Impending War?

[logen]

Serious and long post, so if you don't wanna read things like this, i warned you.



So, looking at the state the world is in, and what direction our leaders and so called "experts" are taking, I can't shake the thought of a coming war, which is becoming more and more realistic after each passing day. I'm pretty sure, that my country will be one of those who will have a bigger scale uprising, especially since what has happened in the last few years only seems to strengthen this belief.

If you don't know, a few year ago, there was a leaked recording of our prime minister admitting to have lied and stolen money from the country, which obviously made the people pissed, so fun events such as throwing molotov cocktails, hijacking tanks, taking over national television, etc. where entertaining the news world. Said guy also stated later, openly, that if you don't like what's happening in this country, you can just fuck off. Wow, fucking thanks dude.

Anyways, right now it's way too calm in here, probably the silence before the storm. The only things you can hear is, that everyone's mentioning an impending war. As for the reasons that come up, are:



- The population is around 10 million, from which 3 million are active workers, tax payers. Now, out of this, around 1 million people can't pay their loan, so they'll probably loose the place where they live. If you just count one additional family member as an average, at least 2 million will be homeless, while banks are laughing their asses of, for getting their homes and selling them off to their "friends".

- Places closing down, shitload of people losing their workplace, and being unable to find a new one.

- The money becoming shit. Obviously, this isn't just a local problem. Our currency is relatively new, the last one became worthless during the great depression, and it's probably going to happen again.

- Rich people playing with the value of the Swiss Franc.

- No fixes for the problem. This too, isn't just a local thing if you look around europe (i.e. greece, italy, etc.). No monetary support from abroad, EU doesn't have any more funds for this. Locally, they thought up of the following: You just pay the amount at which you got your loan for 2 years, and after that, pay normally, plus the amount you couldn't pay now. I don't really understand how anyone could do that. Ah yeah, this was supposed to happen from june, but it's been pushed back further, without any reason. Now they say it'll be from october. And I'm telling you, it ain't gonna happen.



Some facts:

We buy everything on a loan. Homes, vehicles, electronic devices, etc.
90% of the people got their loans in the swiss currency.

                             1 USD = 190 HUF (our currency)
                             1 Swiss crap = 263 HUF (right now, but yesterday it jumped to 275 for a few hours after the Fed's announcement)
                             1 Swiss crap when most got their loan = 156 HUF
                             1 loaf of bread = 190 HUF
                             1 liter of gasoline at the cheapest place = 274 HUF ( 1,44 USD)
                             Minimum wage: 78.000 HUF ( 410 USD)
                             Minus tax: around 22%.
                             Tax for entrepreneurs, one man companies or freelancers who do not have a set wage: around 52%
                             Just additionally: your pension if you've worked for a minimum wage: 28.500 HUF ( 150 USD)



What I can expect to happen locally:

                                          -uprising
                                          -bank workers and brokers getting beaten to half dead
                                          -media attention for a week


                     

So that's about it. I'm saying yes to multiple uprisings, and maybe some terrorism against Switzerland, but am curious as to what's it like in your country, what people think, the financial situation, some monetary facts, and of course your opinion on the matter. Do you think that an impending war is something that's realistic or not? Whetever yes or no, please state your reasons. Thanks.

[rtil]

i don't know anything about switzerland, but in the united states, there are two catalysts of war: the military industrial complex, and neoconservatives (who basically are the military industrial complex). the military industrial complex wants war because war = profit. they produce the guns, the bombs, the ammo, everything. it's the united states #1 export. neocons like war because they are imperialists who like to demonstrate military power to the rest of the world.

both of them don't live in the real world and do not know or care how their interests negatively affect the average person, american or not.

however americans only really have themselves to blame for voting people like them into office. most congressmen and senators today are puppets of lobbyists and special interests.

i mean it's crazy but most americans don't really think about this - we have been at war for 9 fucking years, with thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of civilian lives in collateral damage. it has cost us somewhere in excess of $2 trillion, and while we spend money rebuilding infrastructure we destroyed in countries like iraq, our own nation is slowly decaying.

it's totally insane and i'll never understand it.

[shura]

they learned from the vietnam war to never ever publicize any footage or information from the war, because of riots. it's like almost forgotten here. WWIII could get america out of debt, since it worked with WWII. i wonder if the legalization of weed will be what finally pulls us out of the recession

also holy shit logen, 20% homelessness in your country is insane. i cannot even imagine it

[emanhattan]

[spoiler]im gonna get called spic and bullshit for this but w/e this is an interesting topic.[/spoiler]


Well...in the country im living in things are not getting any prettier. The drug cartel hits and violence on the streets are all getting a lot worse. Ever since the last president assumed office hes got a new "war on drugs" policy...its not rare to find armed soldiers, trucks with turret guns, and other signs of military activity in many states. I live in central mexico and thankfully the city i live in in is kind of an oasis in the middle of everything, and my family and most of my friends havent had encounters with the narcs.

theres been roughly 40,000 deaths associated with the narcs, and i dont mean from getting high on drugs i mean from gettin fuckin shot. the narc gangs have pretty frequent fights between each other, retalliations, stolen goods, any reason is good enough for them to start their shit.

2 years ago, while i was living in monterrey 2 students who were then attending my uni got shot about 1/3 of a mile from where i lived. in the morning i remember seeing the bulletholes on many walls and of course, lots of soldiers "securing" the area.

I really dont think we are winning the war on drugs. First of all, most of the guys that are captured or killed are the bottom of the chain in the drug world and they dont know shit, or wont tell anything to the police because if they do, what the REAL kingpins can do to their families or to themselves would be horrible (some cadavers have been found, where the hands, head or genitals are missing, and the bodies are frequently identified as traitors of a narc group). Basically, you dont fuck with the drug cartels.
incidentally, those who are CAPTURED but stay loyal to the narcs, get released in just a couple of days and sometimes on the same day they got into prison. Its also a fact that sometimes captured narcs are interviewed and filmed for television before they are set free, so that the tv broadcast convinces people that they are all in jail, while this is far from truth.

There are shitload of drug cartels but the most notorious ones are

the 5 Beltran Leyba Bros (The Sinaloa Cartel): This is a group that got divided when the leyba brothers accused their leader  "Chapo" guzman, of being a traitor for causing the capture of one of the 5 bros. this suddently caused the entire organization to basically band in 2 groups who fought against each other. The leyba brothers became alligned with los Zetas, which is basically a large group of mercenaries, and killed el chapo´s son using frag grenades and assault riffles to take out all of his gang and protectors.  With Bin laden dead, "Chapo" guzman is now probably the most wanted man in the world. i believe only 2 of the leyba bros. are in jail right now.

The Juarez Cartel: these are the guys that smuggle the drugs into the U.S. stay away from any of the cities highlited in this map.


los Zetas: Mercenaries who come from pretty much every single part of mexico and who have been trained in various divisions of the army and police. now they work for the drug cartels. these guys have every single fuckin weapon you can imagine. Frag grenades, assault rifles "cuerno de chivo". hell i think not too long ago they attacked a police station with a bazooka. They murder, kidnap , steal cars, and extorsion in the cities they "control". they do a little bit of drug traffic as well.

Every single day, collectlivelly 28-32 people get killed because of this.



TLDR

in the entire irak war theres been roughly 109,000 deaths. and in mexico "without a war" 35,000

fuck


EDIT: we really cant take a fuckin war right now please world dont do anything stupid

[put]

we all fucked

[shura]

america definitely cannot afford another war, but im sure we'll get into another one soon anyway

our government is basically torn in half, like rtil said. recently we hit our national debt ceiling (the maximum amount of debt america by law, is allowed to have), which means that the government is not legally allowed to spend any more money.

If the government is no longer allowed to write checks legally, then they will have to default on their social security payments to millions of people, which would cause most of the already struggling middle class to plummet into poverty.

Anyway, Obama needed to get the approval of congress to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling so they can continue to send out social security checks and pay their bills, and etc.

However congress is torn in half, and none of the bills can get passed, because republicans refuse to agree to pass the bill unless some drastic changes in government are made. The republicans specifically wanted more tax cuts to government-funded institutions such as Planned Parenthood (helps women get abortions).
they also wanted tax cuts for the wealthy upper class and government pensions or something. The democrats i believe wanted tax cuts on military spending, and to heavily tax corporations, and the families earning more than $250,000 USD annually. Anyway, they couldnt strike a deal, and the deadline of August 2nd was quickly approaching. the republicans and democrats couldnt settle on a solution that appeased both parties. there was a panic that the government would default on their social security checks, and in the panic, many people sold their stocks before they crashed, causing the stock market to become horribly cripped.

Our global credit rating dropped from a perfect AAA rating to a AA+ meaning that investors will be reluctant to further invest in US debt. (countries buy and sell debt from each other)

anyway, they finally settled on a deal at the last minute, but everything is just fucked up. im probably forgetting more bad things

[billy]

i'm more worried about pollution actually

[billy]

it's a very evil thought, but war has changed to the point that it is not even an inconvenience for the rich. modern war exists to keep the average citizens happy at the expense of the lives of the poor. as long as the war isn't on american soil, it'll only make america richer. i can't see there ever being a draft again in the united states, because most citizens don't realize we are at war.

[Casey Pixmintro]

Yup, war is money. It costs money to taxpayers and makes money for the people who seem to be beyond paying taxes, based on their clout and ability to hire people to congress to fight for their personal interests, ie tax cuts.

However, even though the state of the world is pretty volatile right now, I don't see any new super-involved wars in the immediate future. Maybe some limited ones such as our recent involvement in Libya, but I think we're in the clear for at least a few years. Unless something crazy happens with Iran or something, we can try to reel back our military investment, no matter how much conservatives wouldn't want to. Also just to say, even though, yes we've been in Afghanistan for a long time, I got pretty pissed about how mad people were getting we're still there. It doesn't help the fact the Afghan War was basically ignored for 5 years when we wandered off into Iraq. But yes, super happy we're finally getting our asses out of the Middle East for the most part.

This isn't entirely on-topic, but yeah, watch out for that new-fangled Super Congress right there, the result of one of the shittiest pieces of legislation to be passed in US history. Yes, of course the debt ceiling needed to be raised obviously. It was just so goddamn disgusting watching Republicans hold it hostage so to extend their own bullshit interests. Also shame on fucking Harry Reid for the Super Congress idea, wtf? And shame on the rest of the people involved in the negotiation to actually agree to it. I believe the constitution is flexible, but I'm damn sure creating a 3rd body of congress, free from accountability or voter intervention is unconstitutional.

Also Sasha, legalizing weed would help a ton with government revenue, it wouldn't bring us out of our hole, but it would help A LOT. Not only considering the amount of revenue generated from the sale and taxation of it (also while driving down prices due to competition among sellers), the amount saved on police force and the amount of money saved from not having to imprison marijuana smokers would also be substantial. Prison is damn expensive, and enforcing a law that so many people break willingly is costly as well. Oh, and just one little correction, Repubs wanted to defund Planned Parenthood, but I'm sure you just mistyped, salllgood.

Bleh, I've been getting pretty fucking mad about politics for a while. And the fact that things keep getting more and more dire doesn't help that fact either. I could easily talk about this stuff for hours now, even considering I tried to have a much less involved, but hopefully informed understanding over the last few months.

[zhicago]

American politics are kind of like an older brother holding a piece of candy over his younger brother, until the younger brother agrees to be his "servant" for 3 days. Complete and utter umbalanced power play, all the time, always.

[rtil]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but yeah, watch out for that new-fangled Super Congress right there, the result of one of the shittiest pieces of legislation to be passed in US history. Yes, of course the debt ceiling needed to be raised obviously. It was just so goddamn disgusting watching Republicans hold it hostage so to extend their own bullshit interests. Also shame on fucking Harry Reid for the Super Congress idea, wtf? And shame on the rest of the people involved in the negotiation to actually agree to it. I believe the constitution is flexible, but I'm damn sure creating a 3rd body of congress, free from accountability or voter intervention is unconstitutional.

just more proof that the modern democrat is an absolute pushover, bending over to the ultimate will of the republicans when they constantly scream and cry about not getting their way.

and then you see democrats who actually stick up for themselves like alan grayson getting voted out of office to some scumbag neocon because he was a lone ranger.

i'd really like to see democrats take a hint from former presidents like roosevelt, get some balls and start yelling back, because we're running out of time.

[put]

things might look bad, but comparatively things all around the world are better than just some decades ago, I'm glad I live in modern mexico more than if I lived some decades ago

yes, there will still be wars, no, we're not running out of time, civilization isn't going to end anytime soon,

[rtil]

when i said running out of time i didn't mean the end of the world, i meant the collapse of the united states. the gap between the rich and the poor is larger than ever, the middle class is being squeezed out of existence, and corporations are the rule of law.

[cipher]

fuck it im moving to antartica

[emanhattan]

things might look bad, but comparatively things all around the world are better than just some decades ago, I\\\'m glad I live in modern mexico more than if I lived some decades ago

i have to agree, even though we have the drug problem today.... but god damn the future doesnt look promising....i believe a lot of people here have poor conceptions about how politics work, and whats worse, they dont give a fuck. I know people that firmly believe that democracy has always prevailed in this country and that there was never a time when you could get killed for thinking differently or oposing the system. The rich guys just want to remain ignorant and keep going for the candidates that will personally enrich them, to the expense of others. The corruption of the government goes waay up in the chain and people just applaud it and embrace it like part of our culture. [spoiler]("el que no tranza no avanza" which is a notion i really hope will die someday)[/spoiler] i hope when people my age start getting more involved in politics the guys who are better informed about the situation of the country will lead people to a better future.

fuck it im moving to antartica

[HXC]

Don't introduce the idea of government to penguins now

[Sinitron]

At least I have lobsters.

[lasse]

so many long posts

[Taokaka]

what if a war jumpstarts the economy like it did during the great depression

[Sinitron]

it hasn't been working for the past decade