Prelude to the Apocalypse

[BryanM]

It's gonna be wonderful when Pence and the others endorse Trump when the time comes. How long do you think the last serious hold-out will last? I think just to desperately save face they'll prop up a sock puppet until Super Tuesday. They have no emergency mechanism for it, but it'll be neat to see if they, too, have a Ratfuck Voltron plan for this day.

Unlike the democrats, it'd fail though. Damn I envy republican voters for having some actual individual conviction.

So, four more months of this sad farce.

I think what people maybe don't understand is just how weak and shitty Biden is/was as an alternative.

I do, he almost lost last time. It's currently around the point where the electorate in Texas flips over to being a permanent blue state in presidential elections, and he still might blow it.

There's no alternative of course. If Sanders or someone to the left of him was the nominee, the entire media and a quarter of the liberal electorate would suddenly find themselves on Team Trump. We'll just have to hope our overlords at nVidia will be a beneficent dictator once they assume control. That's where we must direct our hopium.

[Sengoku Strider]

I don't find your graph terribly convincing. The war on terror was at least as bloody as the seven years war even though it only had global powers participating on one side.

Fortunately, there are a number of meaningful metrics which show the world is a less violent place than it was, wars are more contained, and both civilian and battlefield casualties fewer. This is a pretty respectable meta analysis, if you read through you'll see they've considered a number of broader factors:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society June 2020: Change Point Analysis of Historical Battle Deaths

I don't know if the world overall is currently in a particularly peaceful time period (I doubt it tbh) but it is certainly not true for my country, the USA, which can't go more than a few months without war. Also consider the many other forms of violence practiced by the elites, such as the way constant CIA coups, sabotage, election interference, etc. keep most of South America locked into violence and poverty. Even if it isn't conventional war it still destroys plenty of lives.

These examples are crossing a number of different eras and regimes in a period of history in which social change has become rapidly accelerated, which will skew impressions about where we're at a quarter of the way through the 21st century. The Second World War was the greatest loss of life in human history, but the trauma of that event caused a mass global reconsideration of warfare as a noble and adventurous pursuit in the era of mechanization. "Modernity" (roughly 1500-1945 on a European timeline, though some historians end it with the outbreak of the First World War) had produced two global conflicts of indescribable loss. In response institutional academic philosophy (and to a degree, social psychology) completely re-oriented toward pacifistic, socially integrative and anti-imperial approaches which came under the label of "post-modern" thinking. The hippie generation were their students, the civil rights, LGBT and women's movements were deeply informed by it, and the impulse lives on in contemporary social movements like hip hop or trans rights which would have been impossibly radical in the 1950s.

If you want to get into things like interference in foreign governments, I'd say those processes indicate pretty firmly that violence was not the first, second, third or even fifth option. It was the exception - usually championed by an influential special interest - when other less politically and financially costly avenues had failed. I come back again to this era being ruled by bureaucrats and the merchant class: the balance sheet is the chief arbiter, not the ambition of the would-be war hero or conqueror. As much as I consider Metal Gear Solid to be goofily prophetic, the military industrial complex profits from stable major economies who can afford regularly scheduled purchases of luxury weapons and rolling support contracts. A world of actual endless war just makes for a lot of inflated material costs, disrupted supply chains, a target on your production facilities, governments in deep debt and broke - or dead - customers.

[Sengoku Strider]

Even so, the fact remains that Powell has very publicly carpet-bombed the value of her testimony

Again, fortunately she has not. Unreliable liars are kind of the court system's stock in trade, they've dealt with this before. There's a world of difference between testimony under oath and goofy rants for the cameras.

and I find it incredibly difficult to believe that this wasn't a deliberate act as opposed to "ohh man, she's just so stooopid" - remember, her credibility on the stand was already near zero considering she'd previously argued, verbatim, that no reasonable person could believe that her election fraud claims were factual whilst simultaneously pulling her best Rush Limbaugh impression.

Of course she did it on purpose. MAGA eats its own alive, it was a self-preservation move. And of course she tried a bunch of dumb legal tricks that didn't work, it's how she ended up as a Trump lawyer in the first place. She put herself on Trump's radar while fumbling Michael Flynn's case and getting him a worse deal than he would have otherwise gotten, but saying all the right talking points while doing so. As a result, she squeaked into Trump's top 50 choices and got the nod when all the legitimate firms turned him down.

If she takes the stand Trump's lawyers will absolutely tear her ass

Take a step back here.



Gucci Mane took a plea and spent 2 years in jail on weed and handgun charges. Gunna pleaded guilty as a cog in Young Thug's RICO case and got 5 years. Trump isn't even getting the good gangsta rap lawyers to return his calls.

Here's what will happen if Georgia legal legend Steve Saddow tries to shred Powell on the stand:

Saddow: Interesting, and how can it be that you are telling the truth, when you said the opposite to the cameras? Obviously you are lying, I declare an objection! Mistrial dismissed!

Prosecution: Here is the evidence that she is telling the truth.

Judge: Defense, please present the mountains of totally exonerating evidence you claim to possess and have been promising for 3 years which will show that she is lying and the election interference you are recorded repeatedly committing somehow didn't happen.

Saddow:

considering the endless amount of astoundingly head-up-ass false starts that have led us to this point to begin with, I can only truly believe it once it's actually happened.

Sure, I can't promise you that someone won't do or say something stupid, or that Georgia's republican governor won't immediately find a way to pardon him. But all the ways he skated on justice before depended on:

Him having a sock-puppet as AG to shut down investigations and publications of reports.
Him having a republican-held senate who needed to block every rightful consequence headed his way or get primaried by the base.
Him having goons to run static in the IRS.
Him having competent corporate shark mobster lawyers.
Him having the personal resources to run out the clock on government agency legal budgets.
Government agencies terrified that his nutjobs would start the Boogaloo and they'd take the blame for lighting the powder keg.

All that stuff is gone, and a number of emboldened inquisitors now have him in court for a number of extremely well-documented, what should be indefensible crimes.

There's this myth cultivated by the propaganda about the swing voter that they're some kind of mentally disabled baby that can't form an internal world model. When the opposite is the case on average: most of them are some kind of socialist, communist, fascist, or libertarian. They have strong ideological grounding (much stronger than the average normie Dem or Rep, at least), and have a strong preference for what democrats and republicans are supposed to be, versus what they actually are.

They're people perpetually disappointed by reality.

I don't know that they're all holding positions that radical, a lot of them are just lapsed Reaganites or Clinton believers who feel alienated by where the parties are at now. One way or another they don't see themselves as naturally aligning or identifying with one of them. What the majority of swing voters seem to have in common is a disdain for politics and politicians, and as a result aren't motivated to follow all that closely between elections. This can help a Trump who comes out swinging against "the establishment" that he's somehow supposedly not at the centre of, but that means it also hurts when he starts looking like what these voters already don't trust; Biden cleaned up with swing voters in 2020.

[BryanM]

I don't know that they're all holding positions that radical, a lot of them are just lapsed Reaganites or Clinton believers who feel alienated by where the parties are at now. One way or another they don't see themselves as naturally aligning or identifying with one of them.

I think we're talking about two completely separate groups of people, here. I'm talking about independents and the marginal people on the edges of the democratic or republican party, all of whom might have a tendency to just say fuck it and stay home on election day. The "swing" is basically the fluctuation against polling data - the error margin and enthusiasm toward a certain side.

The crazy person who might vote either way is a psychopath unmoored with reality, and we try not to talk about those people, lest we garner their attention.

Granted the poor people who love Trump because his aesthetics don't align well with elites are more of the second group, aka, "normies". quash voting for Trump and then UBI, but would never in a million years vote for Sanders until the guy wins and literally puts food into his mouth, always made me feel we're fundamentally fucked as a species.

Which I find amusing, of course. When all you can do is laugh, laugh.

[BulletMagnet]

Prosecution: Here is the evidence that she is telling the truth.

But if the prosecution can just present said evidence by itself even if Powell states the exact opposite, why would they even bother offering her any sort of deal in the first place, if the only possible effect her testimony could have on the case is negative - and again, we're talking before her most recent Alex Jones-esque "Yes, listeners, I'm telling you the real truth/No, your honor, it was solely for entertainment purposes" slime shuffle.

I don't know that they're all holding positions that radical

As I've asked before, however, if you insist you aren't an extremist but not only continue to consider extremist politicians and parties as serious contenders for your vote but consistently wind up electing them to represent you, how are your indignant denials to that end anything more than a smoke screen? If a party's mantra is "we will abandon the democratic process wholesale, and replace it with brute force if necessary, the second it becomes inconvenient for us" and you do not immediately rule it out as a contender for your support, sorry, you don't care about democracy any more than they do, you're just too much of a pussy to admit it.

It's how people like this can make themselves say they're "more of an independent" than anything else; mark my words, there are tens of millions of them, perhaps even more, they will never acknowledge, let alone change course from, what they're doing, and they scare the ever-living shit out of me.

[BryanM]

Keke, "more of an independent" - that's exactly what I'm talking about. Everyone wants to believe they're a special snowflake. A non-comformist like the rest of us. Totally not on a team, they're sigma male/female lone wolves. An island unto themselves. "I'm not like the other girls."

It's super chuuni.

Remember the guys who got super angry here when I parroted the Chapo's line about how we're a monoculture? That no one's special? They go to their job for nine hours, come home, perform basic maintenance required to continue working at their job, watch TV with their free time, then go to sleep. Rinse and repeat. Forever.

They find stuff like this immensely, immensely offensive. Because it's accurate.

Most people are children that require their security blankets to function. Nobody likes gazing into true reality. That miserable abyss.

Israel delegates wearing yellow stars at the the UN

Srsly?

[Sengoku Strider]

But if the prosecution can just present said evidence by itself even if Powell states the exact opposite, why would they even bother offering her any sort of deal in the first place

Because this is a RICO case, and she's just a crazy old lady cog in it. If anything, her Hugo Chavez nonsense damaged it - and her, once Dominion & Smartmatic are done - remarkably. If they put her in jail for her role, okay, she's in jail but the conspiracy continues. If she cops a plea and gives inside details on the stand they can use against Trump and Rudy, now the DA is getting at their actual goal. She's signed her confession already, one which is backed up by establishable facts. Unless she can prove it was signed under extreme duress, all she can do is perjure herself by contradicting it on the stand. And that wouldn't derail things, if her confession was the lynchpin of the whole case it never would have made it to trial in the first place (and if it somehow was, they'd deserve to lose).

As I've asked before, however, if you insist you aren't an extremist but not only continue to consider extremist politicians and parties as serious contenders for your vote but consistently wind up electing them to represent you, how are your indignant denials to that end anything more than a smoke screen? If a party's mantra is "we will abandon the democratic process wholesale, and replace it with brute force if necessary, the second it becomes inconvenient for us" and you do not immediately rule it out as a contender for your support, sorry, you don't care about democracy any more than they do, you're just too much of a pussy to admit it.

It's how people like this can make themselves say they're "more of an independent" than anything else; mark my words, there are tens of millions of them, perhaps even more, they will never acknowledge, let alone change course from, what they're doing, and they scare the ever-living shit out of me.

Look, I am far from the guy who's going to debate the fact that America has a deeply unhealthy amount of belligerent crazy. It's perfectly normal that you're stressed out by all this. It's one of the multiple reasons I stay huddled north of the border in my frigid socialist hellscape, and fret over our right wingers learning all the wrong lessons from their 'Merican cousins. For the time being, our crazies are still less concerned with shooting school children/leftists/centrists/moderate rightists/hard right but not far-right rightists/hispanics/black people/gays/jews/Tom Hanks/muslims/government employees (okay, except for Trudeau) and more focused on exposing Taylor Swift and Katie Perry's role in MK Ultra:

[orange808]

Those American flappers are at it again! It's certain to undo polite Canadian society! Ketchup chips will disappear! People will start breathing through their noses while they talk! Soon, the "oh" sound will be shortened and allowed to become subordinate to other syllables in a word! It will be madness!

Yep. Dead girls showing you some skin.

[BulletMagnet]

Unless she can prove it was signed under extreme duress, all she can do is perjure herself by contradicting it on the stand. And that wouldn't derail things, if her confession was the lynchpin of the whole case it never would have made it to trial in the first place (and if it somehow was, they'd deserve to lose).

One can only hope you're right...even so, I can't help but suppress my gag reflex at the thought that she, or any of the other January 6th turncoats, can play with fire the way she did after making the deal and still get off with the exact same slap on the wrist. I mean, Mark Meadows is being sued by the company that published his book in which he claimed the election was stolen because sales dropped after he copped a deal and changed his story; I suppose it figures that in the USA for-profit corporations have broader authority to punish fraudsters than the government does. Speaking of which...

It's one of the multiple reasons I stay huddled north of the border in my frigid socialist hellscape, and fret over our right wingers learning all the wrong lessons from their 'Merican cousins.

Let me put it this way: the guy in your legislature who honored a Nazi in front of Parliament? If that had happened here not only would he not have had anywhere near enough shame to resign, he'd be up to his eyeballs in donor dollars and blowing kisses with George Santos.

[orange808]

Let me put it this way: the guy in your legislature who honored a Nazi in front of Parliament? If that had happened here not only would he not have had anywhere near enough shame to resign, he'd be up to his eyeballs in donor dollars and blowing kisses with George Santos.

...and simultaneously calling the UN an antisemitic organisation. Most likely in the same breath. There's no floor in America and words have no meaning.

[Specineff]

When she says "If I knew then what I know now" she is referring, of course, to the loyalty Trump demanded not being repaid in either a pardon or any of her legal costs.

As much schadenfreude as that may have made me feel, I couldn't stomach the crocodile tears that seemed she was about to spill at the moment.

The collage of mugshots reminded me of something:

[Vanguard]

I don't understand how every foreign war is the current president or prime minister's full responsibility. No matter what the circumstance, we always find a way to make it so.

There haven't been any meaningful ways to influence leadership or domestic politics in Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, or Israel.

Each one has a unique role in allowing the current events to unfold. (Yes, Ukraine wasted decades mired in corruption and they underestimated the threat to the east.) All the other leaders I mentioned are hell bent on war; can't stop that. Ukraine is the only one that accidentally stumbled in. I can't come up with a way that Joe Biden or The Orange Donald could have stopped any of it.

The USA has been supporting Israel's genocide with money and weapons for a long time now, so they could have made the situation between Israel and Palestine far better than it is now simply by not getting involved.

Same thing with oil prices and the general economy. No one person can bring those forces to heel with a pen--and there are too many powerful people that refuse to cooperate.

Likewise wages, working conditions, and more would improve immensely if the democrats and republicans simply stopped deliberately working against us. American insulin prices, for example, can only be as outrageous as they are because of the tireless efforts of our government representatives to maintain those corporate monopolies.

[Vanguard]

I think what people maybe don't understand is just how weak and shitty Biden is/was as an alternative. Trump sucks dick and is a huge conman of course, but Biden was VP for two terms of Obama administration-led prosecution of foreign wars. Additionally, under Biden, two more foreign war fronts have opened up (Ukraine and Gaza.) Only one of which could be said to be reasonable to support. The other is basically a hotbed for US-backed Warcrimes 2.0.

I don't think people voted for Trump as much as they voted against Hillary. Hillary was a fucking horrible candidate. She had a snotty, entitled attitude and acted like a strange reptilian. Her platform was a smugfaced "you better vote for me (and take whatever scraps I give you) or else this orange potato will get elected, so you have no choice." Turns out the voters did have a choice and they exercised it. Trump told people what they wanted to hear, which was more than what Hillary did. Hillary represented years of Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama administration policies that explicitly fucked over the working middle class and anyone with an antiwar worldview.

So all I'm saying is don't be surprised if people vote Trump again anyway. Mainly because Biden sucks so much long schlong. If the Dems could put forward even one decent candidate, Republicans would never take another election without changing their platforms. Republican contempt for the non-rich hasn't gone anywhere, it's just that Democrats have the same attitude now.

But hey, that's all completely by intention anyway. The two parties are barely any different on the issue of fucking over the working poor and middle classes. Whether or not orange man gets elected won't change who controls all the power in this country. War crimes will continue until morale improves.

Every word is true. They basically don't even pretend to serve our interests anymore but people still act like everything will be fine once orange man bad and a few of his friends go away.

[BryanM]

This month's random youtube comment comes from this cover of the Robocop Gameboy title theme, a song that's far more romantic and poignant than it had to be:

"This song always makes me think things will be different this round. No shicurity spacing anyone with access to cargo or chemistry. No clowns spraying the hallway with spacelube. No hallucinogenics in the food.
But my hopes always get cruched."

10 years have passed since these words were spoken, and they're as relevant today as they ever were.

I miss Obama

Argh, just read a couple dozen variations of this comment in a thread. Like I say, fundamentally fucked as a species.

Hey Bryan, they made a real Robocop sequel

....... humanity is redeemed!

[Sengoku Strider]

Every word is true. They basically don't even pretend to serve our interests anymore but people still act like everything will be fine once orange man bad and a few of his friends go away.

So, I'm sympathetic to criticisms of the Obama regime over the callous use of drone strikes on civilian targets, and its generic neoliberal imperialism papered over with ornamental social policy. But honestly, putting the Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine wars on Joe Biden? That's a stretch so stretchy Plastic Man couldn't make it.

George W. Bush, as you all may recall, got very creative with the truth to make the Afghanistan (2001) & especially Iraq (2003) invasions to happen; neither one was an Obama move. Obama inherited a situation on the brink of two failed states in the world's most combustible and resource-vital region, and his generals were pushing for troop surges to right the ship (which they got, and were unsuccessful with). There was no real political will anywhere - right or left, publicly, internationally, to abandon ship and hand that territory over to ISIS & the Taliban until the last quarter of his time in office. The vice-president campaigning to abandon ship for some reason would not have moved that needle.

Putting blame for Ukraine on the US when there aren't even US troops fighting in it sounds a bit like American main character syndrome. Putin has made no secret about wanting to restore the Russian Empire, and the EU - several members of which are former USSR satellite states - have something of a vested interest in him not absorbing 7 of Europe's top 25 economies plus half of Germany if he really started feeling himself. This is about Berlin and Warsaw, not Washington. If Biden had refused involvement, the EU or another parallel decision-making body would have stepped in. But I'm not sure what ideological or strategic interests are satisfied by the US sitting back and letting Putin traipse through Eastern Europe aside from "Screw the American military industrial complex, generally speaking."

[BIL]

George W. Bush, as you all may recall, got very creative with the truth to make the Afghanistan (2001) & especially Iraq (2003) invasions to happen; neither one was an Obama move.

I concur re: Obama, who if I recall correctly objected to the Iraq disaster even if he had no vote either way, but I have to say Biden is as easy a target here as in his million other careerist adventures.

[orange808]

Need to stay in power? When in doubt, dump blood and treasure down the gutter.

[BryanM]

E5 has been getting a lot more attention lately after being published in GeroScience. Getting mentioned in Yahoo news and other rags needing stories to fill space. It's all very slowbro to this guy, coming years after it was news.

I do hope they actually do get the dog trials started next year. Rats responding to an altered signalome has been proven for hundreds of years after all.

Being a dweeb that actually reads things sometimes often unearths some grimdark truth about how sausages get made. The Sinclair lab's treatment for age-induced glaucoma (currently in human trials for potential future monetization) involves inserting a syringe into an eye. Goya's young rat plasma experiment harvested the blood through decapitation. As a guy who gets a few cute animal videos in his youtube recommendations, rats being very much included in that definition of "cute", that's a bummer.

[Sengoku Strider]

Republicans had their 4th (5th?) straight bad election night in a row, and whoever has their hands on the mouse is desperately trying to redirect the lemmings away from the cliff before next year:

Hannity then accused Democrats of “trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances.”

McEnany urged the House of Representatives to pass legislation for “men to pay women child support from the moment of conception, legislation to make the child tax credit apply to the unborn, legislation for women to have access to the supplemental food and nutrition program up to two years after childbirth...But until we own this issue as a party, we will lose again, and again, and again.”

Over on Newsmax, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.: “We’ve seen this now for the last several years, and so a base election, they — Democrats — outspend, and you put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote...pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”

"Years of free food from the government! Men paying more child support! Actually we love abortion! Marijuana is sexy! Hugo Chavez and Smartmatic voting machines rule!"

*Kicks can*

"Stupid democracy...no way to run a country."



EDIT: Good God, Fox News

“You gotta talk directly to the people; you gotta give and take on some issues," proposed co-host Lawrence Jones during a discussion about polling differences between abortion and other hot-button issues. “It looks like a majority of Americans don’t like the rape and incest thing,” he added.

Conservative Strategists Completely Blindsided

[BryanM]

Why is Trump hugging Asmongold. Can't stop imagining the smell..

This bio of a chucklefuck is a great example of wagie+simp culture. I like how it comes full circle.

[Sima Tuna]

“It looks like a majority of Americans don’t like the rape and incest thing,”

Woah, really? Holy fucking shit, I can't imagine why. Really activates the almonds.

Spoiler

The mother's life being in danger might be another small political issue where Republicans would be wise to give ground.

[Sengoku Strider]

This bio of a chucklefuck is a great example of wagie+simp culture. I like how it comes full circle.

I remember her from the time she fought Batwoman!

[Vanguard]

So, I'm sympathetic to criticisms of the Obama regime over the callous use of drone strikes on civilian targets, and its generic neoliberal imperialism papered over with ornamental social policy. But honestly, putting the Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine wars on Joe Biden? That's a stretch so stretchy Plastic Man couldn't make it.

George W. Bush, as you all may recall, got very creative with the truth to make the Afghanistan (2001) & especially Iraq (2003) invasions to happen; neither one was an Obama move. Obama inherited a situation on the brink of two failed states in the world's most combustible and resource-vital region, and his generals were pushing for troop surges to right the ship (which they got, and were unsuccessful with). There was no real political will anywhere - right or left, publicly, internationally, to abandon ship and hand that territory over to ISIS & the Taliban until the last quarter of his time in office. The vice-president campaigning to abandon ship for some reason would not have moved that needle.

Putting blame for Ukraine on the US when there aren't even US troops fighting in it sounds a bit like American main character syndrome. Putin has made no secret about wanting to restore the Russian Empire, and the EU - several members of which are former USSR satellite states - have something of a vested interest in him not absorbing 7 of Europe's top 25 economies plus half of Germany if he really started feeling himself. This is about Berlin and Warsaw, not Washington. If Biden had refused involvement, the EU or another parallel decision-making body would have stepped in. But I'm not sure what ideological or strategic interests are satisfied by the US sitting back and letting Putin traipse through Eastern Europe aside from "Screw the American military industrial complex, generally speaking."

The main reason why the American public was supportive of the war on terror is because the elites got very creative with the truth. And the Obama administration maintained those same lies, that victory (whatever that meant) would liberate the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, that any middle easterner who defended their home against the western invasion was a terrorist, that somehow all of this would protect western civilians. They deliberately worked to ensure that there would not be enough political will to end the war. Obama could have told the truth to help turn public support around but he never made any attempt to do so. He could have used his authority as the commander in chief to mitigate or even end the war. There's a good chance it would have gotten him assassinated, but he did have the means to do tremendous good for millions of people. Instead he murdered more than one million people. He spent 8 years deliberately bombing civilians. Remember when Obama blew up a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital? Don't mitigate the actions of a monstrous war criminal like Barrack Obama just because he puts a D next to his name. Don't make excuses for the mass murder Obama willingly administrated just because that means you might end up agreeing with some conservative voters about something. And yes, Biden enthusiastically supported all of it even if he didn't have as much ability to influence the matter. I agree that George W Bush is the guiltiest of the lot, though all three (plus Trump and many others) are monsters who conspired to kill 3 million+ people purely for the sake of money and power.

Obviously the greatest blame for the war in Ukraine lies with the Russian ruling class, but NATO and the USA's involvement did nothing but make it worse. They provoked the Russians in the lead-up to the invasion and they discouraged Ukraine from accepting early peace treaties with Russia. I'm sure the treaty would have involved giving Russia some of their territory, but they're going to get it anyway. Western support helped Ukraine last longer but they were never going to win so all they achieved was a lot more death.

"Screw the American military industrial complex, generally speaking."

This way of thinking will never lead you wrong. The American empire is easily 10 times the threat to human life and freedom worldwide that Russia is.

I concur re: Obama, who if I recall correctly objected to the Iraq disaster even if he had no vote either way, but I have to say Biden is as easy a target here as in his million other careerist adventures.

Obama said a lot of things before he got elected president that he went back on after. Once in office he revealed himself as one of the most brutal war criminals alive today, as well as a dedicated ally of the banks, the health insurance companies, and of course the weapons manufacturers.

Srsly?

It's some of the most pathetic shit I have ever seen.

Spoiler

These people are committing genocide as we speak and they have the audacity to play the victim this hard. How dare they invoke the holocaust as they massacre the Palestinian people. The Israelis have even confined millions of them into a small, extremely dense area, a concentration camp if you will, where they are expected to simply await their massacre.

[orange808]

Putin wasn't provoked. Fuck that rubbish.

He's already got NATO next door in Königsberg (which was stolen away from my some of my ancestors, but that's another story). It's called Kaliningrad now.

I wouldn't support marching in and annexing the land or killing the people that live there. It's existence (essentially still under Stalin rule) doesn't make me happy, but I'm not "provoked".

Come to think of it, I've never been anywhere where there isn't some form of resentment of one kind or another. So?

[Lemnear]

It's absurd how people living in democracy takes the side of genocide dictators that hates your own democracy/culture/life style.

1) If you like "your lifestyle", don't blame the occident for preserving it.
2) To defend "your world" you need some blood on your hands.

If you want to live a la "B.R.I.C.S." style, why don't you transfer in India/China/Russia/Brazil? Why do you live here and not in Palestine?


Just a bunch of hypocritical cowards that claim human rights, but then aren't "brave enough" to defend them, and prefer to slowly lose them instead.

[orange808]

You're not arguing honestly. When I say Ukraine doesn't have the right to march into Moscow and get revenge (which they can't do, anyway--because: nukes), I'm not supporting Putin. Revenge doesn't make sense and it doesn't fix anything. Hate leads to the dark side, remember? There's no offramps on that road.

Pray tell, how is middle east diplomacy/influence/policy protecting human rights in other nations (or in the middle east, for that matter)?

It's a loaded question. You get that, right?

I understand the political and strategic motives behind all of this, but it's not really about human rights at all. The middle east is a pawn in a much larger geopolitical match. This isn't about human rights or freedom. You've conveniently chosen one catchy nationalist platform and you're deploying it as blank cheque justification to do anything. I can see right through it.

It's no different than the Iraq war drug shaming. "Drugs support the terrorists." I'm certain some of the money from contraband did reach terrorists, but it's still a fucking silly blanket statement. I don't do drugs and I don't care much for junkies of any variety, but that was eye rolling. I feel the same way when someone conflates a geopolitical sphere of influence with freedom/rights at home.

For fuck sake, be honest--and stop using ridiculous circuitous connections between loosely correlated subjects as justifications. The current situation is an exercise in geopolitics; it's about influence and strategic capabilities. I don't know how the west would move forward in the middle east if things changed, but it wouldn't be the end of freedom for people that have it (and that's not in the middle east). Almost every part of society has some kind of distant correlation to some other task, person, or institution. We can justify anything we want with your slippery slope logic.

[BulletMagnet]

"Stupid democracy...no way to run a country."

This is quite literally the guiding philosophy of the American right, and, as has been pointed out before, has been for a very long time.

By the by, did anyone happen to see Trump's recent interview on Univision? Note one particular highlight about a third to halfway down the transcript: if elected, Trump plans to repurpose the all-purpose Fox News justification - "everyone else is so unfairly biased, we get to be super-biased" - to wreak havoc on his opposition, i.e. "the Justice Department is so totally weaponized, that I get to super-weaponize it".

I would caution those still somehow considering voting Republican at this point in time - once again, if the "reasonable" faction of the "center-right" ever intends to say boo about this I sure as hell haven't heard a peep - to keep in mind that this is what happens when you democratically install a party that doesn't itself believe in democracy (I imagine the citizens of Palestine, or hell, Israel for that matter, could carry on quite a conversation to this end), but then I remember that this is half the goddamn electorate and just want to crawl back into bed and never come out.

Putin wasn't provoked. Fuck that rubbish.

If memory serves Putin actually pulled troops away from Russia's borders with NATO countries in order to bolster the Ukraine invasion, so if he's really that afraid of incursion into his own territory he has a funny way of showing it. Not to mention that whenever that sort of thing is pointed out his apologists seamlessly just switch over to "Ukraine doesn't really even exist, its people totally want to rejoin Russia" (again, they certainly have a very funny way of showing it), or"Ukraine is actually governed by Nazis" or whatever other "Plan B" script they've prepared in order to avoid ever addressing it.

I'm hardly one to unreservedly sing NATO's praises, or Zelenskyy's, for that matter, but the notion that Russia's invasion was precipitated by anything other than Putin wanting to snatch territory and thinking that, as with Crimea, he could get away with it (and sadly as time goes on his gambit seems closer to being proven correct, to the rest of the world's shame) is utterly asinine.

[Sima Tuna]

I do not endorse war crimes for any reason, not even in so-called preservation of "my" culture in a war of ideology against those danged godless savages. Some Islamic terrorist would tear down my culture if he could? Well, that's a matter to be taken up when he has the ability to do so. Until then, I'd prefer we refrain from visiting war crimes upon his lands and emboldening his like and those around him in their crusade.

There's no quick and easy answer to the question of terrorism, but I think we might start by raising the standards of living in those parts of the world. Y'know, see what happens if we stop killing their women, children and first responders. Just for fun. Might take the wind outta the sails of Johnny Jihad.

"Hey Bill, you wanna go blow up the West together tonight."

"Sorry Jeff. I'd love to, but I'm working late for that overtime pay, and then Cynthia and the kids, we're all going out for dinner. Then it's an early night for them because they've got school in the morning, you know? And I've got work."

"Well shit, guess those virgins will keep until the next time."

[Lemnear]

I do not endorse war crimes for any reason, not even in so-called preservation of "my" culture in a war of ideology against those danged godless savages. Some Islamic terrorist would tear down my culture if he could? Well, that's a matter to be taken up when he has the ability to do so. Until then, I'd prefer we refrain from visiting war crimes upon his lands and emboldening his like and those around him in their crusade.

General sustain to the Palestine could easily become integralism OR "preservation of integralism" in western culture. Maybe today there's nothing dangerous, but in 2-3 years it could happen.
This is a way for Putin & Co. to split the occident in two internal faction, Pro-Israle and Pro-Palestine, tearing us apart.

We are close to the collapse of society, all the most valuable resources are under BRICS control and they have no remorse to use violence and lies, and they are actively preparing for a war, with nuclear tests in China and Russia.

The most ruthless always wins, so we should be MORE ruthless and cruel than them.
From humans to demons, to survive.

[Sima Tuna]

The most ruthless always wins, so we should be MORE ruthless and cruel than them.