Funny events in anti-woke world

Gergar12

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It's not due to middle-eastern, and African refugees that Italy is suffering. Italy has a smaller, but sizeable problem like Mexico with crime. Take out the mafia, take on organized crime, and Italy could easily be the next Germany. The South of Italy is full of organized crime.

 

Gordon_4

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Hmm, not sure about that. The US army needs a colossal funding cut, a complete doctrinal rewrite to commit them to defensive roles, and a huge cultural overhaul (involving a reckoning for those involved in past crimes abroad, and a mass replacement of the top brass/officership).

But abolishment would result in a huge spate of imperialist aggression elsewhere. Russia & China foremost.
The ability of a military to counter moves by its rival powers are based on their force projection capability and that is an offensive doctrine. As is any action made by their forces on behalf of an ally.
 

Thaluikhain

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It's not due to middle-eastern, and African refugees that Italy is suffering. Italy has a smaller, but sizeable problem like Mexico with crime. Take out the mafia, take on organized crime, and Italy could easily be the next Germany. The South of Italy is full of organized crime.

Well...yes. But taking out the organised crime is taking out a big chunk of Italian society, it's been part of their normal for ages. Not saying it shouldn't be done, but no small task.
 

Gordon_4

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Well...yes. But taking out the organised crime is taking out a big chunk of Italian society, it's been part of their normal for ages. Not saying it shouldn't be done, but no small task.
Taking out organised crime has proved an impossible task in every country. I don’t see why Italy is a special case.
 

tstorm823

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Stepping back to the subject of banned books for a second, I actually live like 5 miles from one of the most controversial "book bannings" of the last couple years, and a recent story came out looking back on it.
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For some additional context, I want you to know that York County, Pennsylvania is very Republican. The only place in York County that isn't solidly red is York City proper, but even the city is anomalous in how Republican it is: the city is 55% black and in some ways basically a suburb of Baltimore, yet overall it leans slightly right in voting patterns. The current mayor is a Democrat who ran on the Republican ticket in the general election. The school district this happened in is Central York, which is not central to the city, but the county. This school district is the residential suburbs outside of the city but before you get to the cow farms and warehouses where I live. Basically what I'm getting at is that this is a conservative area.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd and the protests around the country, this school district felt compelled to make changes to their curriculum, particularly in a place that had a major historical race riot half a century ago. The school board brought in diversity and inclusion consultants to put together a diversity reading list for their schools. Here's the best record of that list I've found. You may notice that document is labelled the "banned list", we'll get to there soon. The vast majority of that list is totally inoffensive material. The resources for children have 100% more Ibram X. Kendi then I would like, but otherwise it's reasonable age appropriate material. This isn't Lawn Boy, it's picture books of MLK. So the books on this list were given a special status: they were all approved for use in classroom instruction (at teachers' discretion) as part of the official curriculum AND they were placed in a prominent location in the school library.

The controversy of this actually comes out of the reading list for the teachers. Nobody was vocally worried about the picture books in the K-3 reading list. The part that got people concerned was where the teachers were being told to read things like "The Art of Critical Pedagogy", and "Reparations Yes!: The Legal and Political Reasons why New Afrikans, Black People in the United States, Should be Paid Now for the Enslavement of Our Ancestors and for War Against Us After Slavery" (which honestly should be banned for having that many words in a title). The consultants they brought in had made a reading list for teachers to try and mold them into activists and teach them how to insert their social activism into the classroom, and people were not fans of this. The school board went "crap, we didn't know all that was in there", and suspended the diversity reading list. The books weren't banned, they never even left the school library, but the prominent display came down and approval for use in class was rescinded, with the exception that any books from the list that were in the curriculum before this list was implemented still retained that approval.

Side note: to anyone who has ever spread the line about how "there's no critical race theory in schools, that's college level stuff", please take not of that "Art of Critical Pedagogy" in the list. No, they aren't teaching grade schoolers to practice critical race theory, they are teaching the teachers to practice critical race theory and then insert the ideas derived by critical race theory into their teaching. They want adults to rationalize where and why systems are unfair, and then just teach the kids to tear the systems down. Anyway...

For most people any distance from this reading list, all they ever heard of it was that a school district in PA was banning MLK and Rosa Parks, but that didn't actually happen, as those figures were already included in the school curriculum before this reading list. The same is true of "Girls Who Code". The books never left the library, they were never disallowed in classroom instruction. An after school club themed on that book series went on during the entire period of the "ban". The books were never banned, and then the entire reading list was reinstituted when it became a national headline.

To go back to the political makeup of this region, here's the takeaway I'd like you all to have: this is a red leaning place full of Republicans who were actively pursuing more diversity in their curriculum to contextualize current events properly for their students. To that end, they asked for recommendations from specialists in that field, who then included one-sided political treaties and materials on actual critical race theory, which in a Republican area is effectively telling people to resent their neighbors. Then when that part of it came into question, the national media painted these well meaning people as massive racists trying to erase MLK and Girls Who Code. So basically, don't trust the media.
 
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Silvanus

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The ability of a military to counter moves by its rival powers are based on their force projection capability and that is an offensive doctrine. As is any action made by their forces on behalf of an ally.
Defence of an ally fits within the purpose of the military that I'm envisaging.

You can have a breaking point at which it's justified to become involved abroad in a non-defensive capacity due to extraordinary circumstances. But currently, that point is far too low for the US military, which views its role as a global policeman.
 

Gordon_4

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Defence of an ally fits within the purpose of the military that I'm envisaging.

You can have a breaking point at which it's justified to become involved abroad in a non-defensive capacity due to extraordinary circumstances. But currently, that point is far too low for the US military, which views its role as a global policeman.
So your problem is with the civilian oversight, not doctrine or capability. The US Military doesn't need a doctrinal change or downsized, it just needs its political leaders to pull their heads out of their arses and stop using them for bullshit.
 

Silvanus

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At this point you're basically a neoconservative
At this point you're basically a parody.

So your problem is with the civilian oversight, not doctrine or capability. The US Military doesn't need a doctrinal change or downsized, it just needs its political leaders to pull their heads out of their arses and stop using them for bullshit.
Not solely: the funding is far, far above its needs, and the doctrine is altogether too broad.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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The man who quoted a 18th century witch hunter in his abortion decision is whining that people are attacking the legitimacy of the Supreme Court

 
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Gergar12

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To all of those that reply taking out organized crime is too hard. Why don't you literally just target the leadership, and send them to a US prison?
 

Trunkage

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To all of those that reply taking out organized crime is too hard. Why don't you literally just target the leadership, and send them to a US prison?
I would look at the many court cases surrounding Trump

Trump might get off scott free on all of them, even though he clearlydid a fuck ton of illegal stuff...

That being said, he did screw around with some documents which might actually be his undoing

I.e. if you are in charge, you don't go to jail over small stuff like dealing drugs, organising bank heists or murder/sending a hitman. You only go to jail over tax evasion. It doesn't matter if you are a drug lord or CEO of Purdue
 

Gordon_4

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To all of those that reply taking out organized crime is too hard. Why don't you literally just target the leadership, and send them to a US prison?
The thing about organised crime is it is, well, organised. It has hierarchy, procedure, delegation and all the other boring shit you’d find in management at say, Sony. Just organised crime deals in things like drugs or the sex slave trade rather than just movies about the same.

In fact here, I’ll let someone who actually knows what he’s talking about explain it to you: