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[Reelya]

Meh, I guess as long as we're talking about WWII, it's still on topic?

Japan wasting their veteran pilots on kamikaze runs later in the war definitely didn't help either.

I kid you not, there's an old black-and-white Pearl Harbor movie showing kamikaze attacks. Not very historical to say the least.

But almost all the kamikazes were NOT veterans. They were mostly volunteer students specially trained for the mission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

They only resorted to this in the last ~6 months of the war, I don't think it greatly negatively affected operations, they'd already long-exhausted experience pilots at this time. They lost 3800 guys this way, but only 19% of them actually died from crashing into ships. For comparison, in the Philippines Sea battle they lost 400 experienced pilots fighting normally. If you're losing 400 skilled guys per battle, having a way to use inexperienced pilots for a quick-kill starts to look more attractive.

BTW: The Kamikazes did take out more enemy soldiers than they lost (they killed twice as many as they lost, and wounded about the same: each kamikaze pilot thus took about 4 allied soldiers out of action). Arguably, this was more effective in terms of Japanese losses to Allied losses than conventional attacks of the time.

[Evil Knievel]

Is this a middle east thing, or an European issue?

Israel halts meat exports to Europe over boycott

I was never aware that the EU does such things (like politically caring from where products originate). Quite surprising.

[Sergarr]

The world is sure getting pretty divided right now...

[Evil Knievel]

The world is sure getting pretty divided right now...

Indeed. It worries me a bit.

[Reelya]

Australian prime minister slammed over anti-Scottish independence remarks.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott weighed into Scotland's independence debate, suggesting Scotland leaving the UK would be a win for the enemies of freedom and justice.

"I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that would cheer at the prospect ... are not the countries whose company one would like to keep."

Ah so he's implying if you're pro-independence you're in league with Iran or something ?

[Loud Whispers]

And on that same note of Euro/MEpol crossovers, the number of British muslims now fighting in Iraq and Syria for jihadist causes is over 500 with mi5 and the police preparing for them to try and make it back to Britain should conflict cease or the jihadist groups begin to lose in the middle east.

Ah so he's implying if you're pro-independence you're in league with Iran or something ? :-/

No, he's saying the splitting of the UK would remove one of the influential opponents of enemies of freedom and justice from the world stage.

[freedoms intensify]

[Sergarr]

Australian prime minister slammed over anti-Scottish independence remarks.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott weighed into Scotland's independence debate, suggesting Scotland leaving the UK would be a win for the enemies of freedom and justice.

"I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that would cheer at the prospect ... are not the countries whose company one would like to keep."

Ah so he's implying if you're pro-independence you're in league with Iran or something ?

already reported

Hey guys, just dropping in to apologize to Owlbread. This happened.

Look, we don't like him, we are trying to get rid of him, we are sorry. We will send you a nice fruit basket in the mail.

[burningpet]

The world is sure getting pretty divided right now...

On the contrary, Europe simply wants to help Israel tighten its economic relations with China and Russia.

[smjjames]

Australian prime minister slammed over anti-Scottish independence remarks.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott weighed into Scotland's independence debate, suggesting Scotland leaving the UK would be a win for the enemies of freedom and justice.

"I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that would cheer at the prospect ... are not the countries whose company one would like to keep."

Ah so he's implying if you're pro-independence you're in league with Iran or something ?

You're kind of late with that, though different link. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122786.msg5579452#msg5579452

When I read that in Owlbreads quote of it, I was like 'Wut? Why is Australia poking their nose into the Scottish independence movement stuff?'. Despite our meddling tendencies, we've (as in the US) kept our noses out of it, though we support whatever happens. I mean there hasn't been any overt choosing of sides like Abbott did, AFAIK.

Edit: Ninja'd by sergarr, heh.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

You gotta be f**** kidding me. That a person old enough to know how the computer keyboard works thinks that lack of computers lead to downfall of communism OR might be interested in seeing the USSR of all things back? I honestly can not believe this. I have no faith in humans whatsoever, and it still too much and I outright refuse to believe that. Tell me that some troll hacked your account. Also, actually, you got the automation part pretty much wrong way. In communism, the work is the ultimate good, and everybody should work because work is good. In capitalism, if you can get away with not working (because, for example, your spouse earns enough money), hey, good for you! So yeah, lack of work is problematic with communistic society, but not as much of a problem in capitalism.

Hmm... Somebody poses an interesting hypothetical and you respond with an emotional barrage. A'ight, lets do this.

You seem to not understand how automation affects an economy. You see it makes specific jobs redundant. For example, only 300 years ago about 90% of the workforce was employed in agriculture, but these days that has dropped to less than 2%, without triggering any sort of food shortage. This is because agriculture has taken up automation. Crops are sowed, watered and harvested on mass with great big machines driven by a single person, rather than by hand by a very large workforce. Reducing the labor demand of an industry has allowed people to move into other industries, industries that provide us other cool things like monster trucks and vidya games.
So, automation is the greatest gift to a capitalist society because it allows people to make a greater economic contribution per person and therefor things can only get better, right?
WRONG!
1915 was the peak year for the horse population on earth. Since that year their population has rapidly dropped because they have been made redundant and replaced by cars. It isn't that horses are lazy, it is just that they are incapable of preforming as well as a car, and this leaves them with nothing to contribute to the economy. They are pretty much redundant. The free market doesn't just magically make jobs for horses because their old positions were automated, and in economic terms there is no difference between a human and a horse.
It is easy to assume humans will always be able to fill a role that automation can not, but to do so is stupid. The transport industry is one of the biggest in any developed nation, but it is going to change very quickly within our life times with the introduction of self driving vehicles. There are machines that test the interactions of different drugs at a rate of thousands a day. What once took an entire floor of accountants to do is now done using a few megabytes of software. The vast, vast width of our economy is subject to automation, and humans, like the horse, will become redundant.
We are approaching a thing called 'near zero employment' where a very small fraction of humans are able to do anything of value. So how does a capitalist society function is such a technological environment? Well it just doesn't. When wealth is awarded to work, and nobody can work, things break down. The only possible solution is through wealth redistribution, a concept much more closely linked to communism than capitalism.

Study the intersectionality between macroeconomics and technology and everybody turns post-scarcity socialist sooner or later.

:3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

[TD1]

And on that same note of Euro/MEpol crossovers, the number of British muslims now fighting in Iraq and Syria for jihadist causes is over 500 with mi5 and the police preparing for them to try and make it back to Britain should conflict cease or the jihadist groups begin to lose in the middle east.

And that is why a properly controlled border is something we should have.

[Max White]

When I read that in Owlbreads quote of it, I was like 'Wut? Why is Australia poking their nose into the Scottish independence movement stuff?'. Despite our meddling tendencies, we've (as in the US) kept our noses out of it, though we support whatever happens. I mean there hasn't been any overt choosing of sides like Abbott did, AFAIK.

You don't understand! Australia is the new freedom machine!

Ladies and gentlemen, I was approached by a young man at the reception here at the King David Hotel on Friday, his name was Aaron, and he asked me who I was and where I was from and I said I was from Australia and he said ‘why are you here?’. And I very simply said, because Australians love freedom. And he said very simply, that freedom isn’t free, right?. And I said exactly right. The reason why the Australians are here today, the first reason, is because Australians value freedom. And we have been fighting for freedom for 114 years and usually alongside our UK friends, whether it has been in the Battle of Beersheva here in Israel, in the Second World War, or the First World War, or more recently in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam and Korea, wars that are now well and truly in the past.

:3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Yea, it is a really good video worth the watch. Put a lot of things in an easy to understand way. <3 CGP, he is good with the word-do thingy.Much better than Thomas Piketty...

[smjjames]

You mean they're trying to be the America of the southern hemisphere?

[MarcAFK]

America's southern, drunken, socially inept, irrelevant special needs step brother.

[wobbly]

I'm counting down the days till we get a chance to be rid of this particular bunch of idiots. It's seriously embarrassing for me to read anything Tony Abbott & co. say, & think that they're meant to be representing my country.