I did concede that point when @Heffsgirl raised it.
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Yeah, sorry I wasn’t saying it as a comparison to the others.
Yep if a country participates in enough wars and that tends to happen.
I think media coverage and the democratic process has drastically changed how the west fights wars, for the better.
Vietnam and Korea were absolutely horrific examples of WW2 strategic bombing heartlessness. That was heavily driven by WW2 veterans who had been involved in dropping nukes and firebombing civilians.
Since then the style has shifted to highly accurate guided weapons. That took a huge amount of investment in tech and organisational skill. It’s easy to blow everything up, very hard to take out a single car in a crowded street. The epitome of this is non explosive kinetic impact guided bombs with spring loaded swords. That is an absurd weapon, only exists because of the public’s values being pushed upon their armed forces.
Very easy to point at a point in history that doesn’t fit the moral standards of today. And that’s valid, much evil was done. But judging any nation you should also consider how they’ve deliberately evolved and why.
Edit - this thread derailment feels very Twitter.
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And Kissinger got a nobel peace prize despite this fact. Good for him. Long he may he die in a gutter.
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I understand and agree with the sentiment Wim ……those countries (rightly or wrongly) were seen as assisting the NVA move troops and supplies into South Vietnam. The American’s aim was to kill as many people as possible so eventually the North would give up. IIRC it was the highest kill ratio of any war ie Allie’s killed vs enemy. It was a brutal blunt instrument …. kill as many as you can. I’m not saying it was right or moral - but the Cambodians and Laos were seen as assisting the NVA and they got bombed - a lot
Anyone who wants some decent background about the secret and illegal war America waged by bombing Laos and Cambodia needs to read “Sideshow”. It is the definitive work on the conflict there, not an easy read by any means, but it is compelling.
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The Pathet Lao were allies of the NVA. That’s not all Lao people of the time, or even most of them IIRC. Pathet Lao concealed themselves very well in remote parts of the country, which the US tried to hit more than than the capital Vientiane. Many, many Lao who weren’t followers of the PL ended up risking (and losing) their lives to flee to Thailand and elsewhere as refugees. Others were forced into re-education camps. The US took many Lao refugees, including Hmong, who settled in places such as Fresno CA. They are those featured in the Eastwood film Gran Torino. As well as deliberate bombings, I believe the US also frequently dumped explosives indiscriminately on Laos during return flights from Vietnam to US airbases in Thailand because they otherwise couldn’t have made the journey. When I was there in Sam Neua in 2001, the US were there conducting ‘full accounting’ operations to retrieve long lost US soldiers, even while Lao kids and adults continued to get blown apart by landmines and other UXO.
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Soulnet38294059382716153859 agrees.
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I (mistakingly) read the post regarding the USA compared to Germany etc. and wow……that’s some SMJ level thinking!
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Musk really should have paid the billion when the courts wouldn’t let him simply walk away.
Edit - update
Much of the OSINT stuff that is in the Ukraine thread will start to get put at risk with this policy. It’s something that can be interpreted quite broadly and result in far bigger impacts than the original narrow intent. There’s a big risk that news and investigation gets banned.
This isn’t a policy, it’s a figleaf. There’s absolutely no way that twitter’s gutted content moderation people can meaningfully enforce a policy so broad. I mean, forget about news, this makes posting ‘I’m at [music festival or shopping centre or whatever] and ran into [mildly famous person]’ posts bannable. Or even ‘at [location] with the boys’ posts with a photo attached. That’s a massive chunk of what everyone who’s not miles down the twitter politics rabbithole actually uses social media for.
It’s ludicrously, unenforceably broad, and that’s because it’s not intended to be a regularly enforced policy. It’s intended to give Musk a toolkit to ban people he doesn’t like, or freeze out causes he doesn’t like, within the rules. Remember those pink hat protests after Trump got elected? I could very easily see, for instance, everyone who attends a future one of those and posts a photo of other people in the crowd being banned. It’s a great weapon for defusing the prominence of mass action that you don’t like.
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When Belarus faked a bomb threat to force a commercial aircraft to land and kidnapped Navalny.
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ahhh, the irony of a jaded authoritarian buying a platform to allegedly save free speech, and then ad-hoc banning things that upset him and justifying it after the fact
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So it looks like Elon had a scare after his family got into a bad situation, got understandably angry. His response was to change the Twitter terms of service on the spot and implement legal action on a young guy who was sharing publicly available info.
Honestly, right now I don’t believe a word Musk says even if he’s claiming water is wet. We’ll see if such legal action ever becomes reality. It seems wildly improbable, unless Musk’s strategy is to bring it, make it long and expensive, then push the kid to settle so he can claim a win.
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Can he just drop dead already. No loss of innocent life there.