since I had to see a really actual-trigger inducing "joke" post
with Jokes about 9-11, the worst day of my entire life and if i have to explain to you Why that was the worst day- well the short version is I had to watch several hundred people die in realtime and then the day got WORSE from THERE and then so did the century and now a few million people are casualties across the globe
but it'd be cool if everyone else didn't think it was HILARIOUS to joke about or at least tagged that shit so I could block it.
General Fabien Mandon urged France to understand losses might be necessary to protect national security, warning of a potential confrontatio
...confrontation with Russia by 2030.
France's Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin backed top military officer General Fabien Mandon, who has called on the country to show "fortitude" and "accept losing our children" in order to "protect what we are," warning that Russia is preparing for confrontation with Western nations by 2030.
General Mandon told the Congress of French Mayors on Tuesday that France risks failure if it is not prepared to accept casualties and economic pain from prioritising defence production.
"If our country flinches because it is not prepared to accept losing its children, because we have to say things, suffering economically because priorities will go to defence production, then we are at risk," the chief of defence staff said.
"We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the Moscow regime from trying its luck further afield. What we don't have is the fortitude to accept the pain of protecting what we are.
"The comments follow General Mandon's warning to MPs in October that the French army was planning for a "clash with Moscow in three or four years' time.
"Vautrin defended Mandon on Thursday, saying the general was "fully entitled to express his views on the threats that continue to grow."
"His comments, taken out of context for political purposes, are the military language of a leader who, every day, knows that young soldiers are risking their lives for the nation," she wrote on X.
"Our responsibility is clear: to avoid any confrontation but to prepare for it, and to consolidate the spirit of defence, that collective moral strength without which no nation could stand up to the test."
The now-infamous ‘Gaza letter’ is propaganda masquerading as scientific research.
by CORY FRANKLIN
Politics has a uniquely transformative effect on science. When a scientific article is published in a political journal, the journal remains political. But when a political article is published in a scientific journal, that journal becomes political. That is what happened recently, when the Lancet, arguably the most respected medical journal in the world, published thinly disguised propaganda as scientific information.
Earlier this month, the Lancet published a letter to the editor from three researchers, which speculated on the number of deaths that will occur as a result of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Two of the authors have a history of extreme anti-Israel bias.
Their estimates are riddled with problems. The authors took as their starting point the official death toll at the time of writing, of 37,396 deaths – a number so precise it should already be setting off alarm bells. These figures, produced by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, have faced a huge amount of criticism and scepticism. Nevertheless, the authors of the Lancet letter felt that even this number was too low as it does not include ‘indirect deaths’ that will continue into the future.
‘Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable and non-communicable diseases’, they wrote. According to the researchers, ‘In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.’
Needless to say, that number strains credulity. This would represent nearly eight per cent of Gaza’s population. The use of the phrase ‘in the coming months and years’ is ridiculously open-ended. Does this mean we should be counting deaths for one year after hostilities cease? Five years? Twenty years? Employing a long enough observation period, the authors can basically attribute any number of deaths of their choosing to the war.
The authors also provide no definition of what constitutes a delayed death as a consequence of the war. Indirect deaths from ‘reproductive, communicable and non-communicable diseases’ is basically medical gibberish, signifying nothing. What diseases, specifically? Currently, there is a minor outbreak of mosquito-borne West Nile Virus – a ‘non-communicable disease’ – in Israel near the Gaza border, although there have been no reported cases in Gaza yet. Five years hence, if there are deaths in Gaza from West Nile Virus, will those be counted as a result of the war? We have obviously exited the realm of science here.
The eye-catching nature of the 186,000 figure, as well as the fact it was published in such a well-respected medical journal, has turned it into international news. It has been seized on by pro-Palestine campaigners. It was spray-painted by vandals on the ground by the Cenotaph in London last week, and has been quoted as fact by a Labour MP.
Some might try to argue that these outlandish figures are in no way being endorsed by the Lancet, as they were published in a letter and not a peer-reviewed article. But this is tosh. Peer-reviewed articles naturally carry more weight because they are more carefully scrutinised by outside reviewers. However, letters to the editor are not published at random. They are not akin to below-the-line comments on a website. They must be approved by an in-house editor and the vast majority are rejected. Approval and subsequent publication confers the imprimatur of a prestigious medical journal, whether the editorial staff publicly agrees with the letter or not. The fact that this was published at all carries some kind of implication.
There are many ways to look at human history, and a typical viewpoint is to study wars. It is unquestionably one of the darker aspects of human culture, and yet we must look at it occasionally to maintain our perspective on human life. I have been reading Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, by Matthew White, and he ranks the 100 deadliest intentional events. For each event,…
Why 2015 might well be mankind’s happiest new year
Journalism usually focuses on what’s going wrong, not what’s going right. As a result, newspapers can give an unduly negative view of the world. I try to remedy this in my Daily Telegraph column todayby pointing out that 2014 has been the best year ever – just as 2013 was, and just as 2015 will be. It is…
Study: Crime not war main source of armed violence
By Frank Jordans, Associated Press, Oct. 27, 2011
GENEVA (AP)--More people are killed by armed violence resulting from crime than are killed in war, with Latin America and a swath of countries through the middle of Africa among the hardest hit, an international study claimed Thursday.
About 526,000 people die violently every year--or more than 1,400 people every day--according to the 2011 Global Burden of Armed Violence report.
Only about 55,000 of those killed die in warfare, while an estimated 396,000 people are murdered outside of armed conflict. Some 54,000 people die due to unintentional violence, and 21,000 are killed in police operations.
"Most of the states that are worst affected by armed violence are not at war," said Keith Krause of Geneva's Graduate Institute, one of the authors of the report.
The Swiss-funded study found 14 countries had rates of violent death above 30 per 100,000, compared with the global annual average of 7.9 per 100,000.
Those countries, led by El Salvador, Iraq and Jamaica, have less than 5 percent of the world's population but account for a quarter of all global violent deaths. Only six of the 14 countries--Iraq, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Central African Republic, Sudan and Congo--were active conflict zones during the 2006-2009 period examined.
Even within countries there were big variations.
Mexico's Chihuahua state had a violent death rate of 129 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010, largely due to heavily armed drug gangs competing for territory, while eastern states had relatively low rates.
"This total is greater than almost any war zone that we can find on the planet," said Krause.
The figures for countries at war don't include indirect deaths, such as those who die because violence prevents them from reaching hospitals. The authors, based at Geneva's Small Arms Survey, estimate indirect deaths in war at 200,000 each year.
