Your country sucks ass

[Hermit]

"US-trained officers" does not mean "a growing US military presence in Africa". Presumably they are ex-US military who have taken the lucrative mercenary route...

The US is known for contracting its more questionable military activities out to mercenaries. Remember Blackwater? One of the first contracts, worth $488 million, was helping the US forces out in Afghanistan, mainly doing jobs the official army could not afford to be seen doing.

The Blackwater thing (egregious as it was) was within countries that the US military was also engaged. Without ruling it out, I have not read of any suggestion of US government policy in Africa being assisted by mercenaries...

US government policy has been implemented via freelancers and mercenaries and without direct involvement of official US armed forces before.
Bay of Pigs, 1961
Chile, 1973
It is of course possible that the recent spate of changes of governments in Africa via mercenaries was accomplished without financial and other US government assistance. Any number of major corporations might be responsible for them, but the US government has always been the handmaid of big business, so I don't know if one or more of its arms (no pun intended) helped facilitate at least some of the changes.

It usually takes a few months, or even years, for such links to surface.

[Svartalf]

"US-trained officers" does not mean "a growing US military presence in Africa". Presumably they are ex-US military who have taken the lucrative mercenary route...

Nope, mercs would never have the army behind them. These are local officers who benefited from training by US observers.

[laklak]

The conservative government is doing everything it can to oblige.

Labor?

Fucking useless, hypocritical arseholes.

Probably while scolding you for using a charcoal grill. Governments, all cut from the same, hypocritical cloth.

[Hermit]

Governments, all cut from the same, hypocritical cloth.

That is a given, but there are differences between governments. In the past 80 years Australian governments were formed by either the conservative coalition (the misnamed Liberal Party and the National Party, previously known as the Country (meaning rural) Party) or the mildly socialist democratic Labor Party. We basically have a two-party system*. The difference in policies between the two is not massive, but it is large enough that nobody with a bit of empathy and humanity should take more than a picosecond to decide to give their preference towards Labor when they vote.


*Our preferential voting system occasionally enables a minor party to gain the balance of power, but that complication can be ignored in this post.

[Sean Hayden]

...

[Sean Hayden]

--just noting

I was in a prosthetics and orthotics clinic the other day and I noticed they only had one magazine in the waiting room, three copies of the same thing, this one:

It's a "luxury magazine", Rolex ads, plastic surgeon showcases, luxury shopping development opportunities, --these sorts of everyday things. Fairly interesting I guess, but still strange for a clinic waiting room. I'm sure there's money around, but odds are the majority of patients are using some kind of assistance or on payment plans.

[JimC]

It's to foster the dreams (however unrealistic) which underpin a consumerist economy...

[Sean Hayden]

--commie talk

[aufbahrung]

LUXCIOR LUXCIOR LUXCIOR

[Sean Hayden]

“I have the same tie as you, only the pattern is reversed”

[Brian Peacock]

UK govt scraps regs that oblige house builders to be 'neutrient neutral', including preventing them from connecting sewage outflows directly to local watercourses. We are literally a country full of shit.

[Svartalf]

given the lump of turds in whitehall, I'm not surprised

[Strontium Dog]

They should make a new rule that sewage should be piped into the homes of those who voted for Brexit.