The "what the farg is wrong with this world" thread

[ice grillin you]

lol @ malaysia doing anything that would even remotely piss off russia much less travelling over 5000 miles to do it....they would be squashed like a bug

[MDS]

boris going to war with vladimir.

boris, always boris

[Rome]

Vladimir Putin Can Stop This War

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JULY 17, 2014

Growing casualties on the ground, a major escalation of sanctions from Washington against Russia, a military plane shot down and now the appalling destruction of a Malaysian jetliner with 295 people on board, evidently shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The Ukrainian conflict has gone on far too long, and it has become far too dangerous.

There is one man who can stop it — President Vladimir Putin of Russia, by telling the Russian-backed secessionists in eastern Ukraine to end their insurgency and by stopping the flow of money and heavy weaponry to those groups. But for all his mollifying words and gestures, he has only continued to stoke the flames by failing to shut down those pipelines, failing to support a cease-fire and avoiding serious, internationally mediated negotiations.

President Obama was fully justified in announcing tough new sanctions; the European Union imposed its own less-stringent measures.

It may take a while to fully sort out who is responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, which Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. said was "blown out of the sky." Some suspected that it was hit by a missile fired by the secessionists in eastern Ukraine. They, in turn, suggested that the Ukrainian government could have attacked the plane.

However it happened, it was the worst catastrophe of an increasingly costly and brutal conflict that could and should have ended long ago. If Mr. Putin wanted to make a political point about Russian interests, he made it weeks ago. His sole, cynical interest now is apparently to hurt and punish Ukraine. Mr. Putin and those who support him seem incapable of accepting that their model of government, with all its cronyism, corruption and bullying, is not the one many former Soviet subjects want.

The Russian leaders prefer not to accept that the C.I.A. did not engineer the preference of many Ukrainians for what they see in the West. They prefer to proclaim that Russia is the victim of American designs and manipulation — a claim Mr. Putin invoked again in response to the new American sanctions.

The escalation of American sanctions against Russia, which target some of its largest energy companies and banks and more of its senior officials, are not likely to change Mr. Putin's mind. But they, along with lesser but still significant European sanctions, should make clear to him that the West will not back down.

And if that fails, how can the innocent victims in the Malaysian jetliner not impress on him that this useless contest must be ended now?

The Times, as usual, nails it.

Putin is a disgusting pig. 

[General_Failure]

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, IDF starts Gaza ground offensive

After days of waiting and deliberation, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday night directed the IDF to send ground troops into Gaza to strike the terror tunnels into Israel.

Signaling that the initial phase of the ground attack would be limited, a statement put out by the Prime Minister's Office said Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon directed the IDF to prepare to expand the ground operation

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/50099603

Oh, right. The what the farg is wrong with the world part is on twitter.

Mohammed Shafiq @mshafiquk
Follow
BREAKING NEWS: Israel use poisonous gas across #Gaza tonight. This is a crime against humanity. The world stands with the Palestinians

ahmed ziyād ‏@ahmedziyadmv  2m
Reports: Israeli warplanes firing missiles in front of ambulances to prevent picking up injuries east of Rafah.
#GazaUnderAttack

CemDM ‏@Defect101  22m
These are the kids killed in the latest israeli attack today. #GazaUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/W4HanBKORm

Gaza Writes Back ‏@ThisIsGaZa  1h
Israelis cheering deaths of PAlestinians. This tweet from Magnay was quickly deleted frm her account #GazaUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/CA27pZdToc

[MDS]

you should see some of the pro-israel jews im friends with on facebook

its disgusting

[PhillyPhreak54]

The retarded right never misses an opportunity to rip Barry

Now they're going in on him for his remarks on the Malaysian airliner and his apparent nonchalance towards the incident.

What the farg do they want? Stupid farging idiots. I'd like these people deported to some remote island in the South Pacific.

[General_Failure]

More super good news from Ukraine. Aids conference says 100 researchers may have been on flight MH17

As many as 100 of the world's leading HIV/Aids researchers and advocates may have been on the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed in Ukraine, in what has been described as a "devastating" blow to efforts to tackle the virus.

Delegates to a plenary session held ahead of the Aids 2014 conference were told that email exchanges showed about 100 attendees were booked on the MH17 flight. The plane was downed in eastern Ukraine by what the US and Australian governments have described as a surface-to-air missile.

There was no official confirmation of the number of researchers on board.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Conspiracy theories to begin....now.

[Sgt PSN]

Thanks Obama.

[Dillen]

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article-1.1871486?utm_content=buffer96a7a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw

He screamed, "I can't breathe!" six times before he went silent and paramedics were called.

"They jumped him and they were choking him. He was foaming at the mouth," Orta told The News. "And that's it, he was done. The cops were saying, 'No, he's OK, he's OK." He wasn't OK."

[Eagaholic]

Looks like we know why Putin had the plane shot down.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/07/18/332646610/joep-lange-who-died-on-flight-mh17-changed-the-way-we-fight-aids

[Rome]

Faith-Based Fanatics

JULY 18, 2014

Timothy Egan

He's had a busy summer. As God only knows, he was summoned to slaughter in the Holy Land, asked to end the killings of Muslims by Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and played both sides again in the 1,400-year-old dispute over the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

In between, not much down time. Yes, the World Cup was fun, and God chose to mess with His Holinesses, pitting the team from Pope Francis's Argentina against Germany, home of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Well played, even if the better pope lost.

At least Rick Perry was not his usual time-suck. The governor proclaimed three days of prayer to end the Texas drought in 2011, saying, "I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, 'God: You're going to have to fix this.' " The drought got worse. Two years ago, Perry said that God had not "changed his mind" about same-sex marriage. But the states have. Since Perry became a spokesman for the deity, the map of legalized gay marriage in America has expanded by 50 percent.

Still, these are pillow feathers in a world weighted down with misery. God is on a rampage in 2014, a bit like the Old Testament scourge who gave direct instructions to people to kill one another.

It's not true that all wars are fought in the name of religion, as some atheists assert. Of 1,723 armed conflicts documented in the three-volume "Encyclopedia of Wars," only 123, or less than 7 percent, involved a religious cause. Hitler's genocide, Stalin's bloody purges and Pol Pot's mass murders certainly make the case that state-sanctioned killings do not need the invocation of a higher power to succeed.

But this year, the ancient struggle of My God versus Your God is at the root of dozens of atrocities, giving pause to the optimists among us (myself included) who believe that while the arc of enlightenment is long, it still bends toward the better.

In the name of God and hate, Sunnis are killing Shiites in Iraq, and vice versa. A jihadist militia, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, boasts of beheading other Muslims while ordering women to essentially live in caves, faces covered, minds closed. The two sides of a single faith have been sorting it out in that blood-caked land, with long periods of peace, since the year 632. Don't expect it to end soon. A majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are peaceful, but a Pew Survey found that 40 percent of Sunnis do not think Shiites are proper Muslims.

Elsewhere, a handful of failed states are seeing carnage over some variant of the seventh-century dispute. And the rage that moved Hamas to lob rockets on birthday parties in Tel Aviv, and Israelis to kill children playing soccer on the beach in Gaza, has its roots in the spiritual superiority of extremists on both sides.

The most horrific of the religion-inspired zealots may be Boko Haram in Nigeria. As is well known thanks to a feel-good and largely useless Twitter campaign, 250 girls were kidnapped by these gangsters for the crime of attending school. Boko Haram's God tells them to sell the girls into slavery.

The current intra-religious fights are not to be confused with people who fly airplanes into buildings, or shoot up innocents while shouting "God is great." But those killers most assuredly believed that their reward for murder is heaven.

Of late, God has taken a long break from Ireland, such a small country for such a big fight between worshipers under the same cross. There, the animus is not so much theological as it is historical. If the curious Muslim is wondering why Protestants and Catholics can't just get along on that lovely island, take a look at the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century, when about 20 percent of the population of present-day Germany fell to clashes between the two branches of Christianity.

Violent Buddhist mobs (yes, it sounds oxymoronic) are responsible for a spate of recent attacks against Muslims in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, leaving more than 200 dead and close to 150,000 homeless. The clashes prompted the Dalai Lama to make an urgent appeal to end the bloodshed. "Buddha preaches love and compassion," he said.

And so do Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The problem is that people of faith often become fanatics of faith. Reason and force are useless against aspiring martyrs.

In the United States, God is on the currency. By brilliant design, though, he is not mentioned in the Constitution. The founders were explicit: This country would never formally align God with one political party, or allow someone to use religion to ignore civil laws. At least that was the intent. In this summer of the violent God, five justices on the Supreme Court seem to feel otherwise.

Standing ovation...

[Rome]

I was watching an NBC report on the Malaysian crash and the reporter suggested that the gruesome scene was too intense to show on television.  Oh, really?  How about you actually show the hundreds of charred and dismembered bodies lying around instead of censoring actual news, jackass?  The only way to stir people out of their stupor is to shock them out of it.  Bring home in intimate detail just how awful the slaughter of 300 innocent civilians is instead of whitewashing it? 

No, that would make too much sense.

[ice grillin you]

Faith-Based Fanatics

JULY 18, 2014

Timothy Egan

He's had a busy summer. As God only knows, he was summoned to slaughter in the Holy Land, asked to end the killings of Muslims by Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and played both sides again in the 1,400-year-old dispute over the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

In between, not much down time. Yes, the World Cup was fun, and God chose to mess with His Holinesses, pitting the team from Pope Francis's Argentina against Germany, home of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Well played, even if the better pope lost.

At least Rick Perry was not his usual time-suck. The governor proclaimed three days of prayer to end the Texas drought in 2011, saying, "I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, 'God: You're going to have to fix this.' " The drought got worse. Two years ago, Perry said that God had not "changed his mind" about same-sex marriage. But the states have. Since Perry became a spokesman for the deity, the map of legalized gay marriage in America has expanded by 50 percent.

Still, these are pillow feathers in a world weighted down with misery. God is on a rampage in 2014, a bit like the Old Testament scourge who gave direct instructions to people to kill one another.

It's not true that all wars are fought in the name of religion, as some atheists assert. Of 1,723 armed conflicts documented in the three-volume "Encyclopedia of Wars," only 123, or less than 7 percent, involved a religious cause. Hitler's genocide, Stalin's bloody purges and Pol Pot's mass murders certainly make the case that state-sanctioned killings do not need the invocation of a higher power to succeed.

But this year, the ancient struggle of My God versus Your God is at the root of dozens of atrocities, giving pause to the optimists among us (myself included) who believe that while the arc of enlightenment is long, it still bends toward the better.

In the name of God and hate, Sunnis are killing Shiites in Iraq, and vice versa. A jihadist militia, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, boasts of beheading other Muslims while ordering women to essentially live in caves, faces covered, minds closed. The two sides of a single faith have been sorting it out in that blood-caked land, with long periods of peace, since the year 632. Don't expect it to end soon. A majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are peaceful, but a Pew Survey found that 40 percent of Sunnis do not think Shiites are proper Muslims.

Elsewhere, a handful of failed states are seeing carnage over some variant of the seventh-century dispute. And the rage that moved Hamas to lob rockets on birthday parties in Tel Aviv, and Israelis to kill children playing soccer on the beach in Gaza, has its roots in the spiritual superiority of extremists on both sides.

The most horrific of the religion-inspired zealots may be Boko Haram in Nigeria. As is well known thanks to a feel-good and largely useless Twitter campaign, 250 girls were kidnapped by these gangsters for the crime of attending school. Boko Haram's God tells them to sell the girls into slavery.

The current intra-religious fights are not to be confused with people who fly airplanes into buildings, or shoot up innocents while shouting "God is great." But those killers most assuredly believed that their reward for murder is heaven.

Of late, God has taken a long break from Ireland, such a small country for such a big fight between worshipers under the same cross. There, the animus is not so much theological as it is historical. If the curious Muslim is wondering why Protestants and Catholics can't just get along on that lovely island, take a look at the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century, when about 20 percent of the population of present-day Germany fell to clashes between the two branches of Christianity.

Violent Buddhist mobs (yes, it sounds oxymoronic) are responsible for a spate of recent attacks against Muslims in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, leaving more than 200 dead and close to 150,000 homeless. The clashes prompted the Dalai Lama to make an urgent appeal to end the bloodshed. "Buddha preaches love and compassion," he said.

And so do Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The problem is that people of faith often become fanatics of faith. Reason and force are useless against aspiring martyrs.

In the United States, God is on the currency. By brilliant design, though, he is not mentioned in the Constitution. The founders were explicit: This country would never formally align God with one political party, or allow someone to use religion to ignore civil laws. At least that was the intent. In this summer of the violent God, five justices on the Supreme Court seem to feel otherwise.

Standing ovation...

'in god we trust' cant be found in any church....but its on the dollar bill....in america money comes first....but god is a close second

[PhillyPhreak54]

I was watching an NBC report on the Malaysian crash and the reporter suggested that the gruesome scene was too intense to show on television.  Oh, really?  How about you actually show the hundreds of charred and dismembered bodies lying around instead of censoring actual news, jackass?  The only way to stir people out of their stupor is to shock them out of it.  Bring home in intimate detail just how awful the slaughter of 300 innocent civilians is instead of whitewashing it? 

No, that would make too much sense.

I saw some of the pics and bodies don't look good after impact from 33k FT. But then again I'm for showing it. But hey...we gotta protect the kids, man. Think of the children. And republicans. Can't forget them either.

Remember the story about the corpse that fell outta the coroner's van in Philly? Fox29 Philly tweeted the picture out of the sheet covered body on the gurney in traffic and blurred it out. Really?? They were the only ones to do that. A dead body. Covered by a sheet. BLUR IT, DAMMIT!

When I went to Peru the first time the local newspaper had a pic of a dead drunk driver on the front page. Like up close and personal photo. And they also show tits, ass and vadge on normal TV.

USA USA USA!