Things that make you go hmmmm

Yes. Just like Al Qaeda before them.

ISIS never would have banded together without western influence. The groups that make up ISIS were a large number of small warring factions prior to that. They mostly hated each other. They needed funds, arms, and mediation, to come together and be as powerful as they became. All of which came from the US and their western friends.

Yeah, I don't. 

I just find it interesting that Trump keeps tweeting about the fake mainstream media, but surely in a democracy the main stream is the important view? Majority rules, and all that.

Just a curious observation.

If you agree with the famous saying ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist’ most countries in the world at some point could be guilty.

In the case of Bin Laden, the US has called him both at differing times. He's not the only one either!

Interestingly, the mainstream news organisations are not even the majority. If you look at the ratings they are absolutely bottom feeding. I can't really see how they will continue to survive when the baby boomers die out. Younger people just aren't watching them, mainly because we don't trust them.

This is a big worry I have. Who do you believe? Because it's not them, they're full of sh*t. You honestly just have to do your own research and determine your own opinions these days, you can't believe a word they say. 

Once upon a time you watched the news and were informed, now I watch it and think hmmmm I'll need to go look that up, is that really true? 

A good example that went quite viral was when CNN literally claimed on air that downloading the Podesta emails from Wikileaks was a violation of law, that only the media could legally do so, and that we should just watch CNN, because they are the only ones who can legally tell us what was in them. 

Check this out, it's pretty eye-opening. 

Then why are they called the mainstream news?

Also, I'd have thought that the baby boomers watch Fox considering people get more conservative as they age. But then people under the age of 40 probably don't watch TV at all so I guess all TV is dominated by baby boomers.

But, the scary one is Sinclair (you bet me to it!)

Because they are historically the mainstream news. 

No one will replace them, that title may as well die. 

We get most of our news direct from source, through social media, and then we read people's opinions on it to get our narrative. They are just another group offering that opinion now, they are no longer the source. 

Al Qaeda was not formed with the west meddling in the ME. It started in 1988 with a meeting of Bin Laden, Zawahiri and a doctor Fadl  in 

Peshawar Pakistan. 

Bin Laden was angered that in 1990 US forces arrived in Saudi Arabia after offering them him mujahideen to defend the kingdom from Saddam Hussein. He then left for Sudan where he made public attacks on the Royal Family.

In 1992 Al Qaeda's first bomb attack was in Aden. That was the start of many outrages against civilians. 

The White Helmets probably have dodgy contacts for sure. It’s the ME. They were started by an ex British mercenary. They have been involved in a long lasting terrible civil war with atrocities on both sides. However their ‘core business’ is trying to save lives. According to The Economist, 1 in 6 of them have been killed or badly injured. Often in ‘double tap’ airstrikes where Syrian/Russian planes, bomb the same site knowing medical staff will be attending the first strike. 

That makes most of them heroes in my eyes, or at least extremely brave people just trying to save another human life.

No Assad didn’t create IS. I didn’t say that. However if he had at least attempted some peaceful resolution, some power sharing arrangement - it’s doubtful IS would have penetrated Syria’s borders.

Gaddafi didn’t stand aside either. His regime was toppled by force, another civil war. A total breakdown of law and order, power vacuum, in rolls IS and their friends. 

In likes the of Tunisia and Egypt - where civil war was averted, after ‘regime change’ - though far far from perfect, at least life pretty much functions and is safe for the populace.

A lot of that is very debateable ^

But overall I agree with the general point being made. Most of these people have honestly good intentions. It's only the guys pulling strings at the top who can generally make callous, terrible decisions, based on financial gain, because they're not on the ground facing the reality. 

Fudge no. 

And don't forget the diplomats having $USD200 a head dinners at various UN peace talk fests or whatever, around Europe, endlessly shaking hands and going nowhere.

Meanwhile many Syrians are living in desperate situations, either at home or aboard - as the country descends further.

This makes me go very hmmmm.......

When it's utterly bollocking down outside but your football game hasn't been cancelled...

Trump has announced the US, Britain and France are attacking Syria. Explosions heard in Damascus. 

US State Dept claims it has evidence that the chemical attack was carried out by the Syrian government, but that it's classified. 

US, France, Britain, the real axis of evil imo.

Syria was on the brink of peace, the rebels finished, but the axis of evil would rather have more war than Assad being in power. US have evidence. Tui billboard right there. 

And if they do topple Assad, then what? There are so many factions in Syria, who will fill the vacuum of power? It will be another nightmare just like Libya.

Does Nato have a plan? do Nato even care?

Hey but don't worry: war is money and it will come as no surprise that the French, US and Britain have all just recently made billion dollar arms deals to countries in the middle east.

Sickening.

Stop being so one eyed. Think the Russians are selling plenty of arms to the ME.

They have just signed up with Iran and Turkey. 

Why doesn't someone just take out Azad? What rational sane person uses chemical weapons Inside his own country? Or in any country of course.

One eyed? Thats pretty cheeky coming from you.

Israel, Russia, everyone is selling arms in the ME but that wasn't my point. my point was that France, UK and USA love war because it makes them a lot of money.  Sometimes they even fund both sides of a conflict. 

USA, UK and France attack Syria without ANY certified proof that chemicals were used by Assad. Surely that breaks international law?

The TV news tonight read like a Nato party political broadcast. No attempt to even look neutral. Impartial investigative journalism? Sheesh no chance. Nope Assad gassed his people because Trump said it happened.

Meanwhile a bunch of Rabbi's in the USA have sent a letter to Trump asking him to attack Syria because Syria is breaking UN law and is oppressing people.

Hmmm, where were these Rabbi's when Israel was bombing Gaza and killing hundreds of Children? Why did these Rabbi's not speak up every time Israel gave the UN the two fingers and broke UN law? Where were these Rabbis just last week when israel killed protesters in Gaza with sniper fire??

Perhaps these Rabbi's don't care about anything other than what is good for israel?

.Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

as an aside Trump says the USA is locked and loaded to strike again at any sign of Assad using gas. Obviously Assad is not a stupid guy but the same cannot be said for Trump/May/Macron. Will they be audacious enough to do another false flag attack and blame it on Assad.

After all their collective hubris seems to know no limits....

I must admit I did find it very strange that Assad choose to use chemical weapons now.

He is more then winning this civil war, with serious help from the Russians and Iranians. The Americans have dealt to Isis.

It just seems a very strange time to use such a weapon.

If his back was to the wall and Isis were marching on his palace but now?

Something doesn't seem right

But you inferred that it was only the French,British and the US that were making money from arms sales. Your last word was sickening.

That is hypocritical. The Russians are equally to blame. 

I read that a UN delegation was due to go into Damascus on April 14 to audit them for Chemical Weapons manufacture i.e. to check up on them. 

Cancelled after the US attacked the same day. How convenient. 

Now France has released it's "evidence" last night, which is basically them saying they've reviewed the footage that we've all seen, and deduced that that is concrete evidence that Syria carried this out. 

No UN resolution voted in for this attack, no Congress permission from the US, no parliamentary permission from the UK. 

And we are all ok with this apparently.

Madness. 

I mean don't get me wrong, if Assad did this, then by all means, but surely if we've got serious doubts about that, it needs to be properly investigated and the world's "democratic" governments should at least be getting the ok through their own due processes. 

This is all completely illegal and nobody seems to care. 

yeah the whole thing simply reeks of another "WMD" farce. And the more answers Nato gives the more questions arise.

Like the buildings they bombed, saying they were used for chemical weapons, if nato already knew about these buildings why not do anything until now? Surely they would have already taken them out if they were being used for chemical weapons? 

And if they didn't know about these buildings until only a couple of days ago (how convenient), where did they get their proof from to find out what was going on?

Show us the proof in other words. Or are we just meant to take Trumps word? Or maybe the actually don't have any proof. Hmmmmmmmm.

Meanwhile the Press, the same one that usually slaughters trump over anything and everything, is conspicuously quiet in its critical analysis, just like how they were quiet in analysis when Trump announced Jerusalem was where the US embassy was moving to. Could it be because attacking Syria, just as with moving the embassy, is exactly what the powerful jewish lobby in the US wants? :-)

Then after Syria is taken out Iran will be next. Its all part of the plan.

meanwhile Saudi Arabia are bombing Yemen back into the stoneage and Trump not only doesn't give a fudge, but he is giving them the weapons to do it.

Tells us all we need to know about the morality of the president.

This isn't about Nato doing the right thing, this is a "might is right" move with no scruples 

Sanders wanted to make tertiary education free, and apparently the cost to do it would be 65 billion.

Everyone on both sides screamed, where will the money come from, we can't afford that, blah blah blah.

Then they all voted for 160 billion more for the Pentagon, at the drop of a hat. Who actually wanted that??? The military industrial complex, that's who. 

The democrats were screaming that Trump was unhinged, unfit to be president, etc etc, then the next week they all voted for Trump to get extended powers for surveillance of american citizens! Yea that's what you do if you seriously think someone is unhinged, give them wider sweeping powers, well done dems, what a top bunch, "the resistance" HAHAHAHA yea sure. 

Mainstream politics is a total swamp, 100% influenced by money, no one is actually making decisions for their constituents. 

You can't tell me that if they had a nationwide referendum that said should we throw more money at war, or make your kids education free, that people would say throw money at war. These politicians are not representing the people, not one single bit. 

It's not much different here either. 

I voted TOP and I'm proud of it. Yes Gareth Morgan is disliked by many and can be a bit of a tool, but their entire ethos was evidence-based policy, full stop, which is what I bought into - not Morgan. This is where we need to be. Morgan can't do it, he's too polarising, but we need something like this. The entrenched parties and the lobbying system will do everything they can to prevent us from voting in real evidence-based policy, so it may never happen, but goddamn I wish it would. 

The current government is too busy trying to look like Trudeau and put across this "look how much we care" vibe, and are not delivering on their actual promises. The previous government were just an extension of private industries, a huge exercise in demonstrating how "trickle down" policies don't trickle anything down at all. We're getting ripped off every which way we turn in my opinion. 

I am almost certain that in the US, this wouldn't be the case. Either the majority would want more money for the military, or at the very least, it'd be a 50/50 call.

I would disagree. Quite a few polls out there showing that people do not favour increasing military funding;

https://www.salon.com/2017/03/23/the-public-favors...

http://time.com/4253842/defense-spending-obama-con...

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/322975-...

This one comes closest to supporting your argument, but still only shows 37% as thinking military spending is too low, so I think it's fairly clear that the majority do not want it;

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/new-poll...

Leaving aside the various biases of such polls, more importantly those polls do not reflect the view on the hypothesis that you posited, which is that more Americans would prefer to have free tertiary education over increased military spending. What I was saying was, if you pit those two against each other, I suspect the military spending wins. Much along the lines Trump won over Hilary, despite what the polls said.

I bet the people of Colorado would prefer to be able to open schools five days a week or heart them in winter.

The polls don't specifically answer the question I have put forward, I could not find a poll that did, but I think the general results of these polls indicate that I am likely correct, on the balance of probabilities. 

The polls I've posted say that most americans are not in favour of increased military spending, and certainly not at the expense of other departmental spending, including education. 

If they don't want to cut spending on education to spend it on military instead, then I'd hazard a guess that they would prefer to spend more on education, rather than more on military, as well. I don't think that's much of a jump to take, especially with what looks like an absence of evidence against it. 

I worked in San Francisco for a bit, and the obsession that the US has for their military and veterans is something that I've never seen anywhere else, it's insane what a high reguard they have for their military.

The polls I've posted, and the info I've been reading when googling it, suggests that that does not translate into a desire for increased military spending. 

However I doubt that applies to support for veterans, which I would not class as military spending in the sense of how we're discussing it. 

I think most people agree the US treats their veterans pretty poorly, which is really surprising considering their apparent respect for them. 

Again a case of the politicians not representing their constituents perhaps?

Like I said, leaving aside poll biases, and the fact that they don't actually provide any answers on the hypothesis that you've set out, what you're completely ignoring is the ideological indoctrination that generations of Americans have been put through and that basically holds that heavy government investment in social services is wrong, and basically 'communism'. I mean, when the Americans are directly confronted with a stark choice on something like this, there is always a much higher proportion of them that still follows that type of thinking than you would think (and in many cases, to their own detriment). The US is a massive outlier in that respect compared to the rest of the western world.

The other thing about the polls, while I'm at it, is that they can't really be used to suggest a view on the particular when they're based on the general, because 1) people aren't working with the full set of information in that case, and 2) many people aren't able to grasp the ramifications/consequences/connections of their general view on the particular (embodied in the make-up of many NZ voters too, and epitomised by the view 'I don't want to pay more taxes/Government is taxing us too much' while at the same time also demanding better infrastructure/health service/take your pick).

I spent a  few hours with a couple of Vientam vets in a bar in Nha Trang in January and they would not agree with you.

https://www.deltacollege.edu/org/deltawinds/DWOnli...

My observations were from a dozen years ago, not the 70s.

One thing you don't see in the US which you see in some other countries are things like guys in their twenties without the bottom half of their bodies in full military uniform, begging.

Everywhere in the US has veterans support, veterans and active millitary discounts, etc.

They glorify war and their fighting men and it's actually sickening.

Yes polls are fraught with issues, I agree, but that's the best that can be done with the tools I have. It's better than nothing, and when you see many poll results pointing one way, it's not unreasonable to assume a general consensus. Don't forget that despite what you say about the american election, Clinton actually got more votes than Trump.

The argument that Americans in general are against social spending does not really hold up under scrutiny.

The US has the 13th highest spend per capita on social welfare, and the highest outside of Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...

Why aren't the american public up in arms about this?

Polls show 60% of americans believe the government should provide full healthcare;

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/13/mo...

This one for Business Insider is interesting;

http://www.businessinsider.com/american-opinion-on...

A whopping 70% of people say the government spends too little on education (just 6% say they spend too much), and those stats are largely reflected over most areas - health, welfare, mass transport, the works. It seems most people polled want more spending on government services, not less. 

The military question in there is admittedly closer - it's evenly split around the 30% mark between those who want to increase and those who want to decrease. But I believe from these overall results that if given the simple choice, most Americans would prefer increased spending on education, than the military. That was the hypothesis I posited, and I see nothing here that tells me it is wrong. 

Aren't they? Don't they keep voting in representatives who run on anti-government spending platforms, and frequently deliver on those?

It's hard to understand, Florida for instance has 24.2% of people uninsured yet turned down $18 Billion in federal funding over ten years.

When I was working over there the company that I worked for wanted to sponsor me for a greencard but I said no thank you and was very happy to return to NZ.

LOL Ryan. When someone disagrees with you,  you either change tack or make excuses..

Your comment never mentioned the  70's  -  just the obsession that the US has for their military.

I said "I worked in San Francisco for a bit" and so my comment was clearly about my own observations. Sorry I didn't put a time frame around them.

Edit: I just looked it up, it was 2011 although I've been in the US a fair amount since and it hasn't changed.