Don't forget Africa, we're still there too.

To a lesser extent, yes.

The largest base is Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti used for Drone strikes in Somalia. The "officially disclosed total" of military personnel in Africa is 3,354 (Probably over 4000 irl).

But it's nothing comparable to the military presence in the Middle-East and Central Asia which "officially" reaches the number of 36,791 active personnel. To this number we must add the the private contractors :

For the fourth quarter of FY2016, DOD reported 3,053 private security contractors in Afghanistan, with 813 categorized as armed private security contractors. DOD reported 239 security contractor personnel in Iraq during the same period, none of whom were identified as armed private security contractors. Private security contractors peaked in Afghanistan in 2012 at more than 28,000 and in Iraq in 2009 at more than 15,000. source

I couldn't find the number of contractors active in Yemen, but also there the number might be interesting (Around 1,800 - 2,000 probably)

Social Justice is Cultural Marxism.

This guy gets it.

Absolutely.

yeah, pushed through universities via critical theory.

At the end of the day, when all the dust settles, it's all about the money - every where in the world. Now, since you can't walk up to all 7+ Billion people and point a gun at their head and demand they hand over their money, you have to trick them into surrendering it. This is what advertising is. As for other countries, you have to trick them too, just in a different way. It's all about deception. And when that won't work then there is always war - just kill every one and take what you want. While you are doing that you need to distract the public. This is where sex, gay marriage, transgender, race wars, drugs, television, Hollywood etc come into play.

Exactly right. Transgender is a small portion of the general population (I've only known one transgender person) and yet we actually debated having separated bathrooms for them.

All drugs should be heavily regulated and legal - except maybe the super dangerous ones like meth.

Gay marriage always puzzled me. It seemed like a lot of controversy and fighting over a none issue.

Television is the worst. I know people that watch 12-13 hours a day while mindlessly eating food. I watched some TV a few years ago but I can't even stand the thought of watching anything.

Gay marriage always puzzled me. It seemed like a lot of controversy and fighting over a none issue.

Exactly. But they will become an issue because of the already existing 1.000.000 unnecessary laws and bureaucratic institution. A priest should have the right to deny marry a gay couple, but they can go somewhere else. That's not the problem. Even marriage. It, in the first place, didn't affect you through laws, nobody would need to get officially married, and could do it their own way.

Transgender people should be able to do what the fuck they want, but we shouldn't try to integrate them in our culture through laws of inclusion. Just like with the gays, we should fix the issues by removing laws of exclusion in general.

I have a gay friend who got married at a late age in life and it must have cost him and his partner a lot of money. It didn't make any sense to me because as a couple they were accepted. And whole event was 'Cowboy' themed. This is so juvenile.

meth

It already is legal and regulated. Has been for years. Just get a doc to prescribe it for severe ADHD or weight loss.

You are probably right. But this should be almost exclusive of the medical profession and regulated by the States with oversight from this group. I hate having 'oversight' because I'm a former bureaucrat and 'they' can invent any requirement they want to, because they don't have to do the work. Unbelievably I've experienced the utter incompetence and 'soft' - 'hard' corruption from this leadership group. In a small business they would be kicked out within a few days. But they influence laws that affect millions.

I don't mean to make it racist but the brownest president ever elected didn't stop shooting at brown people...the Pink movement folded when he was elected. So TPTB feed the Line that serves best in the moment.

Good point, OP.

You'd be right. I actually have a hard time discussing any policy or movement because the ideals are irrelevant compared to their execution. Everything has been coopted to the point that it's hard to tell if one is fighting against the system or feeding it: the human potential movement, anti-war movement, feminism, Occupy Wall Street, etc. All are examples of things that are well-intentioned, but have been usurped to further a sinister agenda.

A lot woman were actually clamoring for combat roles! It just puzzled the heck out of me. I only knew two people who actually saw combat and one was totally screwed up. He was stationed in Danang and it was constant bombardment when he was there and he was constantly going to his therapist. He would lose any capability of performing his job on some days and just go blank. The other guy just told me he never fired back because it was a rocket attack and all he did was run out of the latrine with his pants around his ankles to get cover. It sounds like a great career move.

There was a point in time when I recall serious public discussion on major Reddit threads about how to overthrow the corrupt US government. People were actually discussing the details of how to go about doing this on a national scale. I think that's around the time when Reddit started becoming seriously compromised.

This drives me nuts.

I'm not as anti-"identity politics" as many people here are -- I think all injustice needs to be firmly opposed, including "social" injustice.

But the key emphasis in the above sentence needs to be on the word all, not on including. If you're actively opposing the relatively benign (although real) problems of boardroom sexism, campus racism, etc. -- but completely ignoring the systematic, global-scale exploitation and destruction of whole civilizations while you personally benefit from those atrocities every day without giving them a moment's thought -- maybe you're the one who needs to "check your privilege".

me me big disappointment

Funny thing about privilege.

A couple of years I was reading an article on privilege in American Airlines written by an African American woman. While it starts off as you might expect, she goes to ask the readers to raise there hand if they have a home, or vacation regularly, enjoy fine foods , speak their mind (all things she does). She then goes on explain that many of us are privileged on way or another and that if progressive/improvements can be made, this has to be recognized.

SJWs were created in response to occupy wall street - the only advocacy movement of the last 100 years or so to target the 1%. Immediately OWS was disrupted by identity politics and the "progressive stack", disrupting leadership and organization and creating petty infighting over imagined slights.

The SJWs of today are almost certainly creations of the intelligence state, being used to usher in more police state measures in the name of "being offended" and such bullshit.

We used to protest wars. Now we protest bathrooms.

what 'social justice' are you talking about?

The pentagon is a proxy for Israhell.

I like to remember how we were all united under the "we are the 99%" banner, and how quickly that got snuffed out. We had a target and we forgot about them so quickly.

Placating and confusing the masses from what matters. In Rome they used the coliseum. For years they focused primarily on professional sports. That covers a pretty large swath of the worlds populace. So they introduce concepts for the other 60% of 1st world people to rage over that don't follow a team/sport. They couple these fabricated rage inducing narratives with social "self policing". "What do you mean you don't give two shits about whether or not June who was Jack doesn't have her/his own special place to defecate. You need to care about this!!!" "You're insensitive, chauvinistic, racist". Any good theatrical presentation allows the viewer to be submersed in a fantasy. Submerse yourself in these issues that are entirely irrelevant so we can continue to enslave you.

We should be able to have more than one on going discussion.

Who am I to say no if a woman wants to go on the front line? Sure Im uneasy with the idea of a woman soldier getting captured. But Im more uneasy letting my feelings put restrictions on others lives.

We also need to stop intervening with our military. Its like only having a hammer in your tool box.

SJW stuff is a twisted version of legit social justice and then put on steroids. Justice in social issues is of course not the same as the corrupt SJW stuff the corporate media/Hollywood/TV pushes.

They may have multiple agendas but the obvious ones I notice are identity politics as well as divide and conquer: smearing all leftists as "SJWs" causing division and making people afraid of leftism when these "SJW" extreme/biased/hypocritical concepts are part of the DNC branding. Just like "conservative Christian values" is marketting for the GOP (when Jesus was a socialist of the democratic variety, not a conservative, you don't have to be a "conservative" or GOP worshipper to be against SJW crap and pro-natural gender roles and stuff (unless someone can't help it of course).) The GOP are probably full of false Christians anyway.

And I agree with OP that protesting about race and stuff DOESN'T HURT THE ELITES at all! You have to protest against the corrupt economics/debt based banking system/etc. that actually hurts the elites and fixes problems across the board (poverty, crime, etc.) Nationalize the FED, break up the media, break up the banks, get money out of politics, etc. that will actually do something significant instead of race baiting nonsense.

Why should I value the life of my son, less than that of my daughter?