Also please crumble faster!! Will cause less collateral damage.

You realize it's only gonna take the rest of us down with it, don't you?

The influence of the US + the monster corporations its fostered (same thing pretty much also) is *currently* fucking up the world in several ways..

* Encouraging instability + wars so the military industrial complex can milk money from the US taxbase.
* Imposing neo-liberal economics on weak developing countries, this is essentially the modern form of empire.
* Weakening human rights and national sovereignty globally via trade international agreements.

The more that influence wanes the better imo.

typo: should be 'international trade agreements'

Also, historically the collapse of Empires doesnt seem to cause much trouble (or can even be beneficial) outside of it. Big main examples I'm thinking of.. Roman, British, USSR.
I'm certainly not an expert in this area, would like to hear from someone more knowledgeable.

Yeah, but don't forget our empire is basically holding the lid down on nuclear Armageddon. If good ol' Uncle lets his eye off the ball, we could be looking at WWIII. Preventing WWIII is the reason all those globalization/NWO organizations were created. Granted, big business and cynical US foreign policy has exploited global institutions to the utmost but it is very, very important to remember that they have been successful at their original goal: preventing us all from fighting irradiated cockroaches for the remains of the world.

Also, I notice that this reporter hasn't had his teeth kicked in for reporting this police action. I would like to point out to all my fellow Americans how good it is we can freely comment on how fucked our shitty country is and how very, very, very important it is to repair this fucking place before the actual fascists get their act together and run a more competent candidate in 2020.

It's really just the people who are getting fucked, there won't be any waning influence of the military and corporations for quite some time.

Sorry, wish we could help. Send wet wipes.

@Yuck, penultimate comment:

I dunno, I fail to see any mechanics at play via those institutions to curb the risk of nuclear war. NATO is basically a wing of the US military + a few crony nations. It seems to mainly function as muscle when trying to provoke conflict or bully bannana republics into submission.
Right now the US military in embarking on an insane game of brinkmanship with China, building more and more military bases ringing their major critical port area.

I'd like to hear more from you, gimme some counter examples.

Also one of my examples of relatively harmless empire collapse was the USSR which was the other great nuclear power.

@Yuck, ultimate comment:
Yeah, good point.

I can't tell if you guys are right or you're the left wing version of Alex Jones. Haha! RAR Cronies! Corporations! Fascism! It's All Over! RARRR!

Even if America goes, the corporations still exist. Capitalism is as much a religion as an economic policy, and the priests and monks of capitalism will simply go underground and become something else. The believers have been stateless for nearly a century.

@M-DEEM

I can't tell if you're woefully insincere, or if you need somebody to tie your shoes before you board the short bus to Remedial Everything School.

What Cog said, except economics is a religion also.

The whole world's going to burn, brother.

One more cup of STARBUCKS(tm) before I go..

IZ i love that song. Have you heard the Frazey Ford cover?

The main counter example I can think of where NATO is keeping the peace is Europe, of course. Russia has invaded two countries since Putin came to power, not counting Chechnya. In both cases, Georgia and Ukraine, the invasions were restrained to regions with a great number of Russian speakers and great pains were made to make them look like domestic rebellions, which they were, in part. I tend to think if it weren't for NATO and the US led world order, those invasions would have been naked and unabashed wars of aggression and would have taken as much territory as Russia would have been able to seize. I think it likely that an ambitious man like Putin, if he weren't hemmed in by nations under the protection of NATO, would have launched invasions in other nations as well, including Poland where I still have some family.

More broadly in Europe, American guarantees have allowed Britain, France, and Germany to spend a lot less on their militaries. Trump may bitch about this, but it means there are a lot fewer troops available to the European powers to start dumb fights or stir up shit in former colonies. Also, they no longer have colonies, a priority of post war US foreign policy and the UN.

Most broadly, the American interest, which is supported by NATO and to a large extent by the UN and the WTO, is to maintain the status quo. This has led us to do terrible, stupid things like sabotage the pan-Arab movement, undo democratic revolutions and reinstall dictators, support autocrats, and so on. But the status quo is one where fewer people are dying violently, as a percentage of total population, than ever before in history, and one where no one has used their giant stockpiles of doomsday weapons. It's worth supporting, we just need to do a much better job.

Oops meant as a reply to Senor Gato.

Funny analogy!

Yeah, we're better here in Canada. We have socialized medicine, constitutionally enshrined multiculturalism, Human Rights Tribunals to fine citizens tens of thousands of dollars for holding offensive opinions (or, y'know, misgendering some tranny loser), a pretty-boy Marxist Prime Minister, we're about to make the abortion pill free, "Islamophobia" is about to be added to our list of criminal offenses....

BUT THOSE YANKS ARE SOOOOO STUPID, GUISE.

actually yeah things are pretty decent. your screed started off pretty good before degenerating into babytalk.

It's funny how easy it is to tell which idiotic right-wing pundit some retard has been listening to youtube clips of from the specific stupid things they post. I mean, it's just straight up regurgitation, when these are the dummies accusing college students of being indoctrinated by .

So, when's the next Peterson video, dummy?

Last time I was in Montreal the last game of the hockey playoffs happened, and after it was over people streamed out of the bars and started making a big scene all over the downtown.

I watched a phalanx of a dozen or so cops walk down the block I was on arresting every person obviously of indigenous descent and not even slowing down for anyone else.

America's a shit nation of shit people, this is true, but it's been what, two years since Canada got caught covering up another genocide?

It's not like we don't know you're the most outright authoritarian country on the continent and constantly hide and cover shit up with your public image laws.

I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that all modern nations are built on a foundation of countless horrors past, present, and future.

Our ability to mitigate the constancy and intensity of those horrors has actually increased for the better over time.

Unfortunately, those gains appear to be lagging behind the growing likelihood of an unrecoverable human-derived calamity.

Also, I'll probably die choking to death on spinach.

This could end up being a very fun suite of statements, trials, and protests that might actually force folks hands on resolving the pots problem once and for all. Plus, Republicans could use this for needed fed tax revenue to compensate for their cash grab and advancing a theatrically adversarial Trump narrative some of them will use to retain their seats in riskier regions. This has the bonus of providing a moderate republican face with plenty of room for red meat republicans to complain loudly (and even vote against) any proposed legislation. This is a cake eating moment waiting to happen where mod Republicans get to look tough AND base Republicans get to look tough. Big tent. Big stinky tent.

Or none of that. I don't know.

What I still don't understand is how the fuck Canada could NOT recognize (and continues to refuse to recognize) the genocide of Christians and Kurds in Syria. What the ever loving fuck? Everyone else has seen the tons of evidence and sees that shit going down, Justin.

Naw the cops were always kinda dicky. I do remember a day when a bro would cop to his bag of dope or bottle of captain to protect his bros and as that bro was led away by the man he would become a legendary bro for life. I feel like most of these charges will be dropped.

I remember cops breaking a classmate's arm when they hit her with a baton while beating protesters at the DNC debate in Boston during the 2000 elections.


I remember back in the 90s one of the guys my dad played basketball with was beaten to death in a parking lot and the police didn't investigate because he "slipped on ice" (there was no ice at the time). By pure coincidence, one of the best friends of the chief of police had a son who had gotten in to a big, public argument with the guy who was killed a couple days before it happened.

I think the carte blanche that the police have now exceeds that of previous eras. Also, I have no doubt those horrible things happened and got covered up but I'm talking about in general lighter incidents like house parties have traditionally not been police targets but there has been an uptick in recent years to just arrest everyone without asking questions rather than asking people to disperse, which is the normal tactic that has been used for decades. This may seem like a small thing comparatively but it is a canary in a coal mine. Clampdown is here and it is increasing its viselike grip incrementally.

So...have fun with all that!

The idealogical schism / argument I seem to be seeing on the net of left vs right seems outdated to me.
Really its ultra-wealthy modern robber-barons vs. everyone else.

Eg. Why is the US constantly at war on several fronts in recent times? Because the military-industrial complex have lobbied for that. As a result they get more money to lobby with and thus there is a positive feedback process.
Similarly why are more and more people being arrested for lesser and lesser crimes? Because of the burgeoning prison-industrial complex.
The US is one of the largest countries in the world, with one of the largest economies, if you can siphon off a % of its tax then its an enormous, completely reliable revenue stream, its a stockholders wet dream.

The fix for these issues isnt punch nazi's. Its regulate your corporations. Reinstate the anti-trust laws which were gutted in the 80's. Try and pass laws to limit lobbying.

Do your feet hurt at night? I mean goose stepping around all day must get tiring.