Petro is from Colombia. Columbia is in Canada.

Isn’t the new Syrian government an ex-IS offshoot?

The friend fell off.

Ah yes, the French Revolution …

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror … A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

• Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/989759-there-were-two-reigns-of-terror-if-we-would-but

You need to think long term, man. What if those children grow up to become nuclear scientists?

/s, because someone actually arguing this is just a matter of time.

It would be great if he can at least press the IMF into agreeing to concessions on the bailout terms. The Rajapakses and their friends looted the country and ordinary people have been left holding the bag.

For now, it is great that he seems to have won over the Tamils, Muslims and hill people. Hopefully this leads to an end to the ethnic conflict that politicians (on both sides) were using to rile up their base.

Counterpoint: ‘The Brooks’s Law analysis (and the resulting fear of large numbers in development groups) rests on a hidden assummption: that the communications structure of the project is necessarily a complete graph, that everybody talks to everybody else. But on open-source projects, the halo developers work on what are in effect separable parallel subtasks and interact with each other very little; code changes and bug reports stream through the core group, and only within that small core group do we pay the full Brooksian overhead.’

Source: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s05.html

As an Indian, I just hope they steal someone else’s sacred symbol this time.

I agree, but the UN is useful only when countries pay at least lip service to its decisions. Israel is attacking UN aid workers. Anyway, they won’t get kicked as long as the US defends them, so it’s just a symbolic vote.

They saw the red cross symbol and thought it was the x mark on the target. (/s)

these US assets are present at the express request of the Kurdish militia, which is formed by the people who actually live there who got sick and tired of the oppression of the religious fundamentalist regime

So like the Russian military units that are present at the express request of the Donetsk and Lugansk militias, which is formed by the people who actually live there [and] who got sick and tired of the oppression of the Ukrainian state?

The best course of action for India is to remain neutral and trade with everyone. Whatever mistakes the current government is making, they have fortunately understood this principle.

I think the concern is that some group will launch a dirty bomb at Israel, Israel will retaliate with nukes, and then the best case scenario is ‘only’ thousands dying. Oh, and did I mention that a dirty bomb can make a pretty large area uninhabitable for decades?

I’m guessing the destroyers are doing something beyond just than praying they don’t get hit.

In India, you might throw gazillion-dollar weddings for your children.

If throwing lavish parties was all our oligarchs did, I’d be happy. I know Indira Gandhi did a lot of horrible things, but sometimes I wish we elect someone like her again, to once again put the fear of nationalisation into these leeches.

That already exists. It’s called arXiv, and is used by mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists. Everyone else has to pay up.

If a violent criminal tried to break into my house, I would definitely not try to fight them alone. I do not have a death wish.

Of course Russia should not occupy Ukraine (and neither should Ukraine act as an occupying army towards its own Russian minority). But questions of what is right and what is wrong will not be decided on the battlefield. The only thing that will be proven on the battlefield is which side has a bigger army, and we already know the answer to that question.

that is definitely NOT taking a side lol.

Under the current circumstances, the only moral position is to support peace. Once a peace - or at least a ceasefire - is achieved, Russia, Ukraine and the separatist regions may be able to negotiate a settlement and those who started the war might even be exposed and punished. But if the fighting continues, thousands of random people will die needlessly.

Closest comparison I could think of. What I understood is that these guys get a government job, and in return are expected to stop their hooliganism. But OP says below that it was originally a volunteer system that got corrupted over time.

Plus Bengal is weebland so they’ll understand.

According to my Bengali friends, he belongs to an institution called ‘civic police’, and they are apparently often ex-hooligans. (If you’ve read One Piece, their relation to the local government seems to be similar to that of the Seven Warlords to the World Government.)