I’ve been blissfully unaware of this trend, because I’m not on any other social media! I get that posting this is a bit of smug self-satisfaction, which nobody likes, but I feel strongly that corporate social media is a scourge, and that far too many people farm out their critical thinking to random “content creators.” Black-box content algorithms are not doing you any favors, and they will affect your thinking if you subject yourself to them.

He is, to quote Dan McCoy, a prolific motherfucker! I always enjoy his work.

Trust you to bring such a granularly appropriate reaction gif. 'Preciate ya, ummthatguy.

Once it’s been declassified. Executive Order 13526 specifies the necessary procedures. Among other things, it states that the original classification authority must set an expiration date, after which the information should be declassified.

If an earlier date isn’t set, documents will be automatically slated for declassification after 10 years, or a maximum of 25 years(at the discretion of the classifying authority), barring certain exceptions.

That isn’t what NATO Restricted means, at least not in the US—I’m not going to attempt to delve into Hungarian law. It falls under the category of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) established by Executive Order 13556, and codified in DoD Instruction 5200.48

This information is not freely available to the public, and must be cleared for release according to the procedures detailed in the aforementioned documents, which specify that it should only be disseminated for official government purposes.

Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’

The language is provocative, but factually accurate.

Not even vaguely what fucking happened.

Yeah, it seemed plausible, but I couldn’t find any evidence at all that this took place. Fair enough.

Fucking all of this.

Yeah, it’s some real tanky-tonk incendiary language. And the timeline’s all wrong. The US-backed regime started in 2001, and lasted until 2021. Seems like they just grabbed the first couple of years from the wikipedia article.

That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.

It does appear that the current historical consensus is that the Carter administration did not give Saddam the proverbial green light for the invasion. However, there are more than enough contemporaneous claims to the contrary to convince anyone who’d rather believe that they did.

Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.

I mean, fuck the house of saud. And the US does share responsibility for all their depredations, just as it shares fucking bibi’s.

We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.

Yeah, the CIA may have helped coordinate the 1952 coup against the Egyptian monarchy, but doesn’t appear to have precipitated the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak. Happily, this gets me out of diving into whether or not Mubarak’s government could plausibly be called a democracy. Plenty of truth there, otherwise; a misstep, as you say.

'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.

Yeah, the French Revolution parallel is a real stretch.

Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.

Oh, of course I do. I just have really low expectations when it comes to the veracity of claims made by lemmy tankies in general, inclusive of underpantsweevil. I don’t disagree with you—I was just mildly surprised to see your response, given the average factual content of any of their posts.

Thank you for taking the time to respond! I hadn’t read about some of this stuff for a while, and wouldn’t have otherwise. Best of luck to you.

Old underpantsweevil’s hinges are certainly quite wobbly, but in this particular comment they’re simply providing some historical context for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t know how fair it is to describe the NA regime as brutal, relative to Afghanistan’s current and former governments, but that’s a pretty minor quibble.

They’ve stopped short of claiming that the attacks were justified, and the assertions made are broadly true. What in particular do you find objectionable, if I may ask?

Most SF guys I’ve known have been pretty chill. Some of the young guys are dumb assholes, but that’s hardly exclusive to the special forces community. They’re certainly given a lot more latitude than the rank and file, and that can go to their heads. Shitheels like this are not the norm, based on my limited perception and sample size (mainly us army SF).

Literally every guy I knew in 10th group that went out for CAG came back with some ankle injury from the land nav course. Didn’t help my gopher-hole paranoia. Why is seemingly every stateside DZ just teeming with some kind of burrowing creatures?

You ain’t the only one! I gotta stop scrolling.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services!

I have a really hard time staying cool and collected when I discuss politics with people who hold right-wing positions. As a result, I never do volunteer work for political campaigns, because it seems like the only positions available are phone-banking and door-knocking. It’s frustrating; I want to help, but I feel strongly that I’d do more harm than good, doing either of those things.

You’re much better off not knowing, imo. Influencers are like Tinker Bell, in that they disappear if there aren’t enough people who believe they exist.

How about Anthropogenic Catastrophic Kindling (ACK)? Then we can at least get Cathy on board.

Hey, if we can make a pencil out of leaves, cephalopods can swim through our GI tract like species 8472 through fluidic space.

While this is true, people still bear responsibility for the media they choose to consume. People wake up every day and decide to get their information from liars and grifters, because they prefer the way lies feel. It isn’t as if they don’t have options. Now, media literacy is definitely a problem. But the only solution is education, and that’s a silver bullet too slow to save us from all the extant ill-educated mooks.

When people tell me that their stubborn ignorance has reached levels so acute as to endanger the lives of everyone on Earth, I find it prudent to believe them.

Alan Alda’s got a pretty good podcast now. I watched a lot of MASH reruns growing up. Feels strange that kids now don’t have the experience of watching a bunch of stuff that’s not made for them at all, just because that’s what’s on TV.

Oh, crumb! I’ve gotten here way too late to make a joke about it not being a zero cum game. Ah, well. Next time!

Yeah, I think there’s also a lot of tone-deafness among economists, that seems to reflect a lack of understanding (or at least acknowledgment) that the economy is built on—and designed to perpetuate—massive inequality. The average person derives comparatively little benefit from an economy which is—on paper—booming, because the profits are overwhelmingly siphoned off by the wealthy. This is probably mostly a problem with the way the economy is reported on by the media, but economists are the face of that.