give the Taliban vehicles and want me to spend $200 to register my truck for a year.
Why does it feel like the US government likes other country's citizens more than they like us?
Then, to top it off, they just give the Taliban vehicles and want me to spend $200 to register my truck for a year.
Why does it feel like the US government likes other country's citizens more than they like us?
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2020
The Last Boyscout
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2020
lmao - over here so long as you get a simple certificate, that you got and went through the coof it basically counts as you getting a full vaxx. but land of the free? uhhh...not really sure about that, pal, better vaxx just in case. we got a ton of pharmaceuticals that want their pound of flesh, yaknow!
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