earthli News 3.7 https://www.earthli.com/news/ 2026-03-16T11:15:37+01:00 https://www.earthli.com/news/icons/webcore_png/app/news_100px.png https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6075 2026-03-15T11:19:47+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. I spoke with a co-worker last week, who casually parroted the line parroted by all European official and most members of Congress: "If you ask me, I'm glad he's dead, at least." Can you imagine? People so easily celebrate the death of a person they've never met, about whom they know nothing -- or about whom what they think they know they never think to question -- and then feel satisfied about their moral superiority. An old man has been killed and they think nothing of how it reflects on them to say that they're glad he's dead. All of the information that they have about the man comes from the people who have been trying to kill him for decades. This doesn't disturb most people at all. They never think about it. They don't think about why they hate people they've never met, in countries they've never been to, who speak languages that they don't understand, and whose history they know nothing about. They have no idea what his name is. They have no idea how to spell it or even say it. They don't even know whether Ayatollah is his name or a title, or whether there has been more than one since the revolution, or even when the revolution was, or what they were revolting against. They have no idea, and they don't care. They just parrot what the media has trained them to parrot, like good little monkeys. What did the Ayatollah do in his life? What was his role in Iranian society? In the Muslim faith, in Islam? What did he preach? What did he do in his life? Over which parts of society in Iran was he in control? Did he order the hangings himself? Are there really hangings? Are there really hundreds? Maybe, maybe not. But you don't know. Because the people who are telling you that you should be really mad about all of the oppression and all of the hangings are the same people who were telling you about Iran's "Revolutionary Guard" -- does such a construct even exist? Or is just a name out of the children's comic book that people in the west use to learn about Iran? -- tearing out the wombs of women that they'd raped in order to cover up the evidence of the rapes. That was a NY Post headline, almost certainly planted by Israel and/or the CIA. That's who you get your news from, people. That's the "information" on which you base your vaunted opinion that it's a good thing that an old man was killed. It is for these people that you have thrown your principles and morality out of the window by celebrating the death of a religious figure. It is from them that you will not hear about the girls' school that was one of the first places that the U.S. and Israel bombed. This truly is the depths of anti-intellectualism. But it has always been thus. Iran is the enemy and always has been, for my entire adult life. They and the Russians have never, ever, ever experienced a reprieve in public opinion. The impression that most western citizens have of these countries and their peoples is uniformly provided by people who hate Iran and Russia. The only way to they could get into the good graces of the west is to allow themselves to be eviscerated and vassalized by Empire. The depictions of these countries and their people are caricatures. Even more deviously, the depictions are the worst of the west itself, projected onto the countries and peoples that it has selected to be enemies. [image] The future will laugh ruefully at the simplistic idiocy, at the base immorality, at the crude manipulation. They will laugh because it worked. They will grudgingly admire how the fools in charge of the west were able to easily predict the minimal amount of effort required to convince people to allow the murder of entire nations full of people. It is a pathetically small amount of effort. People are eager to hate, as long as they see themselves benefitting from it, or they can be convinced that they are benefitting from it. This, too, is depressingly easy, requiring almost no effort at all, once the ball is rolling. They are eager to hate to assuage the fear instilled in them by the same people that urge them to hate. I offer the following two videos as an antidote to this indoctrination. [Prof. Mohammad Marandi humanizes the Ayatollah] [media] "[...] he was a person who lived a very simple life his children -- all of them live a very simple life. Now that he's passed away, I can say that I knew him. I wasn't close to him, but I've met him on numerous occasions. I met family members of his regularly and none of them even have businesses. Not that he's against business, but he prevented anyone from his immediate family from getting involved in business just to make sure that the family, the entire family is super clean. "He was a volunteer in the war before the revolution. He was in jail -- he was imprisoned numerous times and tortured. When the war started, he had no military experience, but he left for the warfront and fought. At the end of the war, when he was president, when the United States entered the war on the side of Saddam and they shot down the airliner and they started attacking Iranian naval installations and Iranian naval ships. "The war fronts were very unstable and he went to the war fronts as the president. I saw him there and it was very dangerous for him because he would be a key target but he went from front to front to strengthen the morale. He was never a person afraid of death and he was always a religious scholar. The Christian martyrs in Iran -- and I've posted a lot of these -- he would on Christmas he would go to the family the houses of Iranian Christian martyrs on Christmas -- for the Armenians it's in January, for other Christians it's in on the 25th of December, as in the United States. "So he has visited numerous families of the martyrs. The narrative on Iran in the United States judge is completely fabricated and it has demonized this country for 47 years. And the reason for this, is Iran's opposition to the Israeli regime and Iran's insistence on being independent. But, if there was no Israel, I would assure you that Iran and the United States today would have would have embassies and we would have normal trade and business. But it's the Israeli regime that insists on hatred and animosity." "They're slaughtering people. They're slaughtering families. They destroy apartment blocks. People are thrown 30 meters away from their homes. Kids, men, women, people on the streets lying, dying, kids under the rubble at the school. When they bombed the school on the first day killing 165 girls, we didn't see anything in the western media and the Persian language media in the west because they have this huge media apparatus in Persian which is hostile towards Iran. There was no concern. They didn't care about these kids. It wasn't just the US government or this racist Zionist regime, but it was the entire media apparatus whether liberal or conservative. No difference. They seem to take pleasure in bombing cities and slaughtering people and they're completely indifferent. "[...] "[Young people in Iran] did not see the crimes that the United States had committed alongside Saddam Hussein against us. And they could not feel, they could not comprehend what sanctions meant and how these sanctions were imposed from abroad to strangle us. But now they see it vividly how the empire so crudely slaughters men, women, and children. And then you watch CNN and and Fox News or you read The Guardian or Breitbart, they're more or less the same. These students, who are very all of them fluent in English, see them as sinister and so their world views are evolving. What Trump has done the Iranian leadership, Iranian thinkers and intellectuals could never have done in a 100 years to change the opinions of these young people." [The U.S. knows nothing about Iran] This is an excellent, clear-eyed report by Alastair Crooke, explaining that most of what people think they know about Iran is wrong. And most of what they think has happened in the war is wrong. Iran is taking damage but the U.S. has lost irreplaceable resources. [media] Top comment: "The war is going so poorly Trump will have to start releasing Epstein files just to distract from it" Closing remarks: "Chris: I just want to close, having worked in Iran for many years, and I believe you did too. The caricature of Iranians including the supreme leader -- who was extremely literate: his favorite book, I believe, was Victor Hugo's Les Miserables -- is part of the problem, in that they have been turned into cartoon characters. And we're talking about a rich, deep, Persian culture and tradition. They're not the people they're painted as. "Alastair: I couldn't agree with you more. [...] you put your finger on it. This is a catastrophe of miscognition. They just don't understand. And what is more, there is absolutely zero empathy. They view and treat the Iranians as Israeli subhumans." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] From "Every Death 'a Separate Case in the File of Retaliation'" by Mat Bivens M.D. "It’s been two weeks since Donald Trump ordered a bolt-from-the-blue missile strike to assassinate Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. "Now, the murdered man’s son has taken over. That’s convenient for those of us struggling to follow this unwanted insanity, because at least the new boss has the same name. "The new Ayatollah Khamenei — full name Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, age 56 — was badly injured in the same sneak attack that blew apart his father. He reportedly suffered wounds to both legs and one arm, and has not been seen in public since. "In addition to recuperating, he’s no doubt mourning: We murdered not only his father, but also his wife, his teenaged son, his mother, his sister, and his 14-month-old niece." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6072 2026-03-15T10:52:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6074 2026-03-15T10:43:24+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

at length. "The rapid, unprecedented escalation of Operation Epic Fury is already the subject of rigorous analysis by analysts, strategists, and operations researchers. Although still only within the initial 48 hours of the onset of hostilities, the current course of operation reveals stark, alarming divergences between the tactical military success celebrated by the Allied coalition and the campaign's long-term geopolitical viability. "The joint US-Israeli campaign and the Iranian response are already illustrating the structural limits of air power, the fragility of global energy markets and the mathematics of modern inter economics exposing critical vulnerabilities in the US Israeli operational design. It is questionable if the United States and Israel are operating within a coherent and achievable theory of victory. "The stated Allied war aims are maximalist. To permanently remove Iran from the ranks of confrontation states by either toppling the regime entirely or failing that completely disarming its massive ballistic missiles and drone arsenal. However, historical precedents and rigorous operational modeling indicate that enduring regime change cannot be achieved solely through aerial bombardment. By executing a deception strike against Ayatollah Khamenei without the introduction of occupying ground forces or a coordinated internal revolutionary vanguard capable of securing the political vacuum, the Allied coalition has failed to constrain the Iranian state. "Instead, massive aerial kinetic expenditure merely cripples and fragments the state apparatus. It expands rather than constrains the space of possibilities for regional chaos. The death of the supreme leader rather than inducing immediate societal capitulation for a Venezuelan-style democratic transition has likely unified hardline Iranian nationalist elements and the surviving IRGC cadres under the desperate survivalist doctrine. "Additionally, Iran's aggregate arsenal estimated prior to the conflict at over 2,500 medium-range ballistic missiles and 8,000 short range systems and tens of thousands of loitering munitions is simply too vast and too deeply entrenched in subterranean bunkers to be entirely disarmed from the air. Recognizing their inability to win a conventional counterforce duel against US stealth bombers, the regime's decentralized. Surviving commanders have naturally defaulted to countervailing strikes against soft, highly lucrative targets. "The US lacks the physical defensive density required to permanently shield the oil monarchies from these dispersed asymmetric attacks. If these monarchies cannot be protected, Iran retains the capacity to wreck financial markets, devastate the global economy, and consequently destroy the political viability of the current US administration for a generation, highlighting that the risk of escalation are multiplying hourly without a viable exit strategy. "Conversely, Western threat assessment historically fixated on Iran's ability to mine or blockade the straight of Hormuz. While disruptive, this is a maritime choke point that can eventually be secured and cleared by the United States Navy overwhelming superiority. However, the true existential existential strategic lever available to Tehran is the systemic physical destruction of the onshore oil and gas processing infrastructure of the Gulf. "Because Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait serve as indispensable logistical co-belligerents hosting the air bases and the naval headquarters from which American power projects, their critical energy nodes are rendered legitimate high priority military targets under the laws of armed conflict.These facilities, specifically the export terminals, sit comfortably within the range of Iranian short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and inexpensive Shaheed drone swarms. "If the IRGC facing existential annihilation initiates a scorched earth campaign against these specific nodes, the physical backbone of the global energy system will be severed. The strategic calculus here is to inflict such severe pain on global markets that the international community forces the US to hold its military operations. The financial markets have already begun pricing in this instability. Brent crude closed at $72.87 and on Friday before the strikes and analysts at Barclays and Goldman Sachs project that if the infrastructure targeting scenario materializes Brent crude will rapidly blow past $100 per barrel representing a catastrophic 37% jump. "Under such immense domestic economic pressure, the United States executive branch might implement draconian export controls to stabilize domestic American fuel prices. This political maneuver would leave the European Union and the United Kingdom completely devoid of both Russian natural gas and Gulf energy supplies, effectively fracturing the Western geopolitical alliance and plunging Europe into an unprecedented energy vacuum. "Likewise, the US and Israel are currently prosecuting a highly asymmetric war of attrition that Western military-industrial bases are poorly positioned to sustain economically. Operation Epic Fury relies almost exclusively on advanced ballistic missile defense systems to protect critical infrastructure. This necessitates that expenditure of multi-million dollar interceptors such as the terminal high altitude area defense or THAAD and the standard missile 3 to defeat legacy Iranian ballistic missiles and mass-produced drones warms that cost a fraction of the defensive interceptor. "This inverted cost exchange ratio strongly favors Iran's saturation strategy. Iranian operational resilience potentially backfilled covertly by material support from Russia or China may likely simply outlast Western interceptor stockpiles. Iran's vast missile inventory serves effectively as an ablative sponge designed specifically to absorb and exhaust western high tier interceptors. Once these finite interceptor stockpiles fall below critical operational thresholds, Allied bases, aircraft carriers, and the vital Gulf energy infrastructure will be left exposed to undefended cascading saturation strikes, rendering the Allied position militarily untenable." [Pepe Escobar and Larry Johnson] Pepe Escobar is on fire and full of information, more about the political situation than about the military progress, or lack thereof. Larry Johnson also discussed the politics, but focused a bit more on the military situation, which is that "the U.S. has effectively been driven out of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf." [media] Larry had very choice words for Pete Hegseth. The story that four U.S. F15s were shot down by the Kuwaitis in a friendly-fire incident is completely non-credible. The Kuwaitis haven't been able to shoot down Iranian drones (which are much slower) but they can target and shoot down fighter jets that their targeting systems are programmed not to shoot down? He pointed out that, with oil prices set to shoot up, Russia is going to benefit economically as well. Iran has refused all calls for peace or a ceasefire from the U.S. The wheels are in motion and they are going to let the chips fall where they may. They see that they have the wind behind them. Neither the U.S. nor Israel has dared to fly over Iran because their air defenses are intact -- because, as Nima pointed out, they're shooting up police stations and schools rather than tactical infrastructure. The U.S. aircraft carriers have pulled back to Cyprus, which is over 1000 miles away, which means two refueling ops for any jets making sorties to Iran. Iran can and has hit Cyprus, though. The video is almost 2 hours long but I found it extremely informative. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6038 2026-02-14T22:28:11+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

started out with the following rather naive and incredible statement, "How would the United States handle the rise of the rest? The debate was usually about what the US would do to keep things steady – to maintain equilibrium. No one saw" ... ]]>

started out with the following rather naive and incredible statement, "How would the United States handle the rise of the rest? The debate was usually about what the US would do to keep things steady – to maintain equilibrium. No one saw the US as the disruptor. But as it turns out, it’s the chief enforcer who is changing the script." It is flabbergasting to read something like this from an author I'd thought to be somewhat better-informed. Obeisance to the myth that the empire tells about itself is a mind virus. As usual, those who were victims of the mind virus but upon whom the realization is now dawning -- slowly and after incredible repetition of the obvious -- that the U.S. might not always be the good guy, they have to characterize their previous unquestioning fealty to the empire's myth as a mass hypnosis that was shared by all. Most importantly, the willful and deliberate ignorance of this hypnosis was clearly not a personal, moral failing. There were a bunch of us who knew exactly how the U.S. would react to multipolarity. It was not an ineffable mystery. We'd watched 75 years of cold war. We'd watched the empire expand. We didn't ignore it all because it would have been much more convenient to do so, because e.g., our investments were expanding, because the rising tide of the empire happened to be lifting our boats. We didn't look away from the atrocities committed that they myth claimed were done in all of our names because we were under the umbrella. No, some of us "walked away from Omelas" the minute we got wind of what was going on. [Omelas - Not simple folk, just happy!] ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6021 2026-02-08T21:36:21+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6031 2026-02-08T16:36:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is a fifteen-minute video of rotoscoped animations of prisoners and prisons, with a voiceover by multiple prisoners. They explain their lives inside. The first explains that he was sentenced to 34 years in prison at 16 years old. He lived in Angola prison in Louisiana. The... ]]>

is a fifteen-minute video of rotoscoped animations of prisoners and prisons, with a voiceover by multiple prisoners. They explain their lives inside. The first explains that he was sentenced to 34 years in prison at 16 years old. He lived in Angola prison in Louisiana. The film is also available on YouTube, as linked below. [media] Another "spent 22 years and 36 days total in solitary confinement.". Later, he said, "When they came to take me out of the cell... My vocal cords had gotten so weak from so long not talking to anybody I was semi-catatonic. I didn't have a mirror in that cell. I went in there in my thirties and I didn't come out until I was 58. And when I saw myself, I cried. I had gotten old. I fought all those years to stay alive. For what? I would kill someone before I would put them in a cell like that. That would be so much more humane. "With my words, if I'm able to enable you to feel something that I feel, then maybe you’ll know there's real truth to what I say. This punishment does destroy: Minds, hearts and souls. It robs you of hope, which is the essential need to carry on with life." I am at a loss for words. The U.N. considers it a human-rights violation to keep anyone in solitary confinement for longer than two weeks. This duration is based on the scientific evidence of myriad sociological and psychological studies. Anything more causes irreparable harm. This is what the U.S. of A. does to its own citizens. Imagine how little it cares for the lives of those who aren't even U.S.-Americans. Oh, wait. They don't really care about U.S.-American lives either. This is your tax dollars at work, running the world's longest, most inhumane experiment, while simultaneously masquerading as beacon of hope and democracy, an ideal of the moral high ground. At the end of the film it writes, "Among Western industrialized nations, the United States is the only country to make extensive use of long-term solitary confinement. "A recent report states there are more than 122,000 men, women and children being held in some form of solitary confinement in U.S prisons on any given day." [Solitary confinement cell] ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5964 2026-01-20T22:06:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "The leaked version of the “60 Minutes” segment is devastating. The courage of the men who testified is remarkable, as is the compassion of the students and human rights advocates who helped them, and the" ... ]]>

writes, "The leaked version of the “60 Minutes” segment is devastating. The courage of the men who testified is remarkable, as is the compassion of the students and human rights advocates who helped them, and the determination of Alfonsi and her team of journalists to bring this information to the public. The segment exposes the blatant lying and inhuman callousness of the Trump administration, particularly Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem [...]" I can confirm that these men were courageous to speak out. They speak Spanish. I watched the video at the post "🚨Holy shit. Someone leaked the entire 60 Minutes episode CBS didn’t want you to see." by @CallToActivism . It's not like we're not going to see it, people. There is no stopping it. The footage of CECOT is horrifying, They're not ashamed of it. Bukele is happy to let influencers show the world how prisoners are stuffed into cells, stacked on beds four high, like chickens on a roost. They show prisoners lined up in six rows, each seemingly nude, each with his head shaved, each with his hands tied behind his back, each with his forehead pressed into the spine of the person in front of him. There is footage of Katherine Leavitt, who is an evil witch of a fu@&ing demon, denouncing everyone as a litany of horrific things, none of which they've even been accused of. She's a demon, I cannot stress this enough. She is a true believer. Either that, or she's a brilliant actress, like the Daniel Day Lewis of her generation. Either way, she's intrinsic in helping her bosses do a lot of damage. How many people think to themselves, how could this pretty, blonde, Christian lady be wrong? She wouldn't lie to us; she loves Jesus! Fock, dood, fix your scam radar before it's too late. [image]Props to "Sharyn Alfonsi" for this excellent report, described as follows by Patrick Martin. "The domination of giant corporations and the billionaire families who control them is the fundamental source of the attacks on democratic rights faced by the entire working class. As the WSWS has emphasized, the return to power of Trump and the ongoing effort to establish a fascist dictatorship in America means that the political forms of rule are being brought into line with the underlying social reality. It is impossible to maintain even the pretense of democracy in a society riven by such massive economic and social inequality. "The censorship of “60 Minutes” underscores the critical importance of the working class gaining access to the information needed to develop a clear understanding of the capitalist crisis and the dangers that it poses." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5965 2026-01-20T21:56:26+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, in which I reported on an interview with Nathalie Yamb, who is another Swiss citizen upon whom the fiery eye of the eye has settled. The interview is in German. [media] "Das heißt, das ist genau das Gegenteil von was die Leute wie Rousseau, Voltaire und so weiter im 17. Jahrhundert gekämpft haben. Wir sind zurück -- 300 Jahre zurück -- des Habeas Corpus, dass man das Recht hat zu einer Verteidigung existiert an sich nicht. "Auch wenn ich gegen diesen Sanktionen kämpfe, das wird nicht ein juristische Prozess sein, das wird an sich ein politischer Prozess sein. Das heißt, wir sind sehr weit weg von der Idee, die wir seit 1945 wollten. Das heißt die Herrschung der Demokratie, der Recht von jeder sich auszudrücken, das ist genau, was wir in 1945 verlassen haben. "Und sie wissen als Deutsche besser als ich, was das heißt. Und viele Leute auch, die Sowjetunion gekannt haben, kennen das auch. Und einige Leute in Deutschland haben sogar gesagt, dass was ich erlebe im Moment sei noch schlimmer als was in der DDR passierte in Bezug auf ähnliche Fälle. Das heißt, dass wir haben uns nicht verbessert, wir haben uns verschlimmert sozusagen., wir haben unsere Werte verloren. "Wissen Sie, Demokratie, es gibt nicht zwei Demokratien. Es gibt nicht die gute, die schlechte Demokratie, es gibt nur Demokratie. "Wenn ich mit meinem Schweizerischen Auge, wenn ich die Frankreich anschaue, die französische Demokratie hat nicht viel zu tun mit der Schweizer Demokratie, an sich hat nichts zu tun damit, wenn man da gut beobachtet. Die können einfach der Präsident wählen. Das ist ja das ist ein einzige. Der Rest ist eine Monarchie. "So, das heißt, aber die Begriffe, der Begriff der Demokratie ist immer das gleiche, dass man der Recht sich auszudrücken, der Recht die diese freie Meinung zu haben und so weiter. Es gibt nochmals wieder, es gibt keine gute oder böse Demokratie. Es gibt die Demokratie. Die Werte müssen immer die gleiche sein, die Freiheit. Und wenn jemand eine andere Meinung hat, umso besser, dann kann man streiten. Das heißt, intellektuell streiten natürlich, man kann Ideen austauschen." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5962 2026-01-20T21:47:10+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5998 2026-01-18T13:59:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is yet another well-written lament in a long list of laments about the utter lack of resistance to the grinding propaganda machine buoying the Trump administration. I don't really... ]]>

is yet another well-written lament in a long list of laments about the utter lack of resistance to the grinding propaganda machine buoying the Trump administration. I don't really care about Tim Walz. He's an empty suit. For God's sake, he was nominated as a vice-presidential candidate to the even emptier suite of Kamala Harris. That he's bowing out of a re-election campaign doesn't really interest me. That said, he's getting railroaded for something that doesn't exist. Dean writes a good article debunking this stuff but, honestly? It's a waste of time. Even the people making the accusations don't believe them. The people online who've managed to pressure Walz into resigning don't believe in them. They don't even believe that Walz stands for the things that he says he stands for, or that they say he stands for. The only thing that matters to them is that Walz seems to be in opposition to Trump and his administration, so Trump and his administration -- and their army of online volunteers, who make a fortune grifting the gullible -- are making an example of him. It's quite certain that no-one in the Trump administration or who is adjacent to the Trump administration cares about fraud, and certainly not on principle. Dean writes, "[image]Sometimes even high levels of fraud are apparently tolerated. As I noted previously, the Inspector General of the Small Business Administration (SBA) identified $200 billion of potentially fraudulent payments in the Paycheck Protection Program, an emergency pandemic started in Trump’s first term. This would have been more than 15 percent of the money that went out the door. "That massive level and percentage of fraud proved not to be career ending for Donald Trump. In fact, it was not even career ending for Linda McMahon, the SBA administrator responsible for overseeing the program. Trump promoted her to Education Secretary in his current term." Dean points out that Linda McMahon -- someone whose entire work experience before the Trump administrations was working for the WWE -- didn't suffer any loss of reputation for having been in charge of an agency that lost far more money to fraud. To reiterate: that this doesn't seem to matter isn't mysterious. They like Linda because she does thinks that they like and they don't like Tim because he doesn't. That they used supposed fraud as a lever to torpedo Tim's career is incidental. People don't care about the large-scale fraud from which Trump and his ilk benefitted because they haven't been ordered to do so by their media silo. The media silo doesn't exist in the U.S. that cares a lick about large-scale, white-collar crime. All media tell their minions to care about penny-ante bullshit so that the hoi polloi continue to fight amongst themselves and not against their betters in the self-selected elite. On this, all parties agree. They know on which side their bread is buttered. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6011 2026-01-17T13:09:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6010 2026-01-17T13:00:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes [1], "They are tightening the noose and there is very little room left for any kind of meaningful protest. Minnesotans over the weekend organized massive demonstrations, with thousands of people marching through the south side of Minneapolis several" ... ]]>

writes [1], "They are tightening the noose and there is very little room left for any kind of meaningful protest. Minnesotans over the weekend organized massive demonstrations, with thousands of people marching through the south side of Minneapolis several days in a row. But there was no law enforcement there, nor were there any ICE officers (at least in uniform). No one to whom they could direct their anger at. As for local leaders, Rep. Ilhan Omar spoke to the crowd on Saturday, but even she looked shaken. A few hours before the march, ICE agents blocked Omar from inspecting the federal building and even threatened her with pepper spray. Right after Good was killed last week, Noem created a policy that blocks congressional visits without a seven-day notice." So much national policy is created by unelected madmen and madwomen, overriding state and local law. How can states get away from this, from the tightening noose of the federal regime? The U.S. Constitution foresaw one drastic solution: The threat of secession. The first U.S. Civil War showed that this was not a viable option, though. "[...] it won’t be long until a much darker, far more unpredictable form of opposition replaces that." Yes, the absolute clowns currently running things are so arrogant and stupid enough to think that, if they stifle the protest of desperate people, that those people will submit to the lash. They will not. If you give people no other outlet than violence, then they will resort to violence. It is completely predictable and understandable. The federal shock troops are terrorizing everyone. They sow fear, they will reap the whirlwind. We'll have to figure out who the real allies are. Unfortunately, those who spent decades mentally and physically preparing for government overreach, government militarization of the homeland, internment camps, and so on are now MIA. They don't mind any of those things happening when it happens to someone else. They cheer it on when it's against an enemy they've been trained to hate, no matter that it's against their own interests. So, where are those boasting militias of yore when you need them? Oh. They're posting "liberal ownage" videos on Twitter and joining ICE. "The lesson here is clear: We’re on our own now. They have guns and drones and they can hack our phones and smear our names online and arrest us without a warrant and charge us with terrorism. And all we have are whistles and protests and TikTok and group chats and maybe some journalism. Our local leaders are admitting they can’t help us. So we’re left with nothing but hope that all of that will be enough. But it’s impossible to shake the profoundly unsettling feeling that we have clearly stepped across the threshold into a very different political reality. And it’s not a matter of if it arrives in your town, but when." Disagree. We cannot lose hope. They want us to feel isolated. But we see that, when the community shows up, ICE melts away. [2] They have power against numbers; they can do damage. But they can't win. People need to get to levels of desperation and community that they are willing to suffer inconvenience for their neighbor, to lose something, maybe even their lives. This is not the preferred situation, but if people don't get there? It's only going to get worse. The local, state, and federal governments are the enemy; they always have been. It's time for real anarchy to bubble up. It's time to self-organize. It's time to stop paying your subscriptions, stop paying your taxes. Starve the beast. Forget the midterms. They are, as always, a distraction. They are 10.5 months away. It's only the middle of January and look at what's going on. You won't be able to go outside to vote by November, bro. Face reality. [Anarchy symbol] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I had more notes from that article that I didn't include in the more focused summary. "With tensions inflamed in the city — and following pressure from Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and FBI Director Kash Patel, who all shared Shirley’s video — ICE ramped up their presence. There are more agents in Minnesota than there are local police in both of the state’s major cities. An escalation that directly led to the murder of Good last Wednesday. And now, in response to that, ICE has effectively taken control of the city. Rumors swirl about Trump sending in the National Guard or declaring martial law next. ""ICE agents are, simply put, fucking clowns. According to The Atlantic, they receive 47 days of training — in honor of Trump, the 47th president, naturally. Many of them, also, can barely read or write, apparently. The ones I spent the weekend following around didn’t even have proper uniforms, with some wearing sneakers. In Minnesota. In January. These dipshits are also wearing camo in the snow. They clearly do not have any training when it comes to their own weapons either. Multiple times over the last few days, I watched officers fire pepper spray balls at the feet of protestors barely a few inches away from them. These weapons are basically paintball guns full of concentrated pepper spray. So when they hit a target, they explode into the air. Which meant ICE agents regularly ended up poisoning themselves with their own weapons. I also watched two agents ask each other if a canister they were about to fire at the crowd was tear gas or a stun grenade. (It ended up being a stun grenade that then ignited the tear gas they had already shot at us, which started a fire in the street that a protestor had to help them put out.)""According to The Washington Post, the agency is under pressure from The White House to create as much content as possible. Which is why ICE agents have a phone in one hand and a gun in the other. But it goes beyond that. "During a showdown with protestors at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, I watched as one ICE officer fist-bumped a pro-Trump content creator once he learned he was there to support them. I also watched as a gang of groyper livestreamers, led by January 6th insurrectionist Jake Lang, rile up a crowd of protestors, creating the perfect pretext for ICE agents to fire pepper spray balls and tear gas at the crowd. To say nothing of the other right-wing media networks like OAN, NewsNation, and The Daily Wire, that sent video crews to the city, all of them running their own version of Libs Of TikTok. Singling out protestors and ridiculing them on social media. Olivia Reingold, one of Weiss’ Substack squad, spent the weekend on a state-sanctioned ride-along with ICE agents, posting selfies to her Instagram Stories.""It’s hard to overstate how efficient Trump’s shock tactics are and how existentially terrifying they are to oppose. Thanks to National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), any form of anti-ICE protest can be labeled as terrorism, including filming them. And Attorney General Pam Bondi has added additional protections for ICE, in a memorandum titled, “Ending Political Violence Against ICE.” You can’t dox agents and you’ll get hit with federal charges if you post anything that’s deemed to be threatening them.""This morning, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that DHS plans to launch its own drone program next." [1] Pun detected but not intended and it's awesome, so I'm leaving it. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6009 2026-01-17T12:41:00+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "In the 13th paragraph, we get the mayor of Minneapolis: “Frey said of the self-defense explanation, ‘Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody that is bullshit.’” "Did the NPR reporters see the video themselves? Can they tell us whether or not this is bullshit? How exactly do they define the job of reporting?" "That piece explained that you can’t really know what you saw, or what it means, because “in a polarized country, high-ranking officials were offering definitive, and starkly contrasting, accounts long before the facts could be established.” "The Times sees its role as telling you that whether or not you believe Renee Good deserved to be murdered depends on whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican." [HasanAbi does the work] Here's a short video with examples of hateful, hateful people but also those who are deeply thankful to HasanAbi for having shown them the error of their ways. [media] The title says it all: this is, deep down, how people think. It won't happen to me. [Historical analogues] Martin Niemöller covered all of this already, back in 1946 with his poem "First They Came" that starts out, "First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist "[...]" Look it up if you don't believe me (or look at the German version below), but the stanza about the Jews is last in the list. The poem talks about the Germans having come for the communists, socialists, and trade unionists first. Unsurprisingly, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum skips the first stanza because fuck communists, that's why. I would not be surprised to hear that they've also elided the second and third stanzas by now, leaving just two stanzas, with the oppression of the Jews leading off a much, much shorter poem. There is no German version of the Wikipedia page but the English-language version includes the whole poem in German. "Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. "Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. "Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. "Als sie die Juden einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. "Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte." [The umbrella is shrinking] I only recently realized that a metaphor that I'd been using for what seems to be happening to people who have been historically untouched by the vagaries and violence of empire -- that "the umbrella is shrinking" -- is just a more visual metaphor of what the poem was saying. I think of what's been happening over the last ten years, but perhaps more in the last year, is that the "umbrella is shrinking" and "more people are getting wet" who hadn't been out in the rain before. Some of them are just noticing that they're getting drops on their sleeves. But that's never happened before. The billionaires and other elites are shrinking the umbrella. "You're not in the club anymore" . [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I recently saw the ridiculously titled post "How Russia’s Children Got So Violent" by Jason Kottke , which wrote, "How Russia’s Children Got So Violent. “There is no positive ideology for children in a country fighting a murderous war.” Ultranationalist & xenophobic violence is encouraged by Putin’s regime." The original link is to an article in the Atlantic, which I am absolutely not going to read, because there is no way that I would be able to get through it without having an aneurysm caused by the author's inability to detect any irony in reporting on something like violence engendered in other countries by their wars from the heart of the most violent empire the world has ever seen, which has been at war as long as I can remember. Kottke doesn't seem to have noticed the irony either, which is completely unsurprising. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6008 2026-01-17T09:18:44+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5996 2026-01-16T18:27:03+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5997 2026-01-13T22:51:52+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which writes, "Ignoring video evidence, the Trump administration moved immediately to brand the killing as justified. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X that “one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle” and claimed the shooting was a defensive act that “saved” officers’ lives. Stephen Miller characterized the woman’s actions as “domestic terrorism,” as did DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference. "Trump personally intervened to justify the killing, issuing a statement that repeats and escalates the false federal narrative and openly endorses the actions of the shooter. "“I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” Trump wrote. He claimed that “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” He asserted that the agent “seems to have shot her in self defense.”" None of what they said happened. There are multiple videos. The terrorists were wearing uniforms and point-blank executed a woman they found annoying, while she was in her car in an American suburb. There is no curb on these people. The police are completely absent. The police are not there to protect you. You are being ruled by maniacs and demons. They will murder you if they think you might have looked at them funny. "Trump went further, attempting to criminalize all opposition to federal immigration raids, claiming that “the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis.” He concluded by demanding that the population “stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers.” "Trump’s statement is a direct political signal to federal agents, acting as Trump’s personal paramilitary force, that lethal violence will be defended and rewarded by the White House." The only thing most historically privileged people are going to do is to see how long their privilege protects them. But it doesn't and it won't. You're now just like everyone else. You're now feeling what it's been like for all of those other people you couldn't have cared less about over the years. Now, you partially understand. Maybe. Maybe a little bit. There is no protection against these maniacs. They'll use broken AI software to build a profile of you and then send shock troops to eliminate you because you're a domestic terrorist. What did you do? It doesn't matter. You are what they say you are. That's what a world without laws, habeas corpus, burden of proof, evidence, or trials looks like. The apparatus was never there to protect you, much less so now. "[...] a masked federal agent has shot an unarmed woman in broad daylight, been allowed to leave the scene, and remains unidentified and uncharged." He and thousands like him are out there. They've got theirs masks on. Safeties are off. Enjoy the year. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=6005 2026-01-11T23:09:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5995 2026-01-11T11:19:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, is extraordinarily well-informed and extremely capable of imparting his knowledge. Lee Camp does a very good job of feeding him questions and topics. [media] I learned the following about the mission to kidnap... ]]>

, is extraordinarily well-informed and extremely capable of imparting his knowledge. Lee Camp does a very good job of feeding him questions and topics. [media] I learned the following about the mission to kidnap Maduro, * The U.S. had zero casualties. Kiriakou says that that wouldn't have been possible without complicity on the part of at least some Venezuelans, who were almost certainly on the CIA payroll. [1] * He thinks that the vice president was probably in on it, simply because of how conciliatory she is after the kidnapping versus how fire-breathing she was before. [2] * The U.S. went out of its way to bomb Chavez's tomb, which had been turned into a political-information and tourist destination. WTF. * The U.S. will not be "occupying" Venezuela. The country is bigger than Austria, Germany, and France combined, and it's mostly jungle. * Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves -- centuries worth -- but it's also the dirtiest oil in the world. * The U.S. administration seems to have gotten away with it, as the only other possible poles of the multipolar world have either not reacted -- China -- or have just expressed dissatisfaction -- Russia. * Congress hasn't said or done anything. * The U.S. populace doesn't care about war crimes. * Neither does anyone in Europe. * Macron cheered it on! * Merz needs more time to think about it. * The Labour Secretary in Great Britain only chastised that this kind of thing might "embolden other countries." She is so deliciously unaware of her own bias. But this is typical for Europeans: The problem is never the U.S. The problem is always whoever the U.S. says it is. So, this lady is dutifully afraid that the U.S.'s master stroke of piracy and criminality might be emulated by the true criminals and enemies of the world: Um....checks with the U.S....ah, yes, of course: China, Russia, Iran, Cuba ... who else? Oh, you'll get back to me? Ok. I'll wait here. * Kiriakou: "Just do whatever you want. Nobody's gonna stop you." * Jeffrey Sachs: "The issue before the council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela. The issue is whether any member state by force, coercion, or economic strangulation has the right to determine Venezuela's political future or to exercise control over its affairs. This question goes directly to article 2, section 4 of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." Finally, here's a long, worthwhile citation about refining capacity and how the U.S. has been mostly successful in controlling Venezuela's ability to capitalize on its oil reserves by manipulating refining capacity. "[image]Kiriakou: Until 2017, where were the only refineries on Earth that could clean Venezuelan oil? They were in Houston, Texas. And in 2017, the first Trump administration effectively shut down the Venezuelan oil industry. And we mothballed those refineries. "But the world didn't just screech to a halt. China and India immediately built their own refineries to handle Venezuela's dirty oil. But the Chinese did it right. The Chinese built a refinery in China, but they also built one in the Caribbean. The Indians built one in India and they've been shipping Venezuelan oil to India to refine it there. The Chinese were ready to do it right there in the Caribbean. The refinery is built, but it hasn't yet been opened. "Well, now they don't need a refinery because whatever oil Venezuela lifts is going to come to the United States. We don't have to occupy the oil fields in order to control Venezuela's oil or to control the economy. We just have to insist with a very stern look and a pointing finger that oil comes to the United States. "So, why did I bring up Iran in this? First of all, this was a big "fuck you" to the Chinese. But secondly, virtually the only leverage that Iran has in international affairs today is the ability to close off the straight of Hormuz. Right? Something like 60% of the world's oil flows out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. It's [...] four miles across. So it's easy to block the straight of Hormuz. "So in the event of you know something terrible happening, if the Iranians needed to do something to pressure Western economies -- and especially the US economy -- closing the straight of Hormuz presumably with Russian and/or Chinese consent would be the only thing that they have to do. Well, now we don't need Iranian oil. We have all the Venezuelan oil we could use for the next 500 years. So, it further weakens Iran." I find this information useful and fascinating but I'm not quite convinced about the reasoning. I think he might be putting more thought into it than the Trump administration has. Isn't the U.S. a net exporter of oil? Or is that fossil fuels, including natural gas? And if Venezuelan crude is so heavy, then what's the point of getting that as well as the already heavy crude extracted from shale through fracking? And wouldn't bringing more oil on the market depress prices, leading to a shale-fracking being economically unviable? Now maybe I'm putting more thought into this than the Trump administration has. 🙃 At any rate, I still have a bunch of open questions, so I take this information with a pinch of salt. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] While this is almost certainly true, I also now think that the Venezuelans were unable to defend themselves not because they have no defenses, or that they weren't ready, or that they'd been paid off, but because of the overwhelming violence that the U.S. can bring. That Chinook helicopter can hover there for two hours, like a fat piñata, because everyone is terrified to shoot at it. If you shoot it down, 400 more will appear on the horizon half a day later. B2 bombers will start dropping kilotons of ordnance on you within hours. So, what do you do? You don't shoot, is what you do. [1] I've also changed my mind on this a bit as well, because the story of how supposedly conciliatory she is doesn't really gel with her revolutionary, communist past. She's not offering any more than Maduro already had before her. And, as noted in the footnote above: what is she supposed to do? The U.S. is openly threatening more violence. Venezuela, unlike Ukraine, doesn't have a gigantic back to provide years of weapons and support, so they're going to have to work within the short-term situation, which is they are being mugged. During a mugging, the suggestion of even martial-arts masters is to hand over your wallet because you'd rather be poor than dead. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5994 2026-01-11T11:01:02+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5993 2026-01-11T10:53:17+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is one of the longest ones I've ever seen, and is filled with wishy-washy language that lets the reader believe that there is cold, hard proof of election fraud without actually providing it. This suggests to me that some people in powerful organizations were busy laying the groundwork for being able to say that Maduro wasn't the legitimate president of the country, so that the immunity enjoyed by the president of a country under international law doesn't apply. Think about it: why is there a 35-page article about an election in Venezuela in English? I would understand if it were in Spanish, but someone took the trouble to make sure it was available in English. The CIA lässt grüssen. José also points out that the Venezuelan opposition has always bitched about every election result that they didn't win. There's nothing new there. The main discussion starts at about 20:00. Some notes: * This is an invasion and a coup. The timing is so that Trump could present the fait accompli to the Congress and the nation on the 4th of January. Venezuela had an important meeting on the 5th of January, as well. * Prashad talks about the crews of the boats that were seized. "We live in a civilization of detritus. Nobody cares about any of these people." * José gives a PSA that there is no such thing as sanctioned oil. You can't sanction a commodity. * Prashad recommends to read the indictment against Maduro because it's ludicrous, a joke of an evidence-free document written by teenagers. All of the so-called evidence presented against Venezuela and its democratically elected government is equally shaky. They have been trying to do this for over 20 years. Bush tried to coup Chavez in 20o3, They've been gunning at Venezuela and its oil for that long. The sanctions have also been hitting Venezuela that long. What are we even talking about? "Almost certainly, nothing you "know" about Venezuela is true." It's all propaganda and disinformation planted to lead up to this coup. But they don't even need to work that hard. People are going to be on board with this war because they have been ordered to be on board for this war, just like they're always on board for every damned war of plunder. The cartoon "They’re Not Even Trying to Lie Well Anymore" by Ted Rall sums it up. [image] "He: There is a country. She: This country has a president. He: You don't know anything about this country. She: You don't even know where it is. He: They're a threat. She: He's evil. He: We need war! Else we'll die! She: These scripts aren't even trying any more. Producer: Americans are war sluts! No need for lube!" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5992 2026-01-11T10:47:40+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes about the dynamic at play here. How much has actually changed from before? How different is the Trump administration? In which ways? "If you were wondering why the US establishment was so much more chill about Trump becoming president this term than they were the first time around, you’re watching the reason now. The powers that be were assured that he’d carry out longstanding imperial agendas like kidnapping Maduro, bombing Iran and overseeing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and they trusted him to carry out those plans." Very good people like Vijay Prashad concur, saying that this isn't a "mask-off" moment because the mask has always been off. But I think that he's making the same mistake that other clever people make: he's assuming that since he knew that the mask was off a long time ago, that other people also know that. With "mask off," I mean that most U.S.-Americans will no longer be able to deny that they are toppling other countries' governments for their own gain. The administration isn't even claiming to have done it for Democracy. They did it to steal resources that they don't need but that they want to control, in order to strangle other countries (Cuba, China). More people are in on it now; that's what "mask off" means. Look at this post. [image] That was published under the imprimatur of the Department of State of the United States. How does it differ in any way from the T-Shirt that Homer wore in "Blame it on Lisa" in S13E15 of the Simpsons, broadcast in 2002? [1] [image] There's no way to pretend that the U.S. doesn't think of itself as an empire now. You have to either disavow this administration or go all-in that you're for empire and subjugation of other nations. You have to declare that you're an immoral criminal with no principles. If you don't stop pretending, then you end up basically agreeing with Lindsey Graham. You have to think he's a smart, well-informed, deeply moral, and loving Christian. That's what you have to do because that's what you stand for. You have to put your bloody signature on idiocy like the stuff below. "“Cuba is ready to fall,” Trump told the press on Sunday next to a delighted Lindsey Graham. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re going to hold out. But Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from their Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They’re not getting any of it. And Cuba is literally ready to fall.”" Can we please stop talking about Cuba collapsing on its own? It’s not collapsing on its own. It’s being strangled to death. This is the United States doing to Cuba what Israel is doing to Gaza. The United States has convinced the world that laying siege to a nation by starving it to death is not an act of war. So the United States convinces the world to repeat its idiocies, even people who are actively against the policies. They are accepting the framing. We have to work incredibly hard to recognize the framing and impose our own. People like Lindsey Graham help because, unlike Trump, who's willing to promulgate the lie that Cuba is going to "fall on its own," Graham can't help himself because he's a demon. He positively loves thinking about all of the stupid Cuban communists who are going to die for their dream, making way for his beautiful U.S. corporations to make money. He only hopes that the stronger ones survive as a cheap or slave labor force. "“You just wait for Cuba,” Graham added. “Cuba is a Communist dictatorship that’s killed priests and nuns, they preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We’re gonna wake up one day, I hope in ’26, in our backyard we’re gonna have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narcoterrorist dictators killing Americans.” "“Donald Trump will have done something that’s eluded America since the fifties: deal with the Communist dictatorship 90 miles off the coast of Florida,” Graham said on Fox News. “I can’t wait till that day comes. To our Cuban friends in Florida and throughout America, the liberation of your homeland is close.”" And this kind of framing is everywhere. On Iran, they're no longer talking about a fictitious nuclear-weapons program. Trump claimed half a year ago that he'd destroyed that program, so it would be difficult, even for him, to claim that they still had the program without looking weak himself. So the next pivot is to demand that Iran no longer be able to defend itself at all. "Prior to that Trump had confirmed to the press that the US would attack Iran if it tried to rebuild its missile program, saying in a joint news conference with Benjamin Netanyahu that “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.” "[...] the president is not talking about attacking Iran if it tries to rebuild its nuclear facilities or construct a nuclear weapon. He’s talking about Iran’s conventional ballistic missile program. The United States is saying that Iran simply is not allowed to defend itself in any way, shape or form, and that if it tries to rebuild its ability to do so it will be attacked again." This should be a fun ride. Watch out for the blowback, USA. Although, how would you even know if there were blowback? Can you tell the difference between foreign militants kidnapping people off of and shooting people in the streets and what ICE is doing? The U.S. -- and, frankly, most of the West -- is so broken that it would celebrate Jack the Ripper today for "cleaning up the streets." Might makes right as official policy. They are the absolute worst. These are the violent shudderings, the death-throes of an empire. I often think of the US as the vanquished Balrog in the Lord of the Rings. It falls, presumably to its death or banishment, but its whip lashes back up to pull down the bridge with Gandalf on it. It’s going down, but it’s still so dangerous. Just because empires inevitably die, the flailing of a dying empire was never going to be pleasant. It’s going to get messier. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] A very good friend of mine gave me this T-shirt as a present when he visited in 2004. I still have it and bring it out for appropriate occasions. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5961 2026-01-10T13:40:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes in such a weak way about piracy. This is neither surprising for the author nor the publication. "Over the weekend, the Trump administration seized two oil tankers. [...] U.S. forces boarded a Panamanian-flagged commercial vessel, owned by Hong Kong's Centuries" ... ]]>

writes in such a weak way about piracy. This is neither surprising for the author nor the publication. "Over the weekend, the Trump administration seized two oil tankers. [...] U.S. forces boarded a Panamanian-flagged commercial vessel, owned by Hong Kong's Centuries Shipping, off the coast of Venezuela. They had no seizure warrant, which doesn't appear to have gotten in their way." This is why Liz Wolfe and Reason can't be taken seriously as a news organization, though they act like one. She can't come right out and say that this is illegal activity. It's piracy. The magazine is ostensibly Libertarian but so many of its columnists have a hard time coming out against what they seem to consider their natural allies in the Republican Party that they can't even seem to strongly condemn an act of actual government overreach: a state seizing private property. "On Sunday, U.S. forces apparently intercepted another tanker—"a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela's illegal sanctions evasion" that is "flying a false flag"—according to anonymous officials. U.S. officials claimed that the vessel, reportedly called the Bella 1, was not flying a valid national flag, and that international law dictates that it could be boarded as a result." Oh, sure. That's like a cop smelling pot or having seen something in the victim's hand, or claiming that the dog smells drugs in the trunk. Can you believe this is in a libertarian publication? "An estimated 20 percent of tankers worldwide "move oil from Iran, Venezuela, and Russia in violation of U.S. sanctions," reports the Times. "These ships often disguise their location and file false paperwork. The Bella 1, for instance, faked its location signal on a previous voyage. U.S. officials say they have identified other tankers carrying Venezuelan oil whose previous involvement in the Iranian oil trade makes them subject to U.S. sanctions."" The author is never going to mention that the U.S. sanctions are not some sort of international law; it's just the U.S. declaring war on enemies and then stealing their property. There's nothing more to it than that. There is no "dark fleet". It's just ships from countries the U.S. doesn't like. None of these dipshits are going to question it because it's just the standard worldview for them. They don't see anything wrong with it. They certainly don't have a moral problem with it because they don't have any principles. If they even think about potential blowback, they don't care about that either because they know that it won't get them. That's why they get their panties in a bunch whenever white/middle-upper-class people are killed somewhere. [1] It uncomfortably reminds them that they're not invulnerable. The article "US seizure of China-bound tanker near Venezuela escalates US conflict with Beijing" by Andre Damon goes a bit harder, linking the seizures the coming war on China as well as the still-impending seizure of Greenland. "Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian denounced the seizures as “a serious violation of international law” at a Monday press briefing in Beijing, adding that China “opposes all unilateral bullying.”" "The economic consequences of the blockade are already severe. Cuba, which depends on Venezuelan oil, is facing the loss of a key economic lifeline and is facing widespread hunger, rolling blackouts, and medical shortages." "The National Security Strategy published by the White House last month announces a “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” explicitly aiming to restore “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and deny China “the ability to own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere.” The document effectively asserts US ownership over two continents—presented as “our hemisphere”—whose resources Washington intends to seize as a power base for confrontation with Russia and China." "As part of the drive to seize control of “our” hemisphere, Trump has also demanded that Greenland, a territory of US NATO ally Denmark, become part of the United States. On Sunday, Trump appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland. Over the weekend, Landry said in a post on X that he would seek “to make Greenland a part of the U.S.”" Oh, my God. I thought they'd forgotten about Greenland. Do they think that rare-earth metals refine themselves, though? 90% of the refining capacity that matters -- so-called "5-9s" capacity, which refines to 99.999% purity -- is in China. The U.S. had a multi-year effort that resulted in a "2-9s" (99.1%) purity. [2] That's honestly nowhere near good enough for the low-nm processes needed by high-end chips. [3] "But wait, there's more!" Trump's gonna build the biggest, bestest boats ever! And he's gonna call 'em Trump Boats and they're gonna be awesome. They're gonna go "Blubblubblub" as they cruise across the ocean, like super fast. With jet-skis. "[image]On Monday, Trump announced plans to build a new “Trump Class” of battleships as part of a “Golden Fleet.” Speaking from Mar-a-Lago flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and renderings of the proposed warships, Trump declared that “each one of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest battleship in the history of the world, ever built.” He claimed the ships would be “the fastest, the biggest and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” armed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons and laser systems. The first vessel would be named USS Defiant. Trump said he approved construction of two ships immediately, with plans for 20 to 25 total." They didn't say whether it would have the most awesome trucks that the world has ever seen on it, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that it will. I mean, why not? Go big or go home. This is pure fantasy. it's like watching a 12-year-old next to his cardboard spaceship but it's not cute, it's pathetic. My God, how are people not f@&king embarrassed to be associated with this? You should be backing away slowly but there's so much sunken cost at this point. You should be demanding health care and welfare instead. The madness is on the outside now. They're not even putting on the velvet glove anymore. It's all just iron fist now. Trump is America with the mask off. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Oh, man, was I wrong about that. RIP Renee Nicole Good. [1] I read this somewhere else a while back but found this article from January 2025 that seems to corroborate the number, "USA Rare Earth achieves breakthrough in domestic Dysprosium Oxide production" by Agustín de Vicente . I didn't investigate the thing down to its bones to determine whether it's AI-generated, though. The "next result in the list " was definitely created by AI. Looking at the domain name, it's likely the entire web site is an SEO trap for searches about "rare earths", which, if it's a viable business model, is an indictment of both our economic system and our information environment, but that's a whole other topic. [1] 3-7nm CPUs are basically every chip that a consumer has in a multi-purpose device, like a phone, tablet, notebook, or desktop computer. Some industrial CPUs -- which don't need this level of performance; they need reliability and optimize for cost -- might not need that level of purity, but I'm just speculating here. It's possible that there is no real market for 99.1% pure rare earths. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5933 2026-01-10T13:26:45+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5891 2026-01-10T13:19:41+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "The double-tap strikes are appalling and illegal, but Hegseth is merely following the bloody path Barack Obama blazed. Obama’s drone assassination team even had a name for wounded survivors they would target for a" ... ]]>

writes, "The double-tap strikes are appalling and illegal, but Hegseth is merely following the bloody path Barack Obama blazed. Obama’s drone assassination team even had a name for wounded survivors they would target for a second kill strike: squirters. According to David Shedd, Obama’s former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency." "We used double-taps all the time. You would get the initial signature off of a target that’s been hit and if you saw that they ‘squirted’ and were injured … you hit them again.” Shedd told Washington Post columnist Mark Thyssen: “There was often a second predator ready to go … that was fully expected to be used if you didn’t have a 100 percent coming out of the first hit — and maybe a third hit…It was done routinely." Speaking of drone-bombing civilians, the same newsletter writes that Israel continues its cleanup work in the Gaza strip. "IDF Press Release: “The Air Force eliminated two suspects this morning in the southern Gaza Strip who crossed the yellow line, carried out suspicious activities… and approached the forces.” The two “suspects” were 8 and 11…" [image] NBC News dutifully reported this as: [image] Now, just wait a minute. It depends on how you look at it: At least those kids didn't have to starve to death. It's like the IDF was doing them a favor by nipping things in the bud like that. It was downright merciful. The article "Democrats, Press Gloss Over Original "Double Tap" Operations" by Matt Taibbi confirms that Gore Vidal was right when he called his home country The United States of Amnesia. "The piece explained that British and Pakistani journalists had counted 50 civilians had died in recent “follow-up strikes” that sources on the ground claimed were intended to kill rescuers and first responders. The Times report elicited a bizarre non-denial denial from Barack Obama’s White House, in which an unnamed spokesman said we should “wonder” about “misinformation” coming from “elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”" Does that sound familiar? Some of us have been listening to and hearing this kind of crap for decades. It doesn't matter which actual people are in the U.S. administration -- they all act and talk the same. This kind of bullshit precedes Trump and it will almost certainly outlive him. "The Trump/Hegseth scandal grew out of multiple different strains of recent American military history. One involves those prior “targeted killing” and bomb operations mainly across the Middle East that killed somewhere between 22,000 and 48,000 people from 9/11 through 2021 (a former CIA analyst who oversaw some of these operations put the number closer to 60,000). Another is in Barack Obama’s abortive Libyan campaign from 2011, which in some ways bore the closest resemblance to Trump’s Venezuelan mess. "That brief display of what one lawyer called “total lawlessness” was a ghastly bloodletting involving high-powered weapons and essentially defenseless targets, deployed for questionable if not outright fraudulent reasons by another White House acting unilaterally. Like Trump’s White House, Obama’s deputies concluded his campaign fell short of the definition of “hostilities,” among other things because “there are no troops on the ground” and “Libyans cannot meaningfully exchange fire with American forces.”" Did you catch that? The Obama administration didn't consider its drone attacks to be hostile because the prey had no way of fighting back. They don't consider their own actions to be hostile, a priori. "We documented really shocking killing from both Democratic and Republican administrations. When you look at the data we captured, it wasn’t that different than what these guys are doing in Venezuela. These strikes are more efficient, but they’re really being brazen about it. It’s like the mask is off." "Mustafa Qadri: My personal opinion is that it’s very clear double taps are an act of terrorism. The U.S. military is not the first to do a double tap. It’s been done for many years. The only reason they are doing it is they are trying to convey a sense of terror." Like napalm! Napalm was an indiscriminate way of killing so many people. They killed directly by fire, and indirectly, by starvation because there is nothing left to harvest. They defoliated what they didn't burn using Agent Orange -- causing untold cases of cancer. They mined the entire countryside. It's all the same thing. Drones are just the modern version of killing indiscriminately. They possess an impunity to kill whatever the fuck moves or doesn't move or is considered an enemy. Or whatever. They barely even seem to care what they've killed. Just kill, kill, kill. And make a ton of money while doing it. "Mustafa Qadri: It’s really hard for a lot of liberal commentators to appreciate this. Trump is seen as a tough guy by a lot of non-western audiences. When he acts beyond the law, it is affirming for a lot of people that this is the way you deal with terrorists and your enemies. Many see Trump as out of control, but the U.S. is still seen as the main global power, so the actions of the Trump administration are still very influential. I don’t think the western audiences realize it’s norm-setting. It sends the message that everyone can do this." Western audiences have never experienced blowback. It's been almost 25 years. They'll cry when troops are attacked as if it were the greatest injustice the world has ever seen. Imagine if valuable civilians were to be killed by non-Americans. "Mustafa Qadri: What Trump is doing is expanding on something that already existed. That’s something important for people to realize. As an international lawyer, I’m a huge fan of the role the U.S. played in setting up the international legal system. The Americans were the ones who insisted people go to trial. That system is being systematically dismantled, and it’s really a worrying development." Yeah, that's all over now. Some people say not to panic, that we can still save the system. Bullshit. Prove it. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5889 2026-01-10T13:04:47+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the president wrote on Truth" ... ]]>

, "“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the president wrote on Truth Social. "It’s unclear if the declaration means that the US will impose a no-fly zone on Venezuela, which would be an act of war. Such a step or any military strikes on Venezuela would be illegal without congressional authorization, per the US Constitution." The fact that this continues to be mentioned is pathetic. Not a single instance of U.S. state violence in the last 80 years has had congressional approval. That means that it has all been illegal. This legal nuance doesn't make any difference to the dozens of millions of people that the U.S. has killed. The only difference now is that the POTUS now declares war on his own personal web site. The U.S. is post-constitutional. There is no constitution anymore. Just forget it. Open that glass case and let anyone walk in and take it. It means nothing. It hasn't for a long time, but the Trump administration has officially blown all the doors off of any potential enforcement mechanism. He dares the other branches to enforce anything against him. When they do, he retreats! But mostly they don't. Why? Self-interest and cowardice. They're afraid to rock a boat that's carrying them along as well -- in pretty nice circumstances, for most of them! The article "In pardon of narco trafficker, Trump destroys his own case for war" by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos writes, The title is already wrong because it buys into the notion that Trump's case for war with Venezuela was based on the drug trade. I know that's what he gave as the reason but it's not the real reason. [image]You see, Donald Trump and everyone surrounding him lies for personal advantage. The only reason they do any of the myriad awful things that they do is that they think it will bring them personal advantage, power, wealth, or a combination thereof. I figured I'd point that out because I'm not sure enough people have noticed it. These poor people keep arguing against the Trump administration as if refuting any of their fake reasons would change anything at all. Trump backs his moving van up to the house and starts unloading the whole house's contents through the back door, while everyone else is in the front yard, arguing about a sign with the N-word on it. A corollary of that is that they can't be hypocrites because they don't really believe in anything. If they were to ever do anything that benefitted others while either not benefitting themselves, or that caused them to lose wealth, power, or advantage (or a combination thereof), then that could be construed as hypocritical because that would run counter to the only perceivable principle in anything they've done until now. When Trump pardons a convicted drug dealer so that he can return to power as president of one country, and accuses another of dealing drugs with no evidence as a casus belli against another country, then that's not hypocrisy: it's business as usual. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5776 2026-01-10T12:54:24+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "Machado, who turned 58 this week, was set to run against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government disqualified her. Edmundo González, who had never run for office before, took her place. The lead-up to the election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations." "Machado was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in April. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote her entry, in which he described her as “the Venezuelan Iron Lady” and “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”" Man, if Marco Rubio thinks she's good, there's got to be something fishy about her. Lemme check my own notes. Oh dear... [Machado through the years] My notes over the last year-and-a-half paint a different picture. The U.S. mind-virus is nestled deeply in the members of the Nobel committee. This is not surprising; this is the same committee who've already rewarded Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger for their peaceful contributions. Poor Hillary Clinton seems to always be a bridesmaid. But we were talking about another "iron lady", "Links and Notes for February 2nd, 2024" "Why the US Is Reimposing Sanctions on Venezuela?" by Roger D. Harris "Machado’s treatment by the Venezuelan government has arguably erred more on the side of leniency than severity. In most other countries, a person with her rap sheet would be behind bars. "Back in 2002, Machado signed the Carmona Decree, establishing a coup government. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had been deposed in a military coup backed by the US. The constitution was suspended, the legislature dismissed, and the supreme court shuttered. "Fortunately for democracy in Venezuela, the coup lasted less than three days. The people spontaneously took to the streets and restored their elected government. Machado, who now incredulously claims she signed the coup government’s founding decree mistakenly, was afforded amnesty.""Links and Notes for February 16th, 2024" "Washington, Pro-Democracy? Depends on the Country" by Ted Snider As detailed in the article and elsewhere, Machado has a long history of anti-democratic activity in Venezuela, plausibly if not definitively linked to foreign governments like neighbor Panama and perennial instigator the U.S. She is a signatory to two documents supporting and encouraging coups in Venezuela, one of which succeeded for a few days. The decision to bar her was taken by the courts, not by executive fiat. "Links and Notes for May 17th, 2024" "Is Washington Trying to Subvert Venezuela’s Elections?" by Maria Paez Victor "The results of a 3 May 2024 poll by Encuesta Nacional Ideadatos, indicated that Nicolás Maduro is the choice of 52.7% of voters while Edmundo Gonzalez is the choice of only 18.7% of voters." And that 18.7% of voters are probably just so anti-Maduro that they would vote for a cardboard box instead. "Despite being legally barred from running for public office 15 years ago because of proven corruption, Machado staged a bogus opposition “primary” in which she prevented other opposition candidates from running. Ballots were unaudited and destroyed making post-voting inspection impossible. Then Machado declared the absurdity that two million people voted for her. But truth did not matter. The aim was only to tell this falsehood to the gullible international media, who will print anything the USA candidate of the extreme right will tell them." "Gonzalez openly declared he has no plans to campaign personally (What for? He has the money and power of the USA behind him?) People aren’t sure if this is due to his elderly age, 74, or his sheer idleness. Maria Corina Machado is the one who is campaigning for him, carrying around a large poster of his face so people can recognize Edmundo Gonzalez on the ballot.""Links and Notes for July 26th, 2024" "Venezuela: An Attempted Coup By Any Other Name" by Maria Paez Victor "We are in the presence of an attempt of the international fascist far right and the CIA to overthrow the government of Venezuela with a massive disinformation and denigration campaign to justify illegal sanctions and foreign intervention in the country. "The checkered past and crimes of Machado, poster girl of the far right, is never mentioned, her involvement in coups, her promotion of street violence in the past, her asking the USA for sanctions and military invasion against Venezuela, and right now, her collaboration with criminal gangs and narco-paramilitary groups are never mentioned. Her puppet, Edmundo González, was involved in the logistics and financing of the death squads in El Salvador’s civil war. Their hands are tainted with blood.""Links and Notes for September 6th, 2024" "Washington presses regional governments to secure Maduro’s ouster in Venezuela" by Andrea Lobo "Five weeks after the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela, the fascistic leader of the US-backed opposition, María Corina Machado, demanded on Thursday that the Biden administration “do more” to oust President Nicolas Maduro from power. "Speaking to reporters from an undisclosed location, Machado argued that this was a matter of strategic importance for US interests globally and concluded: “I am partial to maximum pressure.” She then repeated her appeals for the Venezuelan military to overthrow Maduro." Hooray! This is just what the world needs: another maniac to add to Zelensky and Netanyahu. There are so many people rubbing their hands together for a similarly tragic situation in Venezuela. It's not like it's going great there now, but the U.S. is looking to make things so much worse. [1] [Machado in 2025] So that's the kind of stuff that those of who'd been listening had been hearing up to the end of the 2024. What do the reactions look like now that she's won the Nobel Peace Prize? The article "When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, “Peace” Has Lost Its Meaning" by Michelle Ellner writes, "If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents. She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy. "Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations. "Machado has spent her entire political life promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty, and denying its people the right to live with dignity." "She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,” aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch, while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies." "If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”" The article "Nobel Prize for imperialist war and regime change goes to Washington’s Venezuelan puppet María Corina Machado" by Andrea Lobo writes, "This hero of the struggle for a “peaceful transition to democracy” openly hails US military aggression and is directly collaborating with Washington on plans for post-regime-change repression of all those opposed to Washington's intervention. "As the New York Times acknowledged last week, “The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado.” The Times adds: “One of Ms. Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was coordinating with the Trump administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s fall. That plan involves the participation of international allies, he said, ‘especially the United States.’” One can be certain that those 100 hours would be every bit as bloody as those that followed the coups in Chile in 1973 and Argentina in 1976." "Recently, Machado went on Fox News to endorse the ongoing US military buildup in the Caribbean and extrajudicial massacres of fishermen accused without evidence of working for cartels allegedly tied to Maduro. "“I want to tell how grateful we are to President Trump and the administration for addressing the tragedy that Venezuela is going through,” she said. “Maduro has turned Venezuela into the biggest threat to the national security of the U.S. and the stability of the region.”" It's nice how everyone is showing their true face all the time now. It somehow makes things easier when they don't even bother with subterfuge. The Nobel Prize Committee is irredeemably in the tank for the U.S. administration. There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. heavily influenced -- if not outright made -- the selection, having first ascertained that the prize absolutely couldn't go to Trump instead. As Lobo writes, "[...] they couldn’t give the award to the US organ grinder, they did choose one of his able monkeys in the person of Machado." "A defender of “free market” policies, above all the privatization of the state oil company PDVSA, whose public ownership has been upheld by a wide spectrum of bourgeois parties since the 1970s, Machado has endorsed Milei’s economic program of “shock therapy” in which “freedom” means the liberation of corporations to eliminate social spending and exploit the working class without any restrictions or regulations." Should she somehow come to power [2], I suppose she could expect a $20B "loan" from the U.S. government when those policies utterly and predictably fail to do anything but enrich herself, as Milei's have. This is nothing but a farce. Irredeemably stupid. Lobo continues, "It is necessary to cut through the lying propaganda of “democracy” and “human rights” and reveal the ugly reality of bourgeois politics. The working class must reject with contempt the cynical use of the Nobel Prize to sanctify imperialist reaction. Only the unity of workers in Venezuela, with those of the rest of Latin America, the United States, and internationally—armed with a socialist and revolutionary perspective—can halt the march to world war and fascist dictatorship, and open the way to genuine peace, democracy and social equality. "The anointment of Machado by imperialism is, above all, a warning: the ruling class is preparing for new crimes on a world scale. [3]" [Yeah, but who else is worthy?] I just heard Chas Freeman say, near the end of the following excellent interview that, "I would have said that Francesca Albanese should have gotten a Nobel Peace Prize." His interlocutor Jyotishman agrees, saying that "Absolutely. I mean, there there are many candidates. Some some said Greta Thunberg, some said Francisca Albanese." And that's only if we stick to female, white Europeans! I'm sure the rest of the world would have something to offer as well, were the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee to be interested in anything other than currying favor with the U.S. empire. [media] [Let the lady speak for herself] If you're wondering what to believe, then listen to the lady herself. She "posted this on Twitter." , cited in its entirety. "This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom. "We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy. "I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!" This is practically an open invitation to invade Venezuela. [image] Oh, never mind. It is an invitation to invade Venezuela, install her as president, after which she will give away $1.7T of natural resources to U.S. firms. She's probably get something for it. On of the peace prize, of course. And that, folks, is your Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2025. Drive safe. [Postscript] The article "Julian Assange: Sweden Broke Own Laws With Nobel Prize to Venezuela’s Machado" by Wyatt Reed & Max Blumenthal writes that when you embrace Trump and the U.S., you get dirty, "The Wikileaks founder pointed to the “ample public statements… showing that the U.S. government and María Corina Machado have exploited the authority of the prize to provide them with a casus moralis for war,” adding that the explicitly stated purpose of the war sought by Machado and her wealthy Latin American backers would be “installing her by force in order to plunder $1.7 trillion in Venezuelan oil and other resources.” "The Nobel Foundation stands accused of a number of violations of Swedish criminal law, including breach of trust, misappropriation and gross misappropriation, conspiracy, crimes against international law, as well as financing of aggression, facilitation of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and breaching Sweden’s stated obligations under the Rome Statute, to which Stockholm says it is “deeply committed.” "Under Swedish law, “Alfred Nobel’s endowment for peace cannot be spent on the promotion of war,” Assange noted. “Nor can it be used as a tool in foreign military intervention. Venezuela, whatever the status of its political system, is no exception.”" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I'm not a genius for having seen it coming. I just read and remember. [1] Man, things move fast in Trump-world. I wrote that just two months ago and, here we are, with Maduro out of the way, but also Machado has been completely sidelined. [1] Well, Ms. Lobo was certainly right about that. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5224 2026-01-10T10:37:04+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "[image]Using Iran’s attack on Israeli military infrastructure" ... ]]>

writes, "[image]Using Iran’s attack on Israeli military infrastructure Tuesday as a pretext, the White House has effectively given Israel carte blanche to carry out an illegal attack against the most populous country in the region. "“We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do, but all seven of us [referring to the G7 nations] agree that they have a right to respond,” Biden said Wednesday. Reuters commented in a news report, “[T]he US is not pressing Israel to refrain from retaliation.”" Like it would matter if the U.S. had pressured Israel for anything. This is all just so tiresome. It's always lies and deceit. It's quite obvious that Iran is the end-goal. The U.S. use the Israelis as a very willing and enthusiastic proxy to take advantage of Iran's reluctance to go to total war, just as the U.S. has Ukraine doing the same to Russia. These are proxy wars with the goal of weakening perceived enemies. "One year after the start of the Gaza genocide, it has become clear that Israel seized upon the events of October 7 to implement long-held plans to ethnically cleanse and annex all Palestinian territories. This is part of a regional war throughout the Middle East to conquer what the Zionist state claims to be its biblical borders. "For the United States, it has been a means to cement imperialist control over the oil-rich Middle East region and to establish the Middle East and Central Asia as a firm base for US military operations in order to press ahead with its confrontation with Russia and China." [image]It has always been about the oil. U.S. actions in Venezuela, Russia, and now Iran are not coincidentally in the oil-rich areas of the world that have either not come under the control of the U.S. Empire or had been taken away. Iran and Venezuela nationalized their oil and infrastructure. The Saudis have learned their lesson and have learned to curtail their mouthiness. As soon as they step out of line, they'll have a proxy war on their hands, too. These are just high-level plans, though. On the ground, It never works out this way. Military capability, goodwill, and good standing will continue to be burned for the benefit of a handful of elite winners at the helm of the U.S. war machine. "It is high time to put an end to the myth that Israel is an actor independent of the United States. Israel’s primary function is as an attack dog and instrument of the interests of American imperialism throughout the entire region." What did the illustrious "opposition" leader Walz have to say? "Walz said, “We will protect our forces and our allied forces, and there will be consequences.” Vance added, “Look, it is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies wherever they are when they’re fighting the bad guys.”" The "bad guys." Oh. Ok. So, everyone is simpering and stupid. "[...] no one bothered to note, first, that such an attack would be completely illegal, and second, that it would have monumental and historic consequences for the entire world." Neither of those things -- illegality or consequences -- are of particular interest to the people in charge. They don't recognize laws as applying to them, and they never feel consequences. Their supporters live in a propaganda bubble so impenetrable that they couldn't even begin to process the idea that anything the U.S. or Israel might want to do is "illegal". The notion doesn't even compute. How can a nation that never does anything wrong do something illegal? It's inconceivable. Nor can they imagine that anything the U.S. does would lead to anything but positive consequences, as long as the U.S. extends its governance and grip on the world. How could that be a bad thing? The U.S. is an unprecedented force for good in humanity's long history. "The US media is presenting a looming Israeli attack on Iran as a response to the strikes launched by Iran on Israeli military bases on Tuesday. In fact, Iran’s attack was a response to a series of US-Israeli bombings, murders and terrorist attacks that have killed thousands of people throughout the Middle East." I really don't think that it's going to suffice to term the U.S. media "useful idiots" anymore. They are complicit. They know exactly what they are doing. They are well-compensated propagandists for Empire, no different than Goebbels and his crew were. Or, as "These Are US Wars. These Are Biden's Wars." by Caitlin Johnstone puts it: "No matter how much you might despise the mainstream press, it’s not enough." The originally cited article concludes, "The Iranian regime has repeatedly adopted an attitude of restraint to these US and Israeli provocations. There was no significant response to the murder of Qasem Soleimani in 2020, and Iran’s regime has tolerated repeated assassinations of scientists, and most recently, an Israeli bombing in Tehran itself. The president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking for the Iranian ruling class, has repeatedly adopted the most conciliatory attitude toward the imperialist powers. These efforts at conciliation have now failed, and the Iranian regime is coming under increasing pressure to resist and retaliate." Give 'em an inch and they take a mile. Has the lesson been learned? Is Iran prepared? Or is it just as powerless before the military might of the U.S. Empire as Venezuela? Will it be unable to fire a shot for fear of what might come as punishment for having defended itself? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5180 2026-01-10T09:37:33+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5177 2026-01-10T09:29:19+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. [1] I'll leave the link to YouTube,... ]]>

. [1] I'll leave the link to YouTube, though, so we can all enjoy the big black hole provided by Google. The "video is still available on Rumble." You don't even need to log in to see it. [media] In the video, Greenwald discusses how the U.S. is completely uninterested in Venezuela's elections and much more interested in its continued resistance to becoming a vassal state. "Does anyone ever talk about the need to democratize Saudi Arabia or object to the lack of democracy in Egypt or the United Arab Emirates? No, of course not. Nobody does. Or in Jordan or in Kuwait? Because we have no interest in changing the governments there. We're very happy with the governments there. So we don't care at all about whether there's democracy." [image]Don't ever forget that pretty much everything you hear in the U.S. media about Venezuela is a manipulative lie intended to make you not only support the U.S. continuing crippling economic sanctions but also any upcoming military (including CIA) incursions to gain control of that country's resources. [2] These propaganda are designed to make you cheer coups as "victories for democracy" because they will now put an end to the completely fictitious waves of Venezuelan criminal rapists that are flooding the U.S. Thanks FOX News! [3] Glenn continues, "So, how is it that you can have U.S. officials openly admitting -- boasting -- that the reason there's a change in government in a country from a democratically elected leader to one that's imposed on those people undemocratically was because the United States helped engineer the subversion of democracy? "How can you hear things like that, on the one hand, or know that the United States embraces the most tyrannical despots on the planet in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and then believe, on the other hand, that the reason we're so concerned about the integrity of democracy and elections in Venezuela is because we're just so benevolent -- we just care so much about democracy, we just want to spread freedom all over the world? "It's something that will never stop being confounding and bewildering to me, generally. I understand that propaganda often is designed to work well based on studies of how the human mind functions. It's a science developed over many decades but sometimes it's so blatant -- the falsehoods on which it's based -- that I do think it's worth documenting. But it's still something that I don't understand how it isn't just immediately visible as the obvious fraud that it is." The clip he showed where the U.S. official was boasting about a coup was from CSPAN. No-one watches that. If neither silo promoted it, then people don't "know" that this happened or what the official had admitted. The NY Times isn't going to tell them, and neither is FOX News. Also, people don't "know" that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are dictatorships. They are not described as such when mentioned, unlike Venezuela where Maduro -- and Chavez before him -- are continually described as dictators, even though they're actually elected. Ghaddafi was continuously elected, as well. Putin is also elected.. People don't "know" what Glenn assumes that they know so there's no paradox by which he should be bewildered. His context is that, whenever he hears about Egypt or Saudi Arabia, he thinks about them as dictatorships, not as the loving, democratic, open, economic partners that they're described as by the mainstream media. His context is that, when he hears about Russia or Venezuela or Iran or North Korea or China, he wonders why the focus is on their often fictitious crimes and not on the real crimes of vassal nations. People don't think like that because they don't "know" these things. They know them when you tell them and they will temporarily agree with you during a discussion but it will all quickly fade from memory and be replaced with the avalanche of propaganda that they hear all day, every day. They claim not to listen to it, but it worms its way in nevertheless. All of the subtle -- or even quite overt -- phrases that have no anchor in reality or truth. All of the descriptions and characterizations, which, while not outright falsities, leave out so much context and detail and countervailing information that they amount to lies intended to manipulate people and produce a particular mindset. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] One a side note: isn't it great that you can eliminate non-mainstream journalism by simply de-listing results from anything you deem as "right-wing" web sites. I am in no way right-wing but I value Rumble because it hosts all content, including the content that your state would rather you didn't see. This is also why I have always documented every link to a video or article with the full title, author, and site name. I started doing it over 25 years ago because I was already afraid of link-rot then. That was back in an innocent time when link-rot happened because of poor URL hygiene or because a company had gone out of business. Now, of course, Orwellian sidelining of undesirable content is much more likely to be the reason that something is no longer available. [1] You thought I was being hyperbolic at the time? I called it. [1] Just as a reminder: I wrote this in September 2024. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5988 2026-01-06T23:07:13+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "The fact that the biggest drug pushers on the planet for several decades, whose product killed 10s of thousands every year, never ended up having their mansions bombed or [being] carted off in chains, tells you all you really need to know about the bipartisan hypocrisies of the alleged war on drugs. I refer to the Sacklers, of course." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5860 2025-12-16T13:31:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5734 2025-11-23T08:47:48+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes of how a society teaches its young to hate. The example comes from observing Israeli settlers in the West Bank. "The following three images are screenshots from a video of another incident in which settlers harassed the same family. The boy with the side" ... ]]>

writes of how a society teaches its young to hate. The example comes from observing Israeli settlers in the West Bank. "The following three images are screenshots from a video of another incident in which settlers harassed the same family. The boy with the side curls holds a stick. He’s the same boy who was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood in the previous video. I’m showing you these pictures because settlers use their boys as attack dogs. The armed man stands back and tells the boy what to do." [image] "This is called rage-baiting. The settlers are trying to provoke a reaction so they can call the I.O.F. and escalate the violence. Here the Jewish boy is focusing his aggression on the smaller Palestinian boy. "This is sociopathic behavior. This boy’s mind has been damaged if not destroyed. He’s been force-marched into a state of complete irrationality. He’s been taught to hate Palestinians and to take pleasure in tormenting and bullying them. In a few years he’ll go into the army. As a civilian he’ll carry an assault rifle. "How will he raise his children? How will peace be possible when each generation of Israeli Jews has been taught to fear and hate Palestinians and to see them as animals?" I think it's silly to dispute that this is happening. Of course it's happening. Brainwashing and indoctrination is absolutely necessary for any violent project such as the colonization of Palestine. So has it always been, and so will it always be. The idea is to train people to think that they're the good guys, even when they're doing very bad things. You train them to think that doing bad things is good when they are done to bad people, to the enemy, to "the other" . [Plunder] Colonization is just plunder: you want something that someone else has and you think you can take it from them without compensating them for its value and without being punished more than you are willing to accept. The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of an existing inequality. Your group will not only not punish you for plundering a group of lower value, it will reward you. This is the easiest and best way. If there's no convenient group of others around, it's a bit more work to generate an inequality against a group of others. Once you have a group of others, though, it becomes perfectly legal, approved, and rewarded to plunder them. No so-called civilized society today exists without this dynamic. If you can "other" someone, you can take what they have. If you can "other" them so hard that society agrees with you that they aren't even human, then you can even kill them and take away everything they have -- and get away with it. That's the dream. [Gentrification] Every society with colonial ambitions trains its people to do this. Countries without ambitions outside of their own borders can do this too because, remember, "gentrification is a euphemism for colonization" . Declaring a war on immigrants, preventing more from entering the country and trying to get rid of the ones you have -- as many European nations are doing [1] -- requires indoctrination of hatred of the other just as much as outright colonization. [The Poor] Declaring a war on the poor is an age-old standard. Imagine being so bereft of morality and principle that you consider plundering those who have nothing to plunder. It makes sense, though; plunder seeks soft targets. And the poor are incapable of defending themselves. Though the reward is lower, the effort and risk are negligible. The reward for plundering an oligarch would be immense but the effort and risk are high. We avoid effort and risk; we have been taught to seek rent. "Farming" the poor is more lucrative. The logic of plunder is inexorable. [The U.S.] It was no different in the U.S. during its own official apartheid, and it continues now through the relatively long period of "soft apartheid" that has followed and which has been going on my whole life. Instead of being officially racist, the U.S. now officially hates the poor -- which is easier to get people to support than outright racism -- and society is adjusted to ensure that much higher proportions of black people are poor than other races. And then you can send them to prison for being poor ... and rent them out as slaves from prison. Voila. The balance has been restored. [2] While the specific targets change -- current public sentiment is most strongly against South- and Central-American immigrants and Middle-easterners, especially Muslims [3] -- but the project and its goal do not. And we're talking about where the focus is: Black people aren't suddenly living as equals, they are just not the main target right now. The war on trans people continues as well, even though most people don't know anyone whom they would deem "obviously trans" or they have no idea what the term even means. There are people in Central New York lustily and heartily cheering on Trump's war at the southern border even though they've neither seen a swarthy immigrant nor heard anyone speaking Spanish. It is embarrassing how easy it is to move this type of project forward. [Europe] Most societies (at least in the west) teach virulent hate. People in Europe and Switzerland hate Russians with a burning passion. Perhaps Israel takes it farther. [4] Perhaps we see it more now, now that the Hasbara dam seems to have broken. But it doesn't absolve European racism and hatred. After all, Europe continues its unswerving official support for Israel, just as the U.S. does. The Israeli indoctrination programs are perhaps more thorough, more brutal, more virulent -- but Europe wouldn't mind getting there. They could easily find a way to justify it to themselves. The important first step has been taken: there is no principle -- no moral compunction against hating the other -- standing in their way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I'm just taking examples from place with which I'm more familiar, either personally or from the literature. I'm sure that many other countries do this but I don't have any examples to hand that wouldn't put me on shaky ground. I'm quite sure that many of the conflicts in African countries that take the lives of millions work along these lines as well. I'm sure that China, Russia, Indonesia, Japan, etc. all have similar policies, distributed along the bandwidth from banal immigration policies to outright persecution and pogroms. [1] if you're doubting this line of reasoning -- or if you're intrigued by it -- I highly recommend "The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2012)" . [1] The media is not only far from innocent in all of this, they are an essential part of the project. That's what indoctrination means. People can keep up their hatred on their own, after a while -- after they've been well-trained, i.e. well-indoctrinated -- but they really need the media to overwhelm their senses and basic morality for a while before the plunderer mindset sticks. [1] They're living the plunderer's dream because Palestinians aren't considered human, certainly not by large swaths of society, and barely even by the legal system. Palestinians are just there to farm for their land, to be exterminated like prairie dogs so that you can grow something good there, for yourself. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5731 2025-11-18T22:35:23+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "If I had murdered people for trying to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones who I had also murdered, I’d definitely be asking myself a lot of questions, but “what was so important about that corpse?”" ... ]]>

writes, "If I had murdered people for trying to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones who I had also murdered, I’d definitely be asking myself a lot of questions, but “what was so important about that corpse?” would definitely not be among them. "Gaza has become a hunting ground which is visited by psychopathic individuals who want to experience what it’s like to kill human beings, and it’s always open season. Those bloodthirsty monsters then re-enter our communities and walk among us without consequences. "They get to go commit atrocities and then come back and resume their lives as though nothing happened, like going off to some kind of genocide summer camp. It’s about the most horrific thing you can imagine. "Israel poisons the entire world." While I agree that the hagiography around Daniel Raab, an American from Chicago who joined the IDF to murder Palestinians -- that's pretty much a direct quote from him -- is nauseating, it's not just Israel that does this. It's empire. It's colonialism. It's racism. It's indoctrination. It's a mindset engendered by all of these things. [image]This is what U.S. soldiers do all the time. Of course, many of them are absolutely psychically destroyed afterwards. It eats them up. It will eat up the Israeli soldiers too. You can indoctrinate them all you want but their humanity eventually seeks them out where they live -- in their dreams, in their haunted thoughts. Many take it out on themselves. Many take it out on others, self-destructing in a cataclysm that sacrifices even more innocents. This is not to make you feel sorry for people who murdered innocents when they could, but to say that war destroys everything. Many former soldiers are far more apologetic about what they've done than Daniel Raab. Raab was born into just the right cauldron for sniping innocents in Palestine, though: the good old U.S. of A, where you learn early that life is cheap, especially when that life is poor or colored or both. It was a smooth transition from the racism of the U.S. to that of Israel. People like Raab reenter U.S. society and no-one is the wiser because no-one is taught to care or ask what "joined the IDF" even means. If they have any idea what it means, they associate it vaguely with something good. It's kind of wild, isn't it? There are U.S. citizens who join a foreign army and no-one bats an eye. There's even a Congressperson who's worn his IDF uniform in Congress. He has a giant Israeli flag outside of his office. We are taught to be unfazed, and we are simultaneously taught to go f@&king bananas if that army belongs to pretty much any other country. In Europe, people who return to Lebanon or Syria to help protect their families from invading Israelis are roundly chastised as Islamist terrorists -- fighting for the caliphate! -- while people who join the IDF are just treated as normal. You would expect the opposite in world with a moral compass. Lucky for us, we ain't got one. From a comment by Stephen Walker: "They’ve attacked two new countries in two days: Tunisia and Qatar. They’ve carried out dozens of assassinations in the following countries in just 18 months: Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Syria and Qatar. Total number of countries attacked in less than two years: 9 (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Malta, Tunisia, Qatar). Total impunity. The entire world’s inaction is sickening." It's not that the world doesn't act; the world approves. It welcomes the state of things. The U.S. can also attack whichever countries it wants and no-one even remembers these things as invasions of attacks. People will chirp at you that Russia has to be punished because it invaded Ukraine, as if invading a country were a unique act. They only consider it to be unique because it was neither the U.S. or Israel that did it. They literally can't remember any other attacks or invasions other than Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They can't remember any history in that region before February 2022. They can't remember any history in Israel before October, 2023. They have no idea what's going on there. They think Israel is just defending itself. When Swiss media write about Israel attacking Qatar, they don't ask WTF IS GOING ON? No, of course not. Instead, they ask "Where else might Hamas be hiding?" I'm sure they would absolutely welcome measures to rout "Hamas" out of Switzerland by simultaneously egesting every swarthy-looking Muslim or Arabic speaker, just to be on the safe side. We wouldn't want to piss off Israel, which would, in that case, be completely justified in bombing Switzerland. That would be understandable, as they would then only be stamping out obvious antisemitism. The situation is truly sickening. But it is not surprising. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5730 2025-11-17T22:31:39+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5729 2025-11-17T22:20:37+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. The video below is by the same guy -- Hasan Piker -- as in the other article but with a much less hopeful take this time. This video describes the current state of things: that we are cogs in a... ]]>

. The video below is by the same guy -- Hasan Piker -- as in the other article but with a much less hopeful take this time. This video describes the current state of things: that we are cogs in a well-oiled, rent-extraction machine. We have to wake up to it, use our agency, and stop believing all of the bullshit. [media] "Every single American is being surveilled at every single moment of the day. "How is it not illegal or goes against our rights? "Dude, you're an American. Do you not understand? We're nothing. We are peasants who have been deluded into thinking that we have any kind of self-importance whatsoever. "This is what I keep repeating over and over again. And people seemingly do not understand. They do not understand. You do not understand. "We do not have rights. You know who has rights? Corporations have rights. They have the right to do whatever the fuck they want. Okay? They have a right to get the bag by any means necessary. "[image]We're just running around thinking like, "Oh, we got autonomy. We do whatever we want." Yeah, good luck, dude. Every single aspect of your life, whether you are aware of it or not, is being commoditized by these AI tech companies. "This is quite literally just a mass surveillance operation, openly traded on the market. Like all your movements are tracked and they're sold to data brokers. They're sold to companies that want to surveil you for one reason or another to sell you more. Law enforcement has access to this. Your landlord has access to it. "We're literally lab rats, brother." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5728 2025-11-17T22:12:52+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5727 2025-11-16T22:38:03+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5712 2025-11-02T14:37:20+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5704 2025-10-28T22:44:58+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

museum in Berlin if you really want to see how it's done. No punches pulled there. Look at it. It's not dressing up anything. No gold trim there. The people in the U.S. who are positively reveling in the sun right now are a bunch of snowflakes who are too stupid or too venal to even see how snowflake-y their arguments are. They don't care because they're winning, for now. Luckily, everything they do is incredibly short-sighted so things will fall apart very, very quickly. Their center will not hold. The rough beast has slouched to Washington but its hour will come soon enough. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5703 2025-10-28T22:31:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5702 2025-10-28T22:21:04+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

was written near the end of August -- about two months ago -- and discusses the U.S.'s obsession with just absolutely hating first Bolsheviks, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia. "I say this because Russophobia is about more, much more, than near-term" ... ]]>

was written near the end of August -- about two months ago -- and discusses the U.S.'s obsession with just absolutely hating first Bolsheviks, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia. "I say this because Russophobia is about more, much more, than near-term geopolitical strategies and policy choices. This is a question that goes to the ideology that makes America America, to the collective psyche, to Otherness and identity (which are intimately related in the American mind)." It's not just the U.S., though. People in Europe and Switzerland are just delighted to believe the most transparently false and outright implausible fairy tales about Russia's aspirations and abilities. I've talked to many people in Switzerland who are 100% convinced that "defeating Russia" should be not only a top-priority goal for Europe but also for neutral Switzerland. It's no wonder, of course, as every news agency in Switzerland cheerily repeats this viewpoint day after day after day after day. No-one -- not the media nor its willing dupes -- has no idea what would come next, of course. They just know it's super-important that Russia lose. When pressed, they say it's because we need to show that "you can't just attack other countries." When pressed further about Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Yugoslavia, or Afghanistan (an incomplete list of targets of NATO in the last quarter-century), they run out of words if they have any moral compass and they splutter about those not being the same thing at all, if they don't. The article wondered, two months ago, [image] "Can Trump put a long, regrettable past thoroughly into the past, or at least set America on a path such that it may finally embrace the 21st century instead of continuing to fall behind in it?" I wrote at the time: HAHAHA. No. He will almost certainly fuck it up. It is unfortunately too delicate a solution for the bull elephant to find by stumbling about. That's even assuming that he actually wants that solution. Or that he can summon the concentration to actually get it. The last two months of increasingly insane and criminal bullshit has borne out my negativity. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5686 2025-09-08T22:28:00+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

makes what I consider to be a logical error in argument in the following passage, "When a nation keeps having to publish denials that it is intentionally starving civilians, you can safely assume it’s because that nation is" ... ]]>

makes what I consider to be a logical error in argument in the following passage, "When a nation keeps having to publish denials that it is intentionally starving civilians, you can safely assume it’s because that nation is intentionally starving civilians. If you saw someone on social media loudly denying the latest allegations that they are a child molester over and over again for two years, you probably wouldn’t let them babysit your kids." Yeah, you probably wouldn't but would it be fair to do so? Let's ask "Kevin Spacey" , who despite complete and total exoneration, will probably suffer from accusations, jokes, libel, and slander for the rest of his life. The section on his "Sexual-misconduct allegations" is two short paragraphs that end with "not liable" and "acquitted", although no-one will ever care that this happened because he is now fixed in people's heads as a child-molester who can be the butt of cheap-ass comedians' jokes until the end of time. What I'm saying is, is that what you've posited is a bullshit argument, Caitlin. It's one of the first where I've seen her let her emotions carry her from a logical argument, actually. An accusation is not a fact, no matter how many times it's repeated. What matters is evidence. The difference between theory and fact is credible evidence. For example, the genocide in Xinjiang suffers from a major deficit of proof. There are some blurry satellite photos that purport to show what their publishers claim are concentration camps. They might as well be pointing out pareidolia in the surface of the moon. In the case of Gaza, we don't have to guess. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence of starvation, including proud and loud-throated declarations of intent by the perpetrators, who only switch to loud-throated denials when it is politically expedient for them to do so. "You don’t see pro-China spinmeisters frantically churning out propaganda denying that China is intentionally starving civilians, because China is not intentionally starving civilians." Yes you do! Like, China has had to deny a genocide in Xinjiang for over a decade because the west will not shut up about it, will not stop accusing it, although the evidentiary basis is so thin as to be nonexistent. In the case of China, we are seeing a heavy-handed integration of disparate cultural groups into a dominant culture. This happens everywhere. It's not great but it is efficient. The U.S. is filled with monolingual citizens who refuse to learn a single word of Spanish and yell at everyone they can to "learn English!" This is also cultural annihilation, is it not? But let's not get into the philosophical weeds here, though. Suffice it to say that Caitlin's argument here is specious and wrong but I forgive her the exaggeration. The photos and documentation in "'Starvation Is Everywhere': Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose the Scale of the Horror" by Yarden Michaeli and Nir Hasson is very detailed and would be quite harrowing to someone with a sensitive heart and who'd perhaps not already been hardened by having seen this all before so many times. Here are some examples from the Haaretz article, which you can skip if you can't stomach descriptions of bodies in an advanced stage of starvation. "For this article we conducted four such tours, in different places, and conducted separate conversations with another 12 doctors, 10 of them volunteers from the United States and Britain, who are currently in the Gaza Strip or were there recently. What we saw there left no room for doubt about the scale of the horror." "We saw children whose bodies were blighted by hunger, with bones jutting out. Their hair had turned yellow or fallen out, their faces were wrinkled and their abdomens bloated. Their bodies were limp; many had marks on their skin. Some looked totally apathetic." ""The starvation is everywhere – it's everyone," says Dr. Travis Melin, an anesthesiologist from the United States who is currently working as a volunteer in Nasser Hospital. "When I put someone to sleep for surgery this is very apparent as they are naked and asleep. It is easy to count ribs from across the room, you can see a clear pelvic bone, peripheral blood vessels are very visible as is the small amount of muscle left, as there is no longer fat obscuring these structures. I was in Gaza also a year ago, and all the people I met now were dramatically thinner, almost unrecognizable. We are now very late in this process."" "It's impossible to recover from five months of a shortage of food at that age. Children who undergo a thing like that – their brain is finished. Even those who survive will suffer from severe retardation." This particular detail -- that severe malnutrition or starvation during childhood development leads to retardation -- is one that I have mentioned to people throughout the last two years. The goal of the deliberate starvation isn't necessarily to actually starve everyone to death -- though they'll take it if they can get it! -- but to cripple the next generation so that we don't have to hear silly things like "there are so many Palestinian professors and doctors and engineers" anymore. Israel is trying to get Palestinians out of there. Starving them encourages them to move. [image]If they don't move, then making the entire next generation retarded is also a good fallback. They simply don't care about those people as people. Their only concern is the logistics of moving that large amount of flesh out of Gaza. Dead bodies must be burned or buried. Healthy bodies take up more space -- and they might fight back. Starved bodies? Much more compact. A bunch of retarded zombies? Still annoying but at least not that dangerous anymore. For those of us who follow the topic, this is not news. It is documentation of the completely predictable end-game of what has been meticulously planned for decades and executed over the last two years. This documentation is vital but it is not surprising. Israel -- and its allies -- does not consider Palestinians to be humans. They are to be exterminated like prairie dogs who eat crops. People in the Israeli government probably read this Haaretz article with no small amount of joy because it confirms for them that their plan is working and that it is nearly complete. The article documents the intent, ""The decision we made tonight on the total cessation of the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza is an important step," Smotrich declared at the time. "Now we need to open the gates of hell on the enemy." "The gates of hell were indeed opened, and the price was paid, and is continuing to be paid, by the children of Gaza. As early as April, the UN's food program announced that the last bakery in Gaza had shut down because it had no more flour or cooking gas. Official Israel was not fazed." The anti-Muslim sentiment that has been clearly prevalent for my entire lifetime (over five decades), and which rose to such heights after 9/11, is back with a vengeance. These beady-eyed and small-minded criminals never forget their goals. They want domination. And they want only their own kind. Their understanding of the world is limited to this. They know nothing of long-term solutions. They know nothing of morality. They know nothing but thinking in terms of zero-sum economies and the subsequent annihilation of the other. Israel is probably hoping for a Punktlandung on October 7th so that it can celebrate the beginning of construction of a seaside resort with Netanyahu posing with his foot on a golden shovel, breaking ground into rubble. Coincidentally, as I was reading this article, I was helping my family set up a big party (a baby shower), at which over 90 people would be in attendance. It's a giant party for a single as-yet unborn baby with ungodly amounts of food. There was so much food that, even with 10 extra guests that brought the grand total to a neat 100 people, much of it wasn't even eaten. Afterward, we were sitting in the kitchen, in the aftermath, looking at panfuls of macaroni&cheese, potato salad, meatballs, and more, wondering what we can freeze, what we can donate to friends, family, and neighbors (no-one really took anything home from the party), or, as I suggested, whether there's a soup kitchen that could use some food. The irony is hopefully painfully clear. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5685 2025-09-08T21:57:48+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5684 2025-09-08T21:47:53+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "I, too, hope and pray that Trump’s working-class base will rebel against a president who so readily betrayed them. But I suspect they might not." I know they won't. I just spent almost four weeks among a good sampling of them.... ]]>

writes, "I, too, hope and pray that Trump’s working-class base will rebel against a president who so readily betrayed them. But I suspect they might not." I know they won't. I just spent almost four weeks among a good sampling of them. They are heavily propagandized and well-trained to ignore anything and everything that they might accidentally hear that might cause an otherwise principled person to at least consider reconsidering their opinion of the magnificence of every single proclamation made from on high by their great golden leader. "Today, Trump is also peddling two interlocking dreams. One is the dream of crypto riches, reflecting a novel assault on the common good – a campaign to privatize the dollar – that previous Republican presidents lacked the technology even to imagine. Coupled with the AI frenzy, this has triggered not only a bonanza for Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but also fresh optimism among Trump’s working-class base. A significant segment of his MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement, blind to the enormous risks of this new variant of the something-for-nothing mentality that led to the subprime mortgage debacle, dreams of future non-wage sources of income. Trump may be robbing them of food stamps and Medicaid, but he is the conjuror of magical forms of wealth with an “anti-system” aura." This is spectacular-sounding analysis and I'm sure Yanis is proud of it. I want to agree wholeheartedly but nagging at me is that I don't think that either Trump or his flock understand any of what was written above in anything approaching concrete, rational, recognizably logical, or comprehensible terms. Instead, I fear that they're mostly just acting on instinct, snuffling for personal wealth. Their completely broken bullshit meters allow them to believe nearly any vague and wholly unsubstantiated -- if not outright impossible and reality-bending -- rumor. They combine this with an extraordinary resistance to admitting that they might have ever been wrong about anything, even when doubling down is clearly detrimental to not only themselves but everything they know. In order to get angry or critical, you've got to first admit that you've been hoodwinked into something you didn't want and that you're going to have a hard time getting out of. People are not willing to do that. For example, I have exactly one friend who could be honest about being fleeced, who freely admitted that Amazon was ripping him off because Prime Video used to be included in a Prime membership. Soon after, it became $4 per month, and now it's up to $16 per month and there are 2-3 commercial breaks per movie. [image]Other people I talked to just talked about how expensive the licensing must be for Amazon while they admitted to coughing up an extra few bucks per month to turn off the advertisements. For now. They're just cucks, really, making apologies for Jeff Bezos while he's sending his wife into orbit for fun, using their prime-subscription money. The article "MAGA 2.0: Making China Great Again" by Dean Baker writes that, "[...] we also need to come to grips with a world where the United States is still a very important actor, but no longer the world’s dominant economic power." That's going to be a giant tantrum that will shake the world and ruin untold lives. We can only hope that there's anything left once the U.S. is finished throwing its toys out of the pram. "There is no inherent problem with a country other than the United States having the dominant world economy. After all, the rest of the world dealt with it for the last 100 years, and most countries did just fine. However, the United States would be much better positioned to deal with China as the pre-eminent economic power if we had leaders who lived in the real world. We don’t at present, and it is not clear at what point in the future this could change." We haven't had leaders like that for any time during this transitional period (i.e. during the decline of empire): Obama could not shut up about how exceptional America is, neither can Trump and neither could Biden. The U.S. is not capable of accepting multilaterality, culturally, philosophically, and socially. It is a machine that has been built to do one thing: plunder. It cannot do this from a non-dominant position. It will not deal with this well, as is apparent from the histrionics and tantrums of the Trump administration. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5681 2025-09-01T22:21:54+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

discussed several interesting news items. [ICE] St. Clair started off with a few items about immigration: "Cost of painting Trump’s border wall black: $500 million. "ICE recently shelled out $2.4 million for a fleet of new trucks and SUVs," ... ]]>

discussed several interesting news items. [ICE] St. Clair started off with a few items about immigration: "Cost of painting Trump’s border wall black: $500 million. "ICE recently shelled out $2.4 million for a fleet of new trucks and SUVs, which were custom detailed with gold wraps reading “DEFEND THE HOMELAND, INTEGRITY, COURAGE, and ENDURANCE.” "ICE has lowered the hiring standards (it will no longer require agents working the southern border to speak Spanish) and raised the salaries for ICE agents. The starting salary is now $90,000 with a $50,000 signing bonus." I guess they're having trouble finding people to work for them? These people are all malignant toddlers smashing their toys and throwing them out of the pram. As they feel the power they've arrogated to themselves, they will get much more dangerous. It will be short-lived, as anything this maniacal and divorced from reality must be, but there will be so much damage and ruined lives All of this is, at its root, racism. It is a deeply racist policy that treats anyone with a different last name and brown skin as being from a plethora of interchangeable countries. No-one cares whether someone is from Venezuela or El Salvador or Pakistan; it doesn't matter whether the details of the accusation are completely false. None of this invalidates the accusation: you don't belong here and we will make you suffer and then throw you out. It doesn't matter where you're from; we don't think that you're from here -- you're most certainly not one of us -- so you're not human. Citizens of the U.S. barely have rights anymore. Anyone trapped here who's not a citizen of the U.S. is vermin, to be tortured for pleasure and then removed from sight -- it doesn't matter how. [media] [Mispronouncing "Mamdani"] "While Fox News is having a meltdown over Mamdani’s plans for a few city-owned grocery stores, the Trump Administration is buying up massive stakes in US corporations…" Yeah, someone here tried to engage me on Mamdani but I didn't believe that he was of good faith about it, so I demurred. I simply said that the people will choose their mayor, as it should be ... and that Cuomo is a giant piece of shit. He couldn't disagree because (A) Cuomo absolutely and provably is that and (B) he's also a Democrat, which is all the proof a Republican needs. The person pretended to not be able to pronounce Mamdani, to which I had to reply that the name had only seven letters and none of them were mysteriously pronounced. Sure, Cuomo has two fewer letters but pronouncing Mamdani correctly shouldn't be too challenging for anyone of reasonable intelligence and linguistic facility. But these people do pretty much what FOX News says. So, if FOX News says that it's difficult to pronounce Mamdani, then they'll stumble over those seven letters like they can barely read or speak. "Mamdani told the press this week that Cuomo is still running because “Andrew Cuomo is someone who doesn’t understand that no means no.” He’s good." He's used that one before but it's not yet gotten old. [Personal Aggrandizement] "Florida Senator Rick Scott disclosed $26,000,000 in stock trades." These people are looters and plunderers. Their work in government is 100% to grease the wheels for their personal enrichment. They will never support a policy that they see as being detrimental to themselves, even were it to be very beneficial for everyone else. The only way to get anything like that to happen is to fool them into believing a communally valuable law would be personally valuable as well -- which, despite their stupidity, is not so easy because they are quite cunning about personal profit -- or to get rid of them. Depressingly, the former is a much more plausible path than the latter. [Terrible negotiating skills] "Stephen Walt on the abbreviated Trump-Putin summit: “Trump is a terrible negotiator, a true master of the ‘art of the giveaway.’ He doesn’t prepare, doesn’t have subordinates lay the groundwork beforehand, and arrives at each meeting not knowing what he wants or where his red lines are. He just wings it.”" Honestly, that's even a generous appraisal of his abilities. It doesn't mention how easily he's led by his ego or how naturally illogical he is. He is not a smart man. He is cunning. He has charisma. He succeeds against other base creatures like himself, the kind which almost exclusively fill the elite ranks of business and government. His charisma and cunning work on them because they see themselves in him. They wish to be him. They, too, have no principles and would do anything for their own personal enrichment, so they can't help but respect the player and the game, kowtowing immediately in the hope that some of the riches they grant him with feigned subservience will be returned ten-fold. They don't care if a rising tide lifts all boats, so long as it lifts their boat. [Trump probably looks good in shorts] [image] "Trump on the US hosting the World Cup: “I may play…I’m a very good athlete. My son is a good athlete. A good soccer player. On the tall side for soccer…I may put on shorts, I look extremely good in shorts, and join the play.”" This is probably the craziest quote I've heard from Trump. I don't even think he was kidding. He's just like a machine that says that he's the best in the world at whatever he happens to be talking about. He's the world's leading expert on grass. He's a great soccer player, at almost 80 years old and looking like he hasn't taken a quick step in about 40 years. He would look great in shorts. I want to think that he's taking the piss, but I think he's deadly serious, in his own mind, in his own world. He's delusional. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5680 2025-08-31T22:17:50+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, although informative, ascribes much more consistency and reasoning to 'Trump and his administration's actions than the situation warrants. For example, much is made of Trump's statement that he wants to end the war in Ukraine. "No Western leader, if" ... ]]>

, although informative, ascribes much more consistency and reasoning to 'Trump and his administration's actions than the situation warrants. For example, much is made of Trump's statement that he wants to end the war in Ukraine. "No Western leader, if you have not noticed, has ever called for an end to the war. None among them has ever mentioned a peace accord for the simple reason the Western powers do not want peace with Russia. It is with this statement, then, that Trump signaled his determination to chart new territory." Sure, he might have said it. But will it happen? Highly unlikely. Trump says a lot on a long day. (From the original in Swiss-German: Trump seit viel, wann de Tag lang isch or in German: Trump sagt viel, wann der Tag lang ist..) "To say Trump aligned with Putin, or got played or otherwise capitulated, is another way, a simpleton’s or cynic’s way, of denying or veiling reality. In my read, Trump listened to Putin’s case and has concluded, Yes, he is right. This is the ultimate reality long at issue and long unsayable. Trump has done no less and no more than speak this truth at last. The rest is rubbish." This is an incredibly charitable and hopeful -- and, most likely, hopelessly optimistic -- interpretation of Trump's actions. The man is completely unpredictable. There is no through-line to his so-called reasoning. He seems to do whatever pops into his head at any time, often contradicting himself and his espoused principles, aims, and goals in one paragraph, and then seeming to enjoy spewing a stream of bullshit that purports to reconcile everything into a coherent worldview. As one of history's greatest con-men, perhaps he's enjoying skating ever-closer to the line of completely unbelievable fabulation, trying to determine just how far he can go into utter unreality before his entire castle of lies collapses. He hasn't found it yet. The more he lies, the more he declares that reality is wrong, the more people kowtow to him. He's saying what they want to hear. The elites of other countries are in deep trouble and have no idea how to extricate themselves with their fortunes intact. Trump offers a way; follow him to a glorious future. "Let us all look past the mountain ranges of propaganda, cognitive warfare, perception management and what have you and say what Trump is now saying: It is time to acknowledge forthrightly that Putin is right about the war and its causes, about the Biden regime’s purposeful provocations, about the larger questions of which it is merely a subset and about how most sensibly to negotiate a lasting settlement in the borderlands between Europe and Russia" [image]That is what we hope that Trump might be fooled into thinking he wants, if he can be convinced that this is a thing that will make him look good to people whose approval he desperately seeks. Or, good God, if it might get him a Nobel prize, in what would be a bribe more useful than having bestowed the prize on Kissinger or Obama. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5525 2025-06-01T22:05:45+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

describes the U.S. empire in terms of a "bust out", which is what an organization like the mafia does to businesses that they've otherwise bled dry. The bust-out is then setting the business premises on fire to collect the insurance money. He writes, "[image]A" ... ]]>

describes the U.S. empire in terms of a "bust out", which is what an organization like the mafia does to businesses that they've otherwise bled dry. The bust-out is then setting the business premises on fire to collect the insurance money. He writes, "[image]A bust-out works where the mafia takes control of your restaurant (say), runs up bills on the joints credit, steals or sells goods out the back, and never pays the debt back. When it all goes to shit, they burn the place down for the insurance money, or just leave. This is broadly what private-equity (La Cosa Nostra for less spicy whites) has done to the US as a whole, ever since Ike warned about the military industrial complex. They took control of the American Republic after World War II, ran up forever war bills on the joint's credit, overcharge or just steal money out the unauditable Pentagon, and never pay the mounting debt back. Now it's all going shit and they're burning the place down, dumping and pumping the entire US economy in a last orgy of insider trading." "A white-collar bust-out describes the military industrial complex from the imperial perspective. It's the art of the steal, looting the imperial treasury by losing imperial wars. They don't want the Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Ukrainian governments to succeed, they just want them to bleed (money) then move onto the next hypocrisy. It's ultimately the good faith and credit of the US Republic that's being busted out, used to fund a war machine that doesn't work except for laundering money back into the Beltway Mafia." The Beltway Mafia are parasites, killing the host. But they've never learned to care because there has always been another host. But where do you go when you kill the biggest host around? Do they even think that far? Or do they only think: if I don't do it, someone else will. And where will that leave me? Might as well get while the getting's good. In an unprincipled landscape where there are literally no cultural or moral barriers holding back behavior destructive to the very fabric of society, there isn't any other possible conclusion. He makes another excellent point, writing that the U.S. causes all of the problems that its military is there to purportedly solve. "America acts so troubled by the problems in the world, but that's like a soap company acting troubled by dirt. It's just advertising, and CNN and BBC get their cut of the blood money accordingly. America is the world's biggest arms dealer and they create the world's biggest problems and embiggen them through privatized propaganda. They create both supply and demand, forming a vicious circle that drives their business cycle." This is an excellent way of thinking about this, one that I hadn't thought about before and which I will definitely be using in the future. It is undisputed that the U.S. has the biggest military in the world, by at least an order of magnitude. It is similarly undisputed that the U.S. is the world biggest arms dealer, almost by the same margin. It is also the source of much of the world's propaganda, marketing, and cultural influence. How in God's name do people think that these are not all working hand-in-hand? Of course the U.S.'s immense propaganda organization is being used to convince the world that it needs the weapons that the U.S. creates. What else could it possibly be for? This is a country that has been run like a business for at least a century, if not longer. It is doing what seemingly every large capitalist organization does: rather than considering in any way whether what it has to offer is of any value, it leverages the lucre it has accumulated from its prior antisocial behavior grants it to influence and strong-arm unwilling customers to continue buying its product, in an endless cycle of violence and futility. As noted by Samarajiva , this description matches perfectly the creeds espoused in Goodfellas and The Sopranos. The 2022 book "The Withdrawal" by Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad describes the exact same mechanism. Samarajiva goes on to explain that not only is the U.S. the biggest purveyor of violence, not only does it sell the most weapons in a world it considers hostile, as a way of justifying their own level of violence, but they're not even interesting in "winning" the wars or battles they purport to be fighting -- because that would end the lucrative market that they've created. "It's also much better if your solutions don't actually work. The bombs just need to look like they work, so the suckers keep buying more. Thus America creates more terrorism everywhere they go to ‘eliminate terrorism’ (like in AFRICOM). Why the fuck would they want to eliminate terrorism? This would be like Dove eliminating dirt. They're homicidal, not suicidal." And the U.S. -- and most western -- media is in on the game, getting their cut of the deal in exchange for selling the idea that the U.S. empire is dead-set on doing the thing that there is no way they would ever want to do: put an end to war and make peace. "America loses repeatedly to nouns (terrorism, drugs, poverty) because they're ultimately about numbers, everything else is just marketing. There is no sincerity in the American news any more than during the commercials. They are no more sincere about human rights and democracy than Coke is sincere about you having a good time with your friends." That is a devastatingly good description of the U.S. and its captured media. Samarajiva finishes up the bust-out analogy by putting Trump's role in perspective. "All that's left is the dénouement of every bust-out. As Henry Hill said, "and then finally, when there's nothing left, and when you can't borrow another buck from the bank [coming] or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match." And thus finally, from this perspective, Trump is not some aberration. He is the historical arsonist, arriving right on schedule." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5538 2025-05-30T08:47:17+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5524 2025-05-30T00:02:06+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5468 2025-05-21T22:14:14+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

about a month ago. "[...] the situation in the West Bank is not fundamentally different from what is happening to the Palestinian people as a whole. In Gaza, the attack has been" ... ]]>

about a month ago. "[...] the situation in the West Bank is not fundamentally different from what is happening to the Palestinian people as a whole. In Gaza, the attack has been genocidal in its intensity, but the same logic of destruction is being applied in the West Bank — though in a way that garners less attention, with fewer visible explosions. Palestinian communities are being forcibly displaced, their homes demolished, their hospitals destroyed, their farmlands burned. "What worries me most is whether the world will recognize this genocide for what it is — the ability to see Israel’s violence as a systematic attack on the Palestinian people as a whole, across the entire occupied territory. Because that is exactly what it is." [image]Recently, there have been murmurs of dissent from more fronts than usual. What did it take? It took Israel pushing the starvation so far that there are alarmed reports that 14,000 babies and children will likely starve to death in the next 48 hours. What did they all think was going to happen without food? Without drinking water? They could have listened to their allies in Israel who explicitly and often said that the intent is to starve them until they leave. Or die. Either way. But there were complaints. U.S. Senators were saying that they could no longer claim the moral high ground if Israel made the genocide this obvious. Apparently, things were just fine a few days ago, but now the balance is off. So israel threw a few crumbs over the fence. And the world will be satisfied that something is being done. And the weapons will flow. This is, of course, madness. It is the height of cynicism. Almost anyone you can talk to in the west is largely and at best mildly embarrassed to hear Palestine mentioned in otherwise polite conversation. These days, people only get stirred up if the press is stirring them up. If the press uses that power to keep them from getting stirred up, then they'll remain calm for a long time, anesthetized by propaganda. Also, let's be honest: most people know on which side their bread is buttered. When they weigh their pensions funds' performance or their employment against the lives of a bunch of people clinging to tattered tents in a desert wasteland -- who aren't even really people, right? They're animals, savages, criminals, terrorists -- then personal interest wins out nearly every single time. The west will pretend to care when it's too late to save anyone. That is all that is happening now. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5475 2025-05-18T22:19:49+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. I feel Timothy Snyder is not even close to fighting in the same morally clear weight class as Chris Hedges. Snyder's book "On Tyranny", though quite short, felt long. It was very much about Trump but didn't mention him by name, positing 20 "rules" about tyranny, many of which were obvious reformulations of each other, and almost all of which were so vague that they often felt more like horoscopes. I'm mystified how he's so popular or how he's even a professor. I haven't read "Black Earth", though. Perhaps that's better. But I doubt it. Stanley is also a professor at Yale. It seems that that school is expert in hiring people who can very carefully discuss fascism, colonialism, and empire without ever discussing any of the parts that they consider too unsavory to mention. While some might chastise Hedges for not having pushed him on it, I think it was a good interview about what Stanley's book likely contains, it stayed very much on a topic on which Chris has written, and it very much gave Stanley enough rope to hang himself by giving him ample opportunity to show us the very obvious -- and immoral -- lacunae in what he's willing to discuss. Instead, Stanley very often took his examples from Nazis and Hitler's Mein Kampf -- over 80 years ago -- and didn't mention anything about U.S. foreign policy. Even when discussing how fascists want to control schools and education in order to indoctrinate a love of one's own nation, to the exclusion of all others, he mentioned only the U.S. It's possible that he's unfamiliar with the extreme level of indoctrination in Israel but I'm not buying it. I just think that he has carved out an immoral exception for Israel. It is tantamount to refusing to discuss it. This is intellectually and morally bankrupt. This entire interview became a fascinating study in psychology and self-brainwashing. He didn't even seem to have to dance around the subject of Israel to avoid slipping up. He simply had trained himself not to see it as a glaring example of all of the evils he discussed -- fascism, educational control and indoctrination, propaganda and hate against the "other", erasing history, colonialism, and genocide. He cheerily discussed all of these topics -- in early 2025 -- and didn't mention Israel once. His book is called "Erasing History" and he didn't spend one minute talking about Israel's incredible campaign of indoctrination that convinces otherwise perfectly nice people to be ravening monsters against specific groups of people, and to consider theft, rape, murder, and even genocide to be not only ok but morally necessary when directed at those people. I keep using the word "people" as if Palestinians are considered people by most Israelis. I wonder whether Stanley thinks that they're people? Even when Chris had to point out that Stalinists didn't kill the entire family, whereas Nazis did (when Stanley was starting to rail against communism as if it were worse than Nazism, like a good little, well-indoctrinated U.S.-American), Stanley agreed that that was "genocide" because they'd "killed entire families", but then blew right past it. "That's a great point, Chris." Chris's impassivity here was impressive because we absolutely know what he was thinking. Stanley is a scholar for the state. He talks about fascist indoctrination and seems to be utterly unaware that his Israel lacuna is also indoctrination. His contribution is more insidious, in that he pretends to be against fascism but he's just really against fascism that isn't Israeli fascism. Look, I may be wrong about this, and he may just be utterly ignorant of what Israel is doing and he might be shocked -- simply shocked -- to find out what's been going on. Even toward the end, they discuss how "these are smart guys" -- Trump, Cruz, etc. -- who've been educated in the highest institutions of the U.S. Still, nothing. He doesn't see the irony. He won't see the irony that he teaches at Yale and he's indoctrinating his students to not see Israel as fascism, colonialism, or genocidal. He just doesn't see it. To be clear, Trump et. al. have the same lacuna about Israel as Stanley and Snyder, but they don't purport to be against fascism -- instead, they openly embrace it as the way things should be run. Late in the discussion, Stanley says "the opinion page of the NYT says that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are run by communist agitators," but that's such a strawman! Of course the elite institutions in charge of indoctrinating the next custodians of empire, each with endowments in the dozens of billions of dollars aren't communist. This guy's not very intellectually interesting except as an example of how an indoctrination system can produce people that seem like they're supportive but are actually counterproductive. The best statements came from Chris. When Chris cites about corruption from Stanley's book and Chris says that "that's the Trump administration right there," Stanley responds with "and Putin" because he is, in the end, a good little liberal lapdog who almost certainly still believes in most of Russiagate and the Steele Dossier. I mean, he's not bad, you know? He says things like "when they say they're against corruption, they just mean that the wrong corrupt people are in charge." and "this is why unions are so important." Yes! That's right! But I can't help but think that this dude only pops back up after having slept for four years during the Biden administration -- because obviously there was nothing fascist, anti-democratic, or actively suppressive of free expression going on then. He's a good potential ally but he needs a few more rounds of deprogramming because his blind spots will make him incapable of focusing on the methods with the most leverage. It's inconvenient to rail against an erasure of history while clearly suffering from a self-imposed version of the same. A commentator on the video writes, "He wants to equate anything done against universities with antisemitism, I guess. And I find that absurd. Hedges gently suggested that universities are deeply conservative servants of American power systems, but Jason would rather pretend that only Orange Man Bad. "I'm not too clear on the rant as a whole. When they started talking about projection, haha! Government criminality is suddenly perceptible now that Trump is in office, but not before?" To which I answered, My thoughts exactly. Stanley is fine. He's a potential ally. He has an enormous Israel lacuna. He has but a pale shadow of the moral and historical clarity that Chris has. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5515 2025-05-18T21:53:21+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. I do not expect him to say a word about Israel, for example, until the entire rest of the establishment... ]]>

. I do not expect him to say a word about Israel, for example, until the entire rest of the establishment media has indicated that the coast is clear. Still, this video about the odious ADF is a good and funny entry in the war against stupid and disingenuous. [media] At about 07:40, "One of its key founders was James Dobson, a man who looks less like a real person and more like AI's answer to the question, "What do they look like without their hoods?"" Boom. 🎤 💧 At about 16:00, "John: [...] this testimony from a teenage girl named Grace about what had happened to her team at her state softball tournament "Grace: We stepped onto the field motivated to go in and play our hardest and to display how hard we'd trained. But that spirit of determination was quickly dampened with one of confusion and doubt when we discovered that our opponents were fielding a biological male who identified as a female. Our entire team's focus and motivation was affected as we grappled with the impact of this new player. Sure enough our opposing team won. The boy gave them an edge both physically and mentally that we couldn't match. I had heard stories like this happening to other girls in other states but I never expected it would happen at my school. "John: Well, I've got great news for you: it didn't. It didn't happen at your school at all because it turned out there was no trans girl on the opposing team. That team's coach even told us "they only thought she was trans because she had short hair and was good." [😂 ] And, while Grace's team did lose, they also lost 16-6 -- an ass-whooping so bad no one player could be responsible for it. And, on top of all that, Grace isn't just any old high schooler. It turns out she's actually the daughter of Kristen Wagner. She's basically the ultimate transphobic Nepo baby or, to put it more winsomely, transphobic person of nepotistic descent." At about 29:00, "[image]ADF, though, is something different. It's worked extremely hard to put a misleadingly friendly face on what is an utterly hateful ideology. And it benefits immensely from people not knowing just how poisonous and disingenuous it is. "But for the record, this is a group that will talk winsomely about personal liberty, all while fearmongering about softball players that don't exist, shitty studies that don't apply, and pedophile cakes that no one will ever order. "And it might actually be important for everyone to know that at the end of the day, ADF at its core is really a lot like the pews at an imaginary donkey wedding, which is to say, absolutely full of shit." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5323 2025-04-06T21:22:01+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5451 2025-03-23T22:12:28+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5441 2025-03-17T22:25:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "What the right calls cancel culture, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi writes, “is often just the supersized celebrity version of" ... ]]>

writes, "What the right calls cancel culture, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi writes, “is often just the supersized celebrity version of what the rest of us experience all the time: consequences for our mistakes and bigotries. You do something shitty and people distance themselves from you, especially if you refuse to acknowledge your wrongdoing and make amends.”" This is why the Guardian is utter trash: they cite a philosopher, who expresses such a lowbrow analysis to reassure everyone that even philosophers agree with the dumb-ass, super-simplistic, and obviously wrong interpretation that they're going to present. Do you want to be the dumbass who disagrees with a philosopher, whose job it literally is to think for a living? The problem that reasonable people might have with cancel culture isn't that they might be ostracized for doing "something shitty". Obviously, that's how people work -- and how they've always worked. No-one wants to hang around shitty people who annoy or enrage them. The problem that is of more concern is when people are ostracized for having the wrong opinions, ones that are perfectly legitimate to have. Everyone has a different idea of what they consider to be "firing offenses". Some would think you should get fired for not supporting Israel hard enough. Is it being shitty to not support Israel? Is it being shitty to not support Ukraine? Is it being shitty not to care either way? The article is just another in a long line of articles from a supposedly left-leaning periodical by a supposedly left-leaning author citing what is almost certainly a philosopher who considers herself to be left-leaning, all of whom espouse principles about freedom of speech as they would be understood by a first-grader -- and that would be have been right at home in Khmer Rouge Cambodia or the Cultural Revolution in China. Get the f@&k out of here with your utterly simplistic analysis, Guardian. You're trash. I didn't bother reading the rest of the article because what's the point of wasting even more time when it starts like that? If it redeems itself later, then congratulations for burying the lede, I guess. [Pro-censorship is the obviously left position now] I've included the 25-minute video "Facebook & Content Moderation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)" by John Oliver as a link but not as a playable video because I don't think that this show is really worth watching anymore. It was already very hit-or-miss -- and kind of always has been -- but it's just far too superficial and supercilious now. Now that Trump is in office, Oliver and staff don't even really have to try anymore -- and they are showing all signs that they won't. They're seemingly content to subside into the same mud-pit where you can find Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel, all of whom used to be much more subversive and interesting than they are now. Now they all cheerily kowtow to Empire. In the video linked above, Oliver takes pains to convince his audience that Facebook never really censored anything while simultaneously lamenting that, without censorship, Facebook will become a cesspool. [image] Who does Oliver think is to blame? Zuckerberg, kind of, but it's really all Trump's fault. Whereas Oliver explains that the Biden administration didn't influence Facebook at all -- or not really, not the way it's been portrayed by that dastardly right-wing media, which comprises anyone reporting anything that Oliver and his PMC clique don't already believe -- Trump has completely changed how Meta is running one of its major properties. It couldn't possibly be because (A) Facebook's user base skews toward 60+, (B) older people skew rightward, and (C) they all believe they're being censored. Maybe changing how they censor was just pure financial calculation on Facebook's part to keep its user base? Or, maybe, it really was a belief that moderation couldn't be what it had become, which was prophylactic censorship that kept PMC prudes like Oliver delighted because they never, ever saw anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities. This includes not just right-wing stuff but also -- and crucially -- left-wing stuff. Progressive and true left-wing organizations experienced the most brutal censorship and will almost certainly continue to do so. [How do you even choose what to censor, FFS?] Almost no-one is will to consider that the most adult way to discuss the issue of censorship is to ask how we determine what we thinks needs to be censored. The tendency has been to censor unwanted political opinions, as noted above. That makes it quite easy to then censor things that you don't like: first deem a group or organization fascist or extreme right-wing or even nazi and then you're free to just ban all of that group's posts and no-one would care because, well, what are you, a nazi-lover? People are so banal and superficial in their opinions in that they have to constantly be reminded why censorship is bad because, unless they realize that they are being actively censored or that they are aware that information that might be interesting to them is being censored from them, they simply don't care because they just assume that bad people are not getting their bad information. People are so shockingly anti-intellectual that the discussion pretty much stops there. If they stop thinking about it for a second, then they completely forget that censorship is even happening. They literally have no object permanence. That's how dumb they are. For a similar albeit more polite discussion, see "survivorship bias and the algorithmic gaze: you can't see what you can't see" by Etymology Nerd . [COVID message discipline broke people] Part of the backlash against censorship in the U.S. and Europe comes as a reaction to a disastrous COVID-information policy, during which information was brutally controlled, with the narrative shifting all over the place. Some opinions that were consistently blocked as misinformation turned out not to have even been misinformation. This matters even were you to believe that censorship is okay when the information is incorrect. I personally don't because you never really know, do you? At any rate, people are pissed off and the AFD in Germany counts the backlash against the state's COVID propaganda as a big reason for their success. [Joking about a different genocide] I will take John Oliver more seriously when he says the word Palestinian on his show even once. The genocide is well into its second year and comprises three seasons of his show and he's never shown any indication that he will make a single show about the Middle East or Israel. It's a bit weird, right? It's almost like he has no principles. He did manage to mention a genocide in this most recent show but it was a reference to the Myanmar genocide, which Facebook was apparently alone responsible for. Or Trump was, I can't remember. I was shocked to hear people in the show's skit talking about a genocide and then even more shocked to realize they were joking about a genocide that happened years and years ago, without mentioning the brutal information management and censorship surrounding Israel's ongoing genocide. You can currently express whatever support for Israel on Facebook and Instagram that you want -- and you can say the most horrific things that you want about Palestinians -- and none of that has ever been censored. There were so many, many Instagram videos of IDF soldiers committing war crimes that they themselves posted -- and none of it was ever censored, even when Meta was still censoring information. John didn't mention that censorship cutout, oddly enough. Still, maybe that kind of stuff will get a community note now? Nah. I bet those will also be suppressed. And none of this should be suppressed! It's all free speech. But that also means that speech that condemns a genocide is also free. And yet, Facebook continues to censor exactly those voices. And now, the Trump administration has revoked the permanent residency and had ICE arrest of a permanent U.S. resident for having supported Palestinian rights. I am dying to know how Oliver is going to square that circle: will he just ignore the whole thing? Or will he find an angle to bang his drum about Trump taking away people's rights without mentioning why the guy was picked up? He'd have to be really careful to avoid having to take stance on what Israel is doing. Oliver has supposedly moral bona fides to protect -- but he also very clearly has paymasters who are calling the shots about which segments he's allowed to run. I doubt he's going anywhere near that third rail, but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised. [Pigeonholing, then canceling] Finally, the article "The Right Wing Politics of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi" by Chris Green exhibits another form of censorship and suppression: pushing people with unwelcome opinions into filthy pigeonholes and then discarding them down the memory hole for being the thing they've been labeled as. As you can well imagine, you don't actually have to read or view anything that those people produce; all you need is a grudge and a lot of fellow travelers willing to spread you opinions without checking up on them at all. The author of the link above writes, "At present Greenwald hosts a podcast called System Update on Rumble, the right-wing video platform in which the reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has been a heavy investor. Thiel’s company Palantir was involved with the American national security state during the Obama administration in secretly digging up dirt on persons involved with supporting Wikileaks and Edward Snowden—this was, of course, before Greenwald made his right-wing turn. It should be noted that although Greenwald’s podcast substantially panders to right wing audiences, he has also used his forum to righteously attack Israel for its genocidal war on the people of Gaza." It's nice that they at least seem to acknowledge that Greenwald -- completely unsurprisingly for those of who actually listen to him -- is on the right side of history, as far as the genocide of the Palestinians is concerned. They didn't mention that he does occasional "System Pupdates" , in which he introduces the backstory of one of the hundreds of dogs that he has living in or near his house. After having first heard him on This is Hell!, I guess this Eoin Higgins guy's book is gaining a lot of attention. I like how everyone I've heard talk about it, including this review, seems not to have watched a second of Greenwald, or read a page of Taibbi before calling them right-wing cucks. People are just not interested in accuracy because it's not necessary in order to gain popularity with the people whom they consider to be the cool kids. Read through the citation above. Notice the phrasing. Rumble is not just a video platform, but a "right-wing video platform", an accusation made again and again not because its purveyors are right-wing, or because only right-wing content is allowed on it, but because the site doesn't censor the things that these censorious snowflakes can't stand having exist in their world. These people are smug scolds of the worst kind, who cannot understand that one would be horrified that the state would persecute someone like Trump for a complete bullshit like Russiagate because, to them, the target is the important thing, and not the reasons you're shooting at it. To them, they already know that someone like Trump is bad, and so it doesn't matter whether a given accusation is accurate; he deserves whatever you can throw at him because he is the devil incarnate. It's why the author can cheerfully call Peter Thiel a reactionary, just throwing out words without even understanding what they mean. The important thing is that the audience understands which words have negative connotation and will cry and cheer, calling for blood. Thiel is an execrable radical; there is little that is reactionary (extremely conservative) about his mission to take the world apart to suit his personal needs. This unfaithful relationship with truth and meaning leaves fools like this author to write about things like Russiagate without once mentioning that it was a complete scam, a hoax that deluded a nation and turned an entire supposedly left-leaning liberal class into rabid warmongers who still haven't woken up from their nightmare. As usual, anyone who associates with anyone who is not pre-approved is considered not a journalist going after a story but a fellow traveler, guilty by association. Anyone who dared go on Tucker Carlson's program to spout socially left-wing talking points was immediately written off as a traitor. This is how these people think. It's not even really fair to call it thinking, as that's unfair to people who actually do think. It's small-minded, mean-girl-clique bullshit that should have nothing to do with national discourse, but instead positively dominates it. Philosophically, most people wholeheartedly embrace George W. Bush's dictum, that "you're either with us, or you're against us." They double down on this attitude by ostracizing as a heretic anyone who doesn't believe everything they've been told to believe with the fervor that they've been told to believe it, banishing them to a wilderness filled with so-called fascists and so-called right-wingers. That Greenwald tempered his attitude toward idiots like Alex Jones is not a bad thing. There's a lot to learn about why Jones has appeal to so many. He is obviously unhinged but he's also built an enormous media empire. People like Higgins and the author of this piece are completely uninterested in finding out why that is, because they've long since determined that they will censor people like Jones out of existence using state and corporate-media power rather than figuring out how he ticks and why people gravitate toward him. If they were to invest the time and effort, they could perhaps address the problem of people following uninformed demagogues through education rather than punishment. But that's not their style, because they're also convinced that anyone who doesn't already agree with them about everything is too stupid to do so. Or too racist to do so. Or whatever. I only skimmed the remainder of the article (2/3 or so) because it went on to document how horribly right-wing Matt Taibbi is, a claim that is belied by simply reading anything that Matt Taibbi has written or watching five minutes of him on an interview or podcast. Taibbi's great crime is thinking that free speech applies to everyone, rather than just people like Higgins, the author, and the opinion elites that they worship. [Official State Historians posing as revolutionaries] The article "March 5, 2025" by Heather Cox Richardson is by an author whom I've seen gain no small amount of prominence in my newsfeeds since the ascension of Trump II. She writes, "This system enabled leaders to avoid the censorship from which voters would recoil by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out. Essentially, this system replaced the concept of voters choosing their leaders with the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing." If you didn't know that this lady's entire essay had been about Russia so far, you would think that she was describing the last 30 years of U.S. politics. She doesn't mention the coincidence at all, which leads me to believe that she doesn't notice it. Similarly, when I read a prior paragraph, I kept waiting for her to mention that this view of the U.S.'s so-called democracy was flawed, at best, and wildly unjustified, at worst. She wrote, "When the Cold War ended with the crumbling of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, those Americans who had come to define the world as a fight between the dark forces of communism and the good forces of capitalism believed their ideology of radical individualism had triumphed. In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukayama famously concluded that the victory of liberal democracy over communism meant “the end of history” as all nations gravitated toward the liberal democracy that time had proven was fundamentally a better system of government than any other. "Forty-five years after Churchill warned that the world was splitting in two, it appeared that democracies, led by the United States of America, had won. In that triumphant mood, American leaders set out to spread capitalism into formerly communist countries, believing that democracy would follow since capitalism and democracy went hand in hand." Again, I was left wanting, as she didn't indicate in any way that this isn't her actual viewpoint, held by an actual adult, and one who purports to be a historian, no less. This woman is being cited from all over the liberal mediasphere, completely without irony and completely uncritically. They consider her to be a beacon in the darkness. I feel ill. I fear that her wildly inaccurate characterization of Ukrainian history is what counts as the standard view in her sphere, despite none of the main points lining up with the facts, particularly Paul Manafort's involvement, which was part of the Steele Dossier, which was made up out of whole cloth by Hillary Clinton's campaign. None of this is controversial and yet none of it is known in elite circles, for whom I can only imagine Richardson's letters are intended. Being a glutton for punishment, I persevered. "To resurrect his political career, Yanukovych turned to an American political consultant, Paul Manafort, who had worked for both Nixon and Reagan and who was already working for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia." There is, to no-one's surprise at this point, any indication that Ukraine suffered an unconstitutional coup -- just that they "ousted" their president, as you do. In democracies, a president fails to be reelected, and is not "ousted". It is clear that Richardson -- along with anyone who holds the worldview she represents -- only cares about details like this when she's been ordered to deride a country that has been designated an official enemy. There follow several paragraphs of a tired re-hashing of the standard Russiagate fare that I skimmed rather than read in detail. As usual and as expected, she spends an inordinate amount of text condemning Trump for his lack of decorum. That his predecessors were also violent warmongers -- far more so than Trump (so far) -- doesn't matter because it's the language of violence that matters, not the effects of actual physical violence. Since I'd seen this lady mentioned a few times, I decided to give one of her missives a shot, although with obvious trepidation. I was ready to be pleasantly surprised but instead I'm disappointed to find that a bunch of people I've been following for a while are now absolutely quaffing this kind of uninformed tripe posing as scholarly research and analysis -- all day long and with gusto. Nowhere in the entire missive does she take Trump to task for the actually evil things that he's doing, like gleefully helping Netanyahu stomp Gaza even flatter. No, instead, she condemns Trump as a traitor for trying to end the war in Ukraine. i have neither the time nor the patience for such stupidity and obviously self-serving ignorance. You can take issue with Trump's methods but, if you don't start by acknowledging that bringing this war to early end is a good thing, then you're a criminal and a fool who has no idea what's going on and no moral footing. [The modern liberal lives without Irony] Finally, there's the post "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Jason Kottke , which is published by a fool -- who also recommends Cox Richardson at every chance he gets -- recommending the book of the same name as the article's title by Omar El Akkad. [1] This is from a guy who hasn't written about Israel even once because he's terrified of losing his upper west-side and upper east-side subscribers from New York City. This is, in fact, the first time that I can recall him even obliquely referring to Gaza, although he calls it the "war in Gaza", which is exactly what the NY Times -- which he also reads religiously -- wants him to call it, if he's to refer to it at all. He literally seems to have no idea that the entire book is about people like himself who are easily capable of ignoring a genocide until it's safe not to ignore it. The full title, of the book is, "One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." I think Kottke thinks that the book refers to Trump, which would be hilariously missing the point, but its just tragic. It's the same kind of mistake that so many other people make -- people whom so many look up to as thought leaders. [Uplifting Coda: Omar El Akkad] Omar El Akkad is an amazing person and I can only imagine that his book -- the perfectly titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This -- is equally amazing. See the 1-hour interview with Chris Hedges below. He very much takes people like Kottke and Richardson and Higgins to task, for example, when he devastatingly sums up their worldview with "[s]omebody who is served by the system doesn’t have to imagine anything else." [media] At about 09:42, "All of this sort of stuff, I think, makes perfect sense if you believe in a world where there are only two options: you are either wearing the boot or you're having your neck stepped on. And, so, to speak up on behalf of anybody who's having their neck stepped on is immediately assumed to mean, 'oh you want to step on my neck.' Those are the only sort of world views that are acceptable under that ordering of the world. "And it's disastrous [...] because the obligations put on somebody who's trying to imagine a better world are unlimited. If you and I both want something better than this, I guarantee you, within 5 minutes of talking about it, we will have some kind of disagreement as to what 'better' looks like, because the imaginative obligations placed on us are infinite. "Somebody who is served by the system doesn't have to imagine anything else and so can safely live within the confines of this fantasy where, yes, either these people be killed or those people will be killed; either this genocide happens this way, or an even worse genocide is going to happen. And it is such imaginative poverty. And it's applicable to virtually every facet of life under an empire. It has to be this way because somebody has to do the killing and it may as well be us." At about 20:00, "[...] when I wrote the the title of this book -- when I was first thinking about it -- I wasn't thinking in terms of weeks, or even years. I was thinking, if I'm fortunate enough to live the average lifespan in this part of the world, by the end of my life, I'll be watching a poetry reading in Tel Aviv that begins with a land acknowledgement." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5426 2025-03-17T17:55:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

(who doesn't usually provide his own titles) because that can be the only interpretation: he's lamenting that the U.S. might be following through on ending hostilities with Russia. He would rather continue a proxy war than speak to the dastardly Russians. Kottke mocks the Trump administration as having "allied" with Russia, which is, apparently, the worst thing that he can imagine. Kottke probably has no idea that he is -- has become? -- an 80s Republican and he certainly has no idea how brainwashed he is. If you think I'm being unfair, his very next post is again untitled, but amounts to what I will call "The NY Times told me to believe that Zelenskyy is an untouchable hero" by Jason Kottke , which I think matches his sentiment. It includes the following, "My god, Trump and Vance are just total fucking assholes. The US is openly aligning themselves with Russia against Ukraine and Europe, a major shift in international relations that dates back to the 1940s. I am so embarrassed to be an American right now." I wonder if Kottke will ever look back and feel any shame for his simplistic take on foreign affairs. Will he ever regret having sided with continued war when the chance for peace was available? Does he ever wonder why the U.S. needs to be at war with Russia? Will he ever regret that he was "embarrassed to be an American" when the U.S. starting bringing a senseless and murderous war to an end, but he never evinced the same sentiment for the sixteen months of Israel's genocide that occurred during and were wholly supported by Biden's regime. He never even mentioned that it was going on, but peace with Russia is enough to make him want to renounce his citizenship. What sterling and totally banal principles. Kottke even cites a piece of what Trump said to Zelenskyy, after the Ukrainian leader had interrupted and talked over him. Kottke essentially berates Trump for not just rolling over and giving him another $100B when Zelenskyy literally just told him that the U.S. is in grave danger from Russia, and the Ukraine is doing not just Europe, but also the U.S. a favor by fighting Russia. Colloquially, Zelenskyy has drunk his own Kool-Aid. Here's how Trump responded, "You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have," Um, yeah! I kind of feel like Kenan Thompson on Black Jeopardy when Tom Hanks gets another question right. Like, you can't believe you're hearing something you think is correct coming from the person who said it. [Support that which is worth supporting] Look, Trump is doing a lot of things. A lot of them are truly terrible, petty, wasteful, and occasionally evil. We should all try to focus our outrage on the things that are actually bad, like ethnically cleansing Gaza, rather than things that sound promising, like decreasing the chances of nuclear armageddon. Kottke is not alone, of course, in joining the obligatory chorus of "anyone who thinks that Trump wasn't disrespectful to ally Ukraine is a Russian plant". The article "Grovel Before The Great And Powerful Trump" by Scott H. Greenfield writes, "But while the cadre of the Trump-dependent spew the talking points to gaslight a nation that watched the debacle in real time that it was Zelensky being disrespectful of Trump, the rest of the world isn’t buying. Russia loved it, watching Trump suck up to Putin, but European countries, one after another, watched in dread as they came to the realization that the post-World War II structure of the world had come to an end." You see what I mean? Greenfield barely has to put any thought or effort into it. It just writes itself. Trump is a Putin-loving agent of Russia, just like Greenfield's favorite news sources have been saying all along. Accepting any outcome short of nuclear armageddon is a sign that you're not being American hard enough, that you're a Putin-loving traitor. If you're not willing to blow up the entire world to defend the empire, then you're not worth nothin'. And honestly: wouldn't any moral person -- by which I mean someone who wasn't more concerned with the growth of their own personal situation, despite that situation already being much better than most other people's situations -- absolutely welcome the end of the post-World War II structure of the world? You know, the structure in which the Global South has continued to be economically colonized and subjugated by a globe-spanning empire that enforces its will through violence. It's not that there's nothing to save! But there is a lot to tear down. I, too, had hoped that we could get someone who was tearing things down for the right reasons -- and Trump has cited a few good reasons like "too many people have died for nothing" -- but this is what we have. [The iron grip of propaganda] The degree to which the west is in thrall to Ukraine makes for a fascinating study in psychology. It goes beyond self-interest. I think it's that Zelenskyy has a charisma that works on a lot of powerful people, much like Netanyahu's somehow does. And much like Trump's does, as well. Trump even pointed it out when he said that he respected Zelenskyy's game, how he seemed capable of waltzing into the U.S. again and again, leaving a couple of days later with yet another promise of dozens of billions of dollars for his country. Now the unstoppable force of one con man has come against the immovable object of another. The message in a good part of the western press is that Trump is only an idiot, whose every single move is idiotic and harmful, whereas Zelenskyy is a war hero. It's always instructive to observe brainwashing at work. Most of the people espousing this viewpoint would say that they're against war and for peace. Or would they? Are we really in a place where even people who would place themselves socially on the left support an empire, with its war-making and conquest? Do they really continue to believe, after decades of indoctrination, that it's always, always, always the chosen enemy who is alone evil and that "our side" represents an unalloyed moral good? Even after having been show that the opposite is the case so many times in the past? Or do they just miss all of those memos? Or have they been led away from them by a media with ulterior motives to line their own pockets with revenue from so-called defense companies? I've read other takes that describe the situation in Eastern Europe in early 2025 as a disgraceful sellout of Ukraine. Did they not read that the Biden administration admitted that they never had any intent of admitting Ukraine to NATO? That they never had any intent of supporting it with boots on the ground? What is happening in these people's heads? Are they such ethically shallow people that they think it better to continue to pour money into Ukraine, all the while lying to them about the depth of the alliance? They can't all be shilling for the weapons companies, so some of them must have simply bought the propaganda, hook, line, and sinker. Yeah, the meeting with Zelenskyy wasn't pretty at the end [1] -- you have likely only seen the last four minutes, but the meeting was almost 50 minutes long -- but it was 100% USA. It was also refreshingly honest about the actual situation. The US is no longer interested in supporting an unwinnable war that is killing hundreds of thousands per year. How did people think this war was going to end? With Ukraine's victory? How realitätsfremd. [So-called liberals won't give up "their" wars] Europe is free to jump in and "defend itself" from the Russian invasion they can't seem to shut up about. Either they legitimately fear this nonexistent threat or they're cynically trying to support the only industry in Europe that even makes anything anymore: armaments. Europe is in deep shit economically, so what do they do? They kick up war. This is a lazy way of goosing the economy. There is no reason that anyone with a brain should believe these false narratives. Just to be clear, though: Greenfield is openly for the continued genocide of Palestinians, so it's not like he's a moral compass. Kottke has never written a single word about the genocide because he's afraid of losing subscribers. So, it's not like they're leading lights of moral and ethical clarity who are supporting Ukraine. [A little history because why not?] And it's not about "supporting" Ukraine or not. Ukraine is an internationally recognized nation. No-one should be invading it. They were ethnically cleansing Russians in the eastern part of their country, in a grinding, long-running civil war that Zelenskyy was elected to end. Their giant neighbor had a problem with that but it left those Russians mostly to defend themselves. [image] The problems began when Ukraine began working with the U.S. and NATO nations to set up "defenses" against Russia, right on Russia's border with Ukraine. Ukraine went from being a huge trading partner to an actively hostile neighbor that was being funded by a giant empire that had been intent on ending Russia for decades. None of what Russia did is surprising. It's unclear what its alternatives were: capitulation? What could it have done other than to lay down and die? Should it have just allowed high-powered weapons on its borders -- weapons that we all very well know would have eventually been used? Once again, for the cheap seats: the invasion is illegal but it was not unprovoked. Russia is a large nation with an oversized military and a population that is small relative to its size. It was cornered and forced to react or be caught up in a net and trapped. Pretty predictably, it chose to fight back. No-one supporting Ukraine considers anything that the U.S. did to Russia over the last 30 years to have been "attacking" it: not the sanctions, not the putsch in Ukraine, not the many "color" revolutions instigated by USAid and the CIA. Almost no-one either ever knew about those things or they've cheerfully forgotten, as it complicates their narrative. And they sure do love their narratives simple. Like Star Wars simple. LOTR simple. Most of these fools have internalized that diplomacy is for pussies, that only force is worth an investment. The reasoning is that, were EU countries to talk to Russia or China, then they'd be consorting with the enemy and would have appeased. It's laughable and childish and dangerous. Sit down and shut up while the adults talk. Trump is not an adult, and even he understands that you can't just not talk to other nations. I welcome that we're opening embassies again. FFS, how can that be a bad thing? [Trump is more of the same] And the sad thing is that so much of what Trump is doing is a continuation of standard American policy, just without wasting time bothering to put lipstick on the pig for people whose opinions he doesn't care about. What did Biden retract or change of what Trump had done in his first term? Not as much as you think. The sanctions not only stayed in place, they were extended. The immigration policy was continued and extended in its cruelty and restrictiveness. Biden increased tariffs on dozens of countries, in particular China. Most people have no idea that these things even happened. I saw a tweet that read, "The liberal outrage and hatred for trump is largely because his lack of all pretence & decorum destroys the fairy tale of a benevolent US & reveals the thuggish empire it is. They always care more about appearance, rhetoric, and performance than actual policies and their impact." Amen. The policies are the same. Trump's just got the mask off. Go ahead and be appalled, but be appalled for the right reasons rather than demanding that useless and evil wars continue. FFS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] There were pretty good jokes, like the title-based joke at "Insult To Injury: Trump Changes Netflix Password And Now Zelensky Has To Get His Own Account" . 😂 😂 😂 ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5433 2025-03-16T00:03:22+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5429 2025-03-15T17:37:27+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

(5m) * "How Does Russia Define Victory in Ukraine?: With Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin" (20m) * "Was Trump Ever Really Putin's Puppet? Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on Russiagate Hoax" (5m) * "Was Trump Ever Really Putin's Puppet? Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on Russiagate Hoax" (5m) * "Is Russia an Authoritarian Regime?: Glenn Asks Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin in Moscow" (20m) ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5428 2025-03-15T17:32:46+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5425 2025-03-15T15:46:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "[image]Rubio justified the ban on international transgender athletes under the 1952 Immigration and Nationalities act, which authorizes a “permanent fraud bar” as punishment for “lying” on a visa application. The" ... ]]>

writes, "[image]Rubio justified the ban on international transgender athletes under the 1952 Immigration and Nationalities act, which authorizes a “permanent fraud bar” as punishment for “lying” on a visa application. The pretense is that a gender marker matching a transgender person’s gender identity, rather than one that aligns “with their sex assigned at birth,” amounts to “misrepresenting the purpose of their travel or sex,” which constitutes “fraud.” Such a “fraud bar” would lead to a lifetime ban on entry into the United States, with few opportunities for appeal." This is so petty, immoral, and stupid. How in God's name can this be a priority for the State Department? Rubio goes from a press conference for advancing an end to the proxy war with Russia to this one, announcing that trans-athletes will be banned for life from entering the U.S. because they're "lying" on their visa applications? Are they really willing to spend political capital on something so hateful and petty? Or do they think they have endless political capital? Why can't we have peace with Russia without harassing of minority groups? Still, the people who will absolutely explode about this new restriction -- and quite rightly -- also almost certainly want to keep the Ukraine steamroller going at all costs. And neither party is interested in justice for -- or even just less murdering of -- the Palestinians. The "ceasefire" -- in quotes because Israel never ceased firing; they ceased bombing -- was an initial ruse that Trump probably hopes to be remembered by. He will instead be remembered for having continued the flattening of Gaza and its citizens that Biden had nearly completed. And he will also be remembered for these spiteful stupid digs against people who've harmed no-one. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5424 2025-03-15T15:36:34+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

describes Trump's feelings about where he and Zelenskyy differ. "Following the presser, Trump expelled Zelensky from the White House, and posted on Truth Social that the deal was off. “I have determined" ... ]]>

describes Trump's feelings about where he and Zelenskyy differ. "Following the presser, Trump expelled Zelensky from the White House, and posted on Truth Social that the deal was off. “I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE,” he wrote." That statement seems surprisingly clear. I guess that most people will interpret the all-caps "PEACE" to mean "capitulation to Putin," but that's their loss. I think Trump might kind-of mean it. But he isn't doing it on some sort of anti-empire principle, not for a pro-peace principle. Or not just that. There is enough evidence that Trump is an asshole but he has many times lamented the senseless loss of life. He only approves of lost life, lost livelihoods, and lost quality of life if it's sensible, which usually means that either he or someone who will owe him a favor would benefit from it. Another statement cited in the article was from, [image] "Nataša Pirc Musar, the President of Slovenia, posted on X, “What we witnessed in the Oval Office today undermines these values and the foundations of diplomacy. We stand firmly in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”" Note that this statement applies only to Ukraine. No-one else's sovereignty matters at all to the EU, NATO, or the U.S. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan -- the list goes on and on. Even Greece's sovereignty didn't matter more to the EU than paying its biggest banks back ¢100 on the € that they'd loaned to Greece. Don't be fooled into thinking that the EU and its leaders have principles when they say things like this. They don't respect sovereignty, they cynically pretend to respect some countries' sovereignty when it serves their interests. Trump, at the helm of the U.S., is no different. As far as he and his administration are concerned, Ukraine does not serve U.S. interests, so they are dropping them like a hot rock. No-one in the current administration will acknowledge that it was many successive previous administrations -- including the first Trump administration -- that led Ukraine down this primrose path in the first place, but that's honestly been the prerogative of the stronger partner since the dawn of time. The same advice applies when you learn that the only one supporting a move toward peace is, "Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, “Strong men make peace, weak men make war. Today President [Trump] stood bravely for peace. Even if it was difficult for many to digest. Thank you, Mr. President!”" Orban has his reasons and they almost certainly have nothing to do with a general principle about respecting the sovereignty of other nations. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5423 2025-03-15T15:22:34+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5342 2025-02-23T05:23:15+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5406 2025-02-22T20:18:41+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5394 2025-02-16T23:16:34+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5395 2025-02-16T22:24:09+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, and "served as Stanford's Abbasi Program's Associate Director from 2021-2023". Check out the people in this video: [image] Farah was being interviewed, OK. Muhammad has no picture 😹. And I don't think Chris would have chosen Jared Kushner to be highlighted as having been mentioned in his video. It's true that he is mentioned, but I think that this is just how automation can give people the wrong impression from content. I learned that plans for the global war on terror/Islam (GWOT) were hatched in 1979 or, at the latest, in 1982, by Netanyahu. At 14:30, Farah says, "We should not forget that this campaign that we are seeing now, is exactly out of Netanyahu's kind of wet dream for the Middle East: to take all of it, essentially. In 1996 -- you know better than me, Chris, about the clean-break policy that was designed to take out seven countries in five years, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and then swallow the region whole. And for anybody to look at one regime-change and to say that that's not part and parcel of this campaign...even the war on terror was cooked up in Tel Aviv in 1982, or even before in 1979, through the "Jonathan Institute" that Netanyahu himself founded. "He said, 'we're done with the red threat. Now is the green threat, that of Islamic Terror.' And so, a lot of Muslims even internalize this war-on-terror rhetoric, and they themselves start being apologetic and say, 'oh Islam is peaceful. Islam is this. Islam is compatible with democracy. Islam is compatible with civility.' And I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double-consciousness. They don't know their own faith. They don't know their own history. And so, they start being apologetic about it and that is a position of weakness." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5379 2025-02-14T18:28:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5374 2025-02-10T15:58:39+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is best translated as "How do you say virtue-signaling in German?" Predictably, it failed. The following are some notes from conversations I had about the initiative with friends. The referendum is basically Switzerland promising that it will be climate-neutral... ]]>

is best translated as "How do you say virtue-signaling in German?" Predictably, it failed. The following are some notes from conversations I had about the initiative with friends. The referendum is basically Switzerland promising that it will be climate-neutral per citizen as a proportion of its population’s share of the world population. I am basically for every country on the planet doing this thing but I also think that it has no chance of happening. That would mean probably about at least a 90% reduction of CO2 output per person in Switzerland. A massive lifestyle and societal change. They list zero measures that they would enact to do this. That is left up to the Bundesrat, the Nationalrat, and the Kantonsrat. [image]They don’t dare mention that it would mean reducing cars massively, reducing flying massively, reducing imports of high-CO2 goods like chocolate and coffee, etc. … in which case absolutely no-one would vote for it. My God, it was 14 years ago that I read Heat, a book about how we could get to climate-neutral. Here are my 14-year-old notes: "Citations from Heat by George Monbiot" . This initiative will not pass no matter which way we vote, so those who support fighting climate change can feel good about voting yes, and those who think the MARKET and TECHNOLOGY will fix everything can vote NEIN and feel all tickled pink about that. Either way, we’re in the shitter because no-one is doing anything about climate change but making it worse. I’ll vote yes, but have no hope that it will pass — in which case CH can brag on the world stage that it has promised to do its part, which it absolutely will not be able to do — and also have no hope that they will pass a single measure even moving in the direction of CH fighting climate change any better than it already does. If no-one else fights with us, it doesn’t matter one whit. I’ll say "yes" because it lines up with my principles and with what I think we need to do if we want to keep the planet habitable for more than (maybe) our generation, but I also know that 30 years ago was when we should have started and doing stuff now is better than nothing, but it’s like farting into a hurricane. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5294 2025-01-10T11:59:21+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

This was overall an excellent show. Craig Mokhiber is eloquent, precise and nearly poetic in his description of the world. Stick around for the wrapup, where you'll be treated to "In Case You Haven't Heard," by Francesco DeSantis, who delivers a concise, no-nonsense, and information-rich reportage with masterful elocution and nearly unheard-of pronunciation of foreign names. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5299 2024-12-23T11:08:34+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC's This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the" ... ]]>

writes, "In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC's This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been "found liable for rape." A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed Trump civilly liable for "sexual abuse," not "rape." Over the weekend, ABC News announced that it had reached a $15 million settlement with Trump in the form of a $15 million contribution to Trump's presidential library. ABC also agreed to cover $1 million in Trump's legal expenses." [image]Words matter. Stop spreading disinformation. You can't just willy-nilly change the names of the crimes for which people have been convicted to suit your personal preferences. If you don't know the difference, then stop talking about it, or learn. It's not like George Stephanopoulos isn't a repeat offender on being fast and loose with facts. It's basically been part of his job description as long as I can remember hearing his name -- when he was policy advisor to Bill Clinton for most of Billy boy's first term. [1] The rest of the article explains that NYS had changed the definition of the word "rape" in 2023 so people now feel free to retroactively apply the new definition. This kind of thing just screams 1984 to me, even though the new definition of rape seems quite appropriate, "nonconsensual vaginal, oral and anal sexual contact," which would have included Trump's having forcibly fingered his victim in a clothing outlet's changing room in the 90s. [2] The thing I find myself in the awkward position of reminding people is that, as traumatizing as the experience was for the victim, it was 30 years ago and did not have geopolitical or national impact. It's not even in the top ten of terrible, far-reaching, damaging things that Trump has done that has degraded or eliminated lives. Can we focus on hitting Trump for depraved acts that continue to cause harm, rather than pettily calling him names for things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things? Stephanopoulos's "journalism" is pure bullshit, just swatting at what he imagines to be low-hanging fruit for ratings. He's not actually going after Trump for real shit -- he and his cronies in the so-called left-wing media approve of all the more horrible things that Trump has done, is doing, and will do. Trump gave a huge tax break to the rich. That caused and causes a lot more damage in many more people's lives. He assassinated a top Iranian general after fooling him into coming to Iraq for high-level talks. He let Israel have the Golan Heights. He let them have Jerusalem. These things that he does are more far-reaching and relevant. We have to stop him from doing things like that. Focus. Obviously, he has to stop sexually assaulting people too but he's actually already stopped doing that. All of the charges against him stem from decades in the past. It's not at the top of the list for most of the world's population affected by the bull in the china shop that is the U.S. empire. Focus. Calling him out for sexual abuse from the 90s -- for which he's already been convicted and sentenced -- is a distraction and actually plays into his hands. People who tune in to that shit and ignore the real machinations of empire are complicit. ABC ended up buying a wing of his presidential library (God help us.) He's the f@&king president now. Again. Calling him a rapist just because it makes you feel like a hero -- and gets you ratings -- won't make him less the president. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] What I didn't know -- and "Wikipedia" just taught me -- is that he was preceded in that role by Rahm Emmanuel, who I had no idea had been involved in the Clinton administration. I only started hearing about his crazy ass when Obama made him chief of staff for a while in 2009--2010, from which he failed upward to Mayor of Chicago and, most recently, Biden's ambassador to Japan. Some people just can't lose, ammirite? [1] It's not quite as glamorous as a blowjob in the Oval Office. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5280 2024-12-08T21:52:51+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

: "It doesn't matter what I read, it's the tone you use. She doesn't understand the words anyway [...]" To Shuster's credit: when Aaron says something that is partially drawn from Shuster's book and partially drawn from Shuster's own sources that is diametrically opposed to what he himself happens to be saying, he says, "that's a fair point." Soon after, though, he will state his previous conclusion as if he'd proven it. Instead, what he'd done is agreed with the information countervailing his argument and then reiterated his opposite conclusion, but in a tone of voice that implies agreement. The words disagree but the tone agrees. At about 54:00, he answers Katie's question about a possible nuclear war by saying that, again, he has relatives in Russia and that he has access to Russian media [1] and that the "flippant way" that they discuss nuclear war is "maddening". Agreed. Wholeheartedly. Has he watched the U.S. media and the U.S. administration talk about nuclear war? What does he think of that? How much worse could it be? If you asked him whether the attitude toward nuclear war was similarly -- if not equally -- flippant, he would probably agree! But then he would continue to believe that the Russians were much, much worse -- because that's how he's been programmed. He would be completely unperturbed. As proof, a little while later he says, "Schuster: I agree with the consensus view that Russia needs to lose this war and be defeated in Ukraine, in order for it not to continue with its broader ideolological program of defeating the west, defeating NATO." Sure, Ok. I mean, that's why your book is on the NYT best-seller list, dude. Noam Chomsky had your number a long time ago: If you didn't believe what you believe, then you wouldn't be in the position that you are. It's a self-regulating system. Shuster goes on to accuse Russia of waging a "civilizational war" (instead of the other way around) and that it is the West that is "trying to stop that" (again, instead of the other way around). He concludes with a smile, saying that this is the "consensus view", knowing that the people he's talking to know that already and are not accepting it but also knowing that he couldn't possibly be expected to doubt the consensus view, else he wouldn't be who he is. "Katie: So you're saying -- and this is not a rhetorical question -- that some kind of nuclear war is preferable to letting Russia win, for the sake of democracy?" Shuster doesn't disagree. How could he? Instead, Shuster says that Zelensky told him, "Russia's already hitting us with everything have; if they hit us with a nuke, then we'll keep fighting." This is so wildly out of touch with reality. Shuster can acknowledge that Russia is winning but then believes Zelensky when he says he'll keep fighting no matter what. Ukraine is already having trouble fighting as it is. But it will continue fighting through a nuclear attack. "He knows that Russia isn't interested in the goals he ascribes to it -- European dominance and empire -- because otherwise he would advocate fighting even harder against them." The only thing that can happen now is that more people die but there will be no change to the result, unless NATO steps in with its own troops and directly attacks Russia. The only reason it doesn't do that is because of the nuclear threat. Why doesn't Shuster discuss that, if the goal is so important, why doesn't NATO directly fight for Ukraine? If he believes that it's a civilizational war, then he should be all-in, no? Of course, he knows -- and simultaneously cannot acknowledge -- that this would start an all-out European war. He knows that Russia isn't interested in the goals he ascribes to it -- European dominance and empire -- because otherwise he would advocate fighting even harder against them. But, at the same time, he cannot say that we should just reconcile with Russia and stop the bloodshed because he knows that the real goal for which he's a cheerleader is to bleed Russia and weaken it. That is the goal that he is advocating for without directly advocating it. The propaganda about Russia wanting to wage a civilizational war is just that: propaganda intended to garner support. It's fascinating to watch him say things like, "We're not choosing between peace and nuclear-use; we're choosing between ways to contain a very aggressive authoritarian regime that has set out to basically humble and destroy the West." ...without at-all understanding how that could very much and much more believably be the Russian viewpoint, by replacing the final words "the West" with "Russia". There would be no war without NATO pushing toward Russia. Russia hadn't moved an inch westward for about 80 years. Most of the rest of world sees it that way, not the way that Shuster puts it. Shuster has so much faith in the "brains up in the [U.S.] State Department and the Pentagon" that they are working in everyone's best interests. It's almost like he thinks they're competent, amazing as that seems. He is a lackey for empire but an extremely affable one, so he's all the more dangerous. "If you allow Russia to swallow up Ukraine and get its way in Ukraine to neuter it militarily and so on, it won't satisfy the appetites of the beast that Putin has unleashed with Russian militarism and expansionism." Breathtaking. 🤡👏👏👏 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] But he says "which have good English translations", so it's unclear to me: in which language did he interview Zelensky? In which language is he watching and reading Russian media? If it's English, who's translating it for him? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5287 2024-12-08T17:34:16+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is an excellent interview about public-school funding with the very articulate -- and clearly a trained podcaster -- Jennifer Berkshire. [image]She was a bit hesitant to go all-out revolutionary in some cases, preferring the more mealy-mouthed liberal-style... ]]>

is an excellent interview about public-school funding with the very articulate -- and clearly a trained podcaster -- Jennifer Berkshire. [image]She was a bit hesitant to go all-out revolutionary in some cases, preferring the more mealy-mouthed liberal-style formulations like (possibly paraphrasing here), "It's interesting that Republican representatives who otherwise oppose government expenditures are so generous with the public wallet when it comes to their wealthier constituents. That seems, at first gloss, a tad hypocritical." C'mon! It's fu@&king crooked. They are utterly without principles, grubbing for money and power with not a single other overriding concern. Just. Say. It. We have to start saying it. We can't just keep watching them as they rob our f@&king houses, muttering "they really shouldn't be doing that. Registered-letter time." No. It's torch and pitchfork time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On a lighter note, the Question from Hell was "why can't we have nice things?". At about 19:00 minutes left, they read the answer "because we're a nation built on genocide and slavery," to which Chuck replied, "Ah, I see. They've got the same bumper sticker I've got." This is a good line on its face...but it's made funnier when you know that Chuck is legally blind. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5288 2024-12-07T22:17:53+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

and the original video is linked below (30mins). [media] "Marr: This is what I don’t get, because it suggests that - I mean I’m a journalist - people like me are self-censoring. "Chomsky: No, not self-censoring. You’re, there’s a filtering system, that starts in kindergarten, and goes all the way through, and it’s not going to work 100% but it’s pretty effective. It selects for obedience, and subordination, and especially I think… "Marr: So stroppy people won’t make it to positions of influence. "Chomsky: There’ll be behavioural problems. If you read applications to a graduate school you’ll see that people will tell you, he’s not, he doesn’t get along too well with his colleagues, you know how to interpret those things. "Marr: I’m just interested in this because I was brought up like a lot of people, probably post-Watergate film and so on to believe that journalism was a crusading craft and there were a lot of disputatious, stroppy, difficult people in journalism, and I have to say, I think I know some of them. "Chomsky: Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters in the United States, I won’t mention names, {inaudible}, whose attitude towards the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening, they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority - I’m sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture. And I think a very realistic one. "Marr: How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are. "Chomsky: I’m not saying you're self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting. "Marr: We have a press, which has, seems to me, has a relatively wide range of views… There is a pretty small ‘c’ conservative majority, but there are left wing papers, there are liberal papers and there is a pretty large offering of views running from the far right to the far left for those who want them. I don’t see how a propaganda model can. "Chomsky: That’s not quite true. I mean there have been good studies of the British press and you can look at them, by James Curran3 is the major one, which points out that up until the 1960s there was indeed a kind of a social democratic press which sort of represented much of the interests of working people and ordinary people and so on, and it was very successful. I mean in the Daily Herald, for example, had not only more… it had far higher circulation than other newspapers, but also a dedicated circulation, furthermore the tabloids at that time, The Mirror and The Sun, were kind of labor based. That, by the 60s, that was all gone. And it disappeared under the pressure of capital resources. What was left was overwhelmingly the sort of center-to-right press, with some dissidents, it’s true. "Mann: I mean, we’ve got, I’d say a couple of large circulation newspapers which are left-of-center. Which are, which are, you know putting in neo-Keynesian views which the, you call the elites, are strongly hostile to. "Chomsky: It’s interesting that you call neo-Keynesian left-of-center, I would just call it straight and center. The… I mean left-of-center is a value term. "Marr: sure... "Chomsky: But there’s, there’s… there are extremely good journalists in England. A number of them write very honestly, and very good material, a lot of what they write couldn’t appear here. On the other hand, if you look at the question overall I don’t think you are going to find a big difference. And the few, there aren’t many studies of the British press, but the few that there are have found pretty much the same results and I think the better journalists will tell you that. In fact, we, what you have to do is check it out in cases. Let’s take what I just mentioned, the Vietnam War. The British press did not have the kind of stake in the Vietnam War that the American press did, because they weren’t fighting, but just check sometime and find how many times you can find the American war in Vietnam described as a US attack against South Vietnam, beginning clearly with outright aggression in 1961 and escalating to massive aggression in 65. If you can find .001% of the coverage saying that you’ll surprise me. And in a free press a 100% of it would have being saying that. Now that is just a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with left and right." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5229 2024-12-04T22:13:43+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

... ]]>

. In the article, he took time to point out that, despite his 14 years of imprisonment, he'd gotten off comparatively easy, citing the plight of Joshua Schulte. "In February this year, the alleged source of some of our C.I.A. revelations, former C.I.A. officer Joshua Schulte, was sentenced to 40 years in prison under conditions of extreme isolation. His windows are blacked out and a white noise machine plays 24 hours a day over his door so that he cannot even shout through it. These conditions are more severe than those found in Guantanamo Bay." This is how the elites punish disobedience: with extrajudicial and contra-constitutional torture, cruel and unusual. There are only the elites who wield extrajudicial power and the rest of us. The rest of us are arrayed against them; do not let them divide and conquer. "If the situation were not already bad enough, in my case, the U.S. government asserted a dangerous, dangerous new global legal position. Only U.S. citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights, but the U.S. claims its Espionage Act still applies to them, regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey the U.S. secrecy law with no defenses at all." The following video isn't very tightly edited at all but it has a good presentation by Assange as well as a quite-lengthy question-and-answer session. Assange begins speaking at about 28:30 or so. [media] I've included several transcripts of the parts I found the most moving or interesting below. [1] At 01:25:00, "The US-UK Expedition treaty is one-sided. Nine times more people are extradited to the United States from the UK than the other way around. The protections for US citizens being extradited to the UK are stronger. There is no need to show a primary case or reasonable suspicion, even when the United States seeks to extradite from the UK. It's an allegation-extradition system. The allegation is alleged; you do not even have a chance to argue that it is not true. All the arguments are based simply upon: 'is it the right person? Does it breach human rights?' That's it. "That said, I do not think in any way that UK judges are compelled to extradite most people, and particularly journalists, to the United States. Some judges in the UK found in my favor at different stages in that process. Other judges did not. But all judges, whether they are finding in my favor or not, in the United Kingdom, showed extraordinary deference to the United States, engaged in astonishing intellectual back-flips to allow the United States to have its way on my extradition and, in relation to setting precedence that occurred in my case more broadly. "That's, to my mind, a function of the selection of UK judges, the narrow section of British Society from which they come, their deep engagement with the UK establishment, and the UK establishment's deep engagement with the United States. Whether that's in the intelligence sector, BAE -- which is now the largest arms [actually] the largest manufacturer in the United Kingdom -- a weapons company -- BP, Shell, and some of the major banks. The United Kingdom's establishment is made up out of people who have benefited from that system for a long period of time. And almost all judges are from it. They don't need to be told explicitly what to do. They understand what is good for that cohort and what is good for that cohort is keeping a good relationship with the United States government." At 01:40:00, "I was a computer scientist / programmer from a young age, studied mathematics and physics, ... cryptography." He's singing my song. Man, am I just so happy to see this guy out of prison, still alive, still cogent, still incisive, seemingly mentally well and balanced, strong, and still fighting the good fight. He concluded with: "Just a few final words. In 2010, I was living in Paris. I went to the United Kingdom and never came back until now. It's good to be back. It's good to be amongst people who, as we say in Australia, who give a damn. It's good to be amongst friends. And I would just like to thank all the people who have fought for my liberation and who have understood importantly that my liberation was coupled to their own liberation. That the basic fundamental liberties, which sustain us all, have to be fought for, and that, when one of us falls through the cracks, soon enough, those cracks will widen and take the rest of us down. So, thank you for your thoughts, your courage in this and other settings, and keep up the fight. Thank you." How eloquent. What a refreshingly happy end to this chapter. The Empire did not get its way. He lives. He speaks. He is loved. [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] On a side note, all videos on YouTube now have an automatic transcription, which is a decent start -- but it's just wrong enough to require a bunch of cleanup anyway. His diction is so clear, but the auto-trasncriber doesn't understand his Australian accent, which is pathetic, to be honest. It kept writing "difference" instead of "deference" and "expedition" instead of "extradition". [1] Seriously: watch how Stella Morris keeps an incredibly carefully watchful eye on him throughout. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5270 2024-12-04T22:02:00+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

was an extremely dense podcast, starting with Henwood reading his excellent article "It Was Always About Inflation" (from which I cited a few passages in "Links and Notes for November 8th, 2024" ), before going in-depth on a survey of Israeli public opinion: politics, polls, and... ]]>

was an extremely dense podcast, starting with Henwood reading his excellent article "It Was Always About Inflation" (from which I cited a few passages in "Links and Notes for November 8th, 2024" ), before going in-depth on a survey of Israeli public opinion: politics, polls, and inclinations with the extremely lucid and quick Dahlia Scheindlin, who works for Ha'aretz, then moving on to James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, who afford the war Ukraine the same treatment. It was just a devastatingly good podcast, packed into only 53 minutes. All meat; no fat. [image]Scheindlin's statement that Israelis aren't really thinking about Gaza, nor are they actively not thinking about it gibes with what I've heard anecdotally. This isf rom some notes I made from over the last several months: ---------------------- | Sometime in August | ---------------------- I spoke to my co-workers in Israel this week. At least one of them seems to be quite nervous. It seems that the war has finally hit home. I asked them a few months ago whether the Israeli economy had been affected and they'd responded that everything was fine, they hadn't noticed anything. Prices were higher but had been rising for years anyway. They said that the war was basically "over". This week, though, he was worried about all of the other fronts that have been sold to him as inevitable. They said that maybe they have to go fight Hezbollah in Lebanon to eradicate them, no matter what the cost in Israeli lives. They say very clearly now that, instead of everything being Hamas's fault, it's now Iran's fault. They have swallowed the new narrative. They, of course, don't assign any agency to Israel or wonder how Israel could behave differently. They are besieged on all sides and can trust no-one -- even if they were willing to make peace deals, which they are not. They are worried that an attack will destroy Israel's ability to produce electricity, which would affect water availability as well as air-conditioning. There has already been a massive lifestyle impact -- especially an increase in psychic load amongst an already very anxious people. There is no recognition, though, that they could have done anything differently. Everything happens to the beleaguered chosen people. They have no agency. ---------------------- Then I have these: ----------------------- | Sometime in October | ----------------------- Talking to my Israeli colleagues is wild. They don't acknowledge what is going on at all, other than to say that it's a shame that the poor hostages are stuck "out there" and have been suffering for so long, for almost 400 days now (give or take). It's also really hard to get flights because everyone (including airline staff) is scared to come to Israel and also flights are expensive. So it's hard to vacation in Sinai, where it's always been cheap and easy. Now, you have to vacation in Israel, which is OK but considered to be a sacrifice. They seem to have no idea what's going on and we have to tiptoe around their sensibilities. But they're the ones whose elected government is committing genocide and they seem to be largely unaware of it -- or they pretend to be so no-one takes them to task for it. It's wild how we have to be careful not to insult the citizens of the country that's committing genocide by accidentally mentioning that they're committing genocide. It's like being around a crazy person. This is not unlike how every in the West pretends that the U.S. doesn't just invade 2-3 countries per decade. It's just completely unacknowledged. ----------------------- As Scheindlin said, Israelis' overriding and only concern is the hostages. They have to focus only on that because it is the only potentially ennobling facet. They are well-aware that slaughtering two million people is not an appropriate response to having lost one thousand (or so, when you've subtracted the ones that the IDF killed). It's easier to convince themselves that, as long a single hostage remains, they can continue to smash at the Palestinians, who are just being bloody-minded about not releasing the hostages and therefore deserve whatever they get until they do release them. Israelis don't know or care about the thousands of hostages that Israel has taken both before October 7th and in the past year. They don't empathize and wonder what happens when the Palestinians say the same thing: we fight until we get our hostages back. An unstoppable force versus immovable object. Well, Palestinians are slipping closer and closer to becoming a theoretical people, but you understand what I mean, I hope. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5212 2024-11-19T22:20:52+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "“I read this letter,” he tells us, “from sixty-five physicians from around the world who gave testimony as to what they observed. And every one of the physicians testified that the children who were coming into the hospital had bullet wounds to the skull or to the chest. No shrapnel. It wasn't bombs and shrapnel. It was targeted bullet wounds to the skull and to the chest of children. What does that have to do with war?” "“There were fifty-four disabled children who used the school in the convent complex. They fired two shells at it. What does that have to do with war?” "Norman also recalls meeting Hezbollah members, and shares what he got wrong about the organization. “Israel, he says, “is willing to kill for material benefit, and Hezbollah and Hamas are willing to die for survival” He also recounts his time meeting Hamas leaders, and explains Israel’s unfair advantage: "“Israel is the entrenched, concentrated manifestation of Western imperialism. It's got deep roots. It's got the whole Western system behind it, that Western system which won't let go. It will nuke China before it lets go of its global dominance. And in order to defeat it, it requires a very long-term struggle and intense calculation.” "[...] Norman explains this despair, and the generational hopelessness which lacks historical precedent. "“Our generation,” he laments, “has, for good reason, lost the belief, the conviction that we have the force of history behind us. That we have the force of justice behind us. Our generation believes there's a good chance we'll be defeated. There's a good chance we're not going to win.” "But that doesn’t mean we should give up. "“The only thing I can say as a conclusion is you never know. You can only know one thing for certain: If you do nothing, it can only get worse.” "It’s that certainty that he says keeps him going. “If you resist, there are moments where it looks very grim. And then there's that folk song, it's always darkest before the dawn. It's this hope that keeps me carrying on. It's always darkest before the dawn.” "“There's another reality. There's something in the human constitution that simply can't do nothing. In the face of such death and devastation, you just can't.”" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5241 2024-11-12T22:19:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "[image]The mastermind of the October 7th tragedy, Yahya Sinwar, was fortuitously killed. Other than the terminally ignorant, this is recognized as both a great thing and a necessity for the future of the middle east. Of course, it wasn’t" ... ]]>

writes, "[image]The mastermind of the October 7th tragedy, Yahya Sinwar, was fortuitously killed. Other than the terminally ignorant, this is recognized as both a great thing and a necessity for the future of the middle east. Of course, it wasn’t necessary before, as so many clamored for a ceasefire while Sinwar remained alive and ready to do it again and again, a detail that didn’t seem to prevent fantasies of peace. But hey, now that he’s dead, it’s over, right?" Yawn. Good ol' Greenfield is back with another scintillating take on U.S. foreign policy and world affairs. He's so insightful and nuanced, so aware of historical context, so aware of what is even going on right now, anywhere. I don't really need to go any further, as he starts citing Thomas Friedman at length and there's only so much dumbness I can handle in one blog post. I'm willing to fight through Greenfield's opinions because he occasionally writes something good. When he starts off with the paragraph above, then moves to fighting with Friedman over whose uninformed, imbecilic and, frankly, completely immoral opinion is better, I am outtathere. I did skip to the end, though, where he writes, "[...] a future for Palestine is possible. It’s not possible as long as the primary goal is terror, destruction and death." He is, of course, talking about literally everyone but his precious, sainted Israel and U.S. I'm sure he doesn't see the irony at all, nor would he were someone to point it out. He would only get very, very, very mad and then ban them from his comments. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5214 2024-11-10T11:46:46+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. It's a hypersonic warhead that's loaded on to strategic missiles -- old SS1-19s, the "Sarmat" , the new heavy missile, the "Yars" mobile missile -- they all have regiments that are equipped with conventionally armed Awangards. These will hit at -- impact on the ground at -- 26 times the speed of sound. That's the equivalent of a 26-ton bomb. All right, we've seen what happens when a 1.5 ton or a three-ton bomb goes off. This will be a 26-ton bomb coming in at hypersonic speed. It will take out entire blocks. "And all Russia has to do is sprinkle Kiev with a half-dozen of them and the city ceases to exist. Mind you, they can also do that to Brussels, to NATO headquarters, they can do that to the British, they could do that to anybody. These aren't nuclear weapons and, when they do this, the impact will be so devastating, it'll have a nuclear-like impact on the psychology of the West." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5213 2024-11-10T11:18:23+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5205 2024-11-10T11:11:43+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5237 2024-11-10T11:07:08+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5207 2024-11-10T11:00:37+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5239 2024-11-09T23:23:24+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

puts it: "The ones who know a genocide is happening but avoid making too much noise about it because they want to make sure the Democrats win the election are wrong. The ones who know it’s a genocide but don’t respond to this reality with the appropriate level of urgency, forcefulness and focus are wrong." It's an appalling dereliction of duty for anyone like Oliver. There's no avoiding that conclusion. Watching SNL is just like watching John Oliver: the most interesting part is figuring out who their sponsors are by the negative imprint left by who they don't lampoon. SNL, just like Oliver, is 100% in the tank for the Democrats, so they have zero interest in getting the other 50% of the nation. Like Oliver, they just outright call anyone who'd not voting Democrat idiots. Just flat-out. No interest in understanding or bridging the gap. They have only superciliousness to offer, served up by someone who's so dumb that they actually believe that they're the intellectually superior half of the conversation. It can get grating. As an example of where SNL can be funny while ostensibly lampooning billionaires' flouting of labor law, they just had a pretty funny skit about Amazon Prime Day. [media] They didn't go as hard as they could have -- not even close -- but it's hard to imagine that Amazon and Jeff Bezos are sponsors. "Prime day is sort of like Hanukkah in that they said it would last one day, but I worked eight straight days. Yeah, I worked so much, I had to make up a whole new day of the week. Floozday. Yeah. That's when you close your eyes on Friday and wake up behind the wheel on Tuesday." After she fell asleep and Che woke her up, she apologized for lashing out because, "I was just a little disoriented to wake up and not be driving." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5230 2024-11-09T17:39:51+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5245 2024-11-08T23:28:08+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5238 2024-11-08T23:13:55+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. WikiLeaks grew famous for (A) publishing only true information that (B) shone an extremely harsh and unfavorable light on the practices of the U.S. empire and its vassals. As you can perhaps imagine, Wikileaks and whistleblowers were thus pursued relentlessly. Assange ended up holing up in the Ecuardorian embassy in London for ten years. He was made an Ecuadoran citizen. A change of government to one more amenable to the U.S. revoked his citizenship. The UK broke all laws of diplomatic immunity and sent its police into the embassy to get him out. They stuffed him in Newgate prison and tortured him. He'd been, until July 2024, a de-facto political prisoner of the U.S. for 14 years. They finally stopped trying to extradite him when he “confessed to journalism.” The precedent is grim, though. The U.S. reserves the right to pursue any citizen in any country for saying unfavorable things about it. Journalism is, in a sense, dead. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5259 2024-11-08T17:48:42+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=5204 2024-10-26T08:44:43+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4985 2024-08-12T15:19:08+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes about the Bush years. It's essentially an essay that is a campaign ad for choosing the lesser evil, which is... ]]>

writes about the Bush years. It's essentially an essay that is a campaign ad for choosing the lesser evil, which is clearly the Democrats in the author's eyes. They exhorted readers to choose now, and to start donating at least $25 regularly, even thought that's a "pathetic" amount. How much money do these dopes need from regular people? The next article on the same site was a carton "Catspeak" by Brooks Riley that showed two cats talking to each other. "First cat: Hillary called Tucker Carlson a 'useful idiot'! "Second cat: It's the 'useful' part that bothers me." A real knee-slapper. The cartoon was referencing Tucker Carlson's interview of Vladimir Putin. The author had been instructed by his masters to promulgate the message that the interview was useless. I didn't think it was; see my notes in "Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin for over two hours" . The next article after that was called "Orange Creamsicles: Facing the Idiotic Within our Borders" by Mark Harvey . I didn't even bother reading that one as it is festooned with a big picture of Trump supporters, who surely come under the wheels of the author's incisive wit and political-analytical acumen. It probably also ends with an exhortation to send money to the Democrats. It became much easier weeding out the news when a normally reliable source of essays has decided to function as an arm of the Democratic party for the next 10 months or so. This has continued for the next five months, with the intensity rising to fever pitch over the last several weeks. Even sources of fun cat pictures like Reddit have been completely co-opted like Agent Smith taking over NPCs in the Matrix. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4984 2024-08-12T15:07:49+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is from February but the incident it describes has been repeated at least a dozen -- if not dozens -- of times since. It illustrates quite concisely how you should write about war crimes when you wholeheartedly support them. It hits all the standard notes: ... ]]>

is from February but the incident it describes has been repeated at least a dozen -- if not dozens -- of times since. It illustrates quite concisely how you should write about war crimes when you wholeheartedly support them. It hits all the standard notes: * Attacking a hospital is a normal thing. * It's perfectly reasonable to tell everyone in a hospital to evacuate. * The hospital is a enemy headquarters (this time it's true!). * The enemy uses human shields. * The purpose of the attack is not to destroy the hospital, but to find hostages. * None of this is your own fault. You've been forced into it by the enemy. Check it out. "News broke this morning that the Israeli military is beginning its raid of Khan Younis' Nasser Hospital, in the Gaza Strip. The BBC reported that one trauma surgeon said, from inside the building, that "tanks and snipers" currently surround the hospital from "all directions." "The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have told all people inside the hospital to evacuate immediately so that it can begin its raid. "The Israeli military reports that it has intelligence—including testimony from now-released hostages—that indicates that Hamas is using Nasser Hospital as an important spot for its military operations, which would be in keeping with the well-established pattern of Hamas using civilians, including the sick and wounded, as human shields. There is some belief among the Israeli military that either living captives or the bodies of hostages might be located at Nasser Hospital. "Meanwhile, Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry officials claim that the IDF's operation has destroyed critical areas of the hospital, crippling its operations and harming displaced people who were sheltering there. "Both could be true, and Israel must continue weighing whether raids like these are worth the cost—a situation it's been forced into in part due to Hamas' callous disregard for human life." [image]It's a tragedy that this is the kind of stuff that people regularly consume, believe, and then just go about their day, chirpily supporting whatever Israel needs to do in order to keep itself alive for one more day. You don't even think about the fact that Israel has essentially normalized attacking hospitals as if that's not a high crime of the Geneva Conventions. Of course these kinds of attacks all make sense when you're literally fighting for your existence every day, when any reluctance or hesitation or mercy would result in the eradication of Israel and the extinguishing of the entire Jewish faith literally overnight. But if that fiction is not your context, then everything that Israel is doing looks like a horrific war crime. It's always this way: when the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, there was tremendous domestic support since people had been told for months how their very lives depended on the U.S. "defending itself" in those countries. The indoctrination is incredibly strong; every time I return to this country and see what media they consume here, it all makes sense how people have no chance to think their own thoughts. They will do what they're told. They can't seem to turn away from it -- and then they no longer even think they might want to, as they become totally engrossed in every mendacious and misleading detail. In a similar vein, the article "Biden is Right to Grant Temporary Refuge to Palestinian Migrants Already in US, but Should go Further" by Ilya Somin illustrates what it looks like when an author wholeheartedly believes in the unassailable righteousness of his (adopted) country's existential clash with its implacable and incomprehensibly evil enemy. Ilya Somin is a fool, but I scanned his short article anyway. He cited another fool, then wrote that he agreed with it. He starts off by saying that he agrees with the Biden administration that 6,000 Palestinians shouldn't be forced to return to Palestine just because their visas have technically run out. "[...] the Biden administration granted temporary refuge to Palestinian migrants currently in the United States, who might otherwise be subject to deportation. The grant of Deferred Enforced Departure status (known as DED) allows about 6000 Palestinians to remain in the US for an additional 18 months." "As the White House statement on the subject puts it, because of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, "humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territories, and primarily Gaza, have significantly deteriorated." That surely understates the point: thousands of people have been killed, and much of Gaza leveled. There is less extensive, but still significant, violence on the West Bank. In addition, Gaza Palestinians are subject to Hamas's brutal tyranny, which is awful, even aside from the war." While he acknowledges the destruction in Gaza and "violence on the West Bank" -- I like how he writes "on" rather than "in" because he thinks the West Bank is literally the bank of a river -- he doesn't assign any agency to the violence until he attributes "tyranny" to "Hamas". Somin and his peers are shockingly brainwashed. Don't worry. I didn't judge him prematurely or harshly. He goes on. "In my view, the primary blame for this situation falls on Hamas for using Gaza as a base for its horrific terrorist attacks, and then using the civilian population as human shields. But, regardless of the blame, it would be wrong to force Palestinian migrants (or anyone) to return to a deadly war zone—or to live under a system of quasi-medieval oppression." Israel doesn't enter into this. It's all Hamas. Israel has nothing to do with the destruction in Gaza, which, to his credit, he at least doesn't pretend doesn't exist, like so many other commentators of his ideological ilk. "In a previous post, I explained why opening the door to Gaza refugees is the right thing to do on both moral and strategic grounds: it can save thousands of people from needless suffering and death, while also making it easier for Israel to defeat Hamas." It's also 100% the goal of Israel to throw out all Palestinians and not let them back in. Not a single one of them is going to "go back" after all of this. Israel will not allow it and the attack is ensuring that there is nowhere to go anyway. There will be nothing left to which to return in Gaza. "Why would anyone other than Hamas—especially the U.S.—support locking Gazans in like North Korea does? Since 1948, Arab states and the U.N. have refused to treat Palestinians like ordinary refugees, keeping them in a unique intergenerational limbo to provide a reservoir of resentment against Israel." What the f@&k are you talking about? Most Palestinians live in neighboring countries already. It's interesting to see how Somin and others portray themselves as humanitarians who care about the plight of Palestinians, but treat the Israeli violence as completely without human agency, as if Palestinians are fleeing an earthquake. "Letting Gazans leave not only would reduce human suffering; it would provide a test and incentive for postwar governance. Refugees often return to their home countries when governance stabilizes after a conflict. For this to happen, the new civilian administration would have to make it a place where Gazans want to live, not where they are prevented from leaving." "[...] suggest the US use its large-scale aid to Egypt as leverage to pressure the Egyptian government to let Gaza refugees leave." Did you get that? 1. Literally everything that's wrong with Gaza is Hamas's, if not the Gazans' own fault. 2. Israel has nothing to do with it, as it's just defending itself from Hamas's violence. 3. Egypt is primarily at fault for the massacre and suffering for not letting Palestinians leave. Nowhere there does Somin address the expressed and stated fact that any Palestinian who leaves Gaza or the West Bank now will never go back. It's kind of fascinating to read a few of these, but it's tiring. The article "United Nations Warns Israeli Attack On Rafah Could Lead To More Hostages Being Rescued" is on a site that considers itself to be a Christian Satirical Online Magazine. It has fully bought -- hook, line, and sinker -- the Israeli narrative. It literally doesn't care about Palestinians. Christian charity doesn't enter into it. If you're feeling generous, you might assume that they have no idea what's really going on. If you don't know, then you're in a majority of people living inside a carefully engineered media bubble that keeps out reality and maintains a sphere that allows you to go about your day without harshly judging literally everyone in your government and media. You either don't know, or you don't care. Both are bad; the second is worse. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4974 2024-08-12T00:12:52+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

came out in February, so about six months ago. I took some notes on it before the U.S. decided to completely ignore the Venezuelan election results a few weeks ago. So, how was it going in Venezuela before the election? "Even with" ... ]]>

came out in February, so about six months ago. I took some notes on it before the U.S. decided to completely ignore the Venezuelan election results a few weeks ago. So, how was it going in Venezuela before the election? "Even with limited sanctions relief, Venezuela anticipated a 27% increase in revenues for its state-run oil company. Experts predicted a “moderate economic expansion” after having experienced the greatest economic contraction in peacetime of any country in the modern era. Venezuela was on the road to recovery. "Then on January 30, the US rescinded the license for gold sales and threatened to allow the oil license to expire on April 18, which could cost $1.6B in lost revenue. The ostensible reason for the flip in US policy was the failure of the Venezuelan supreme court to overturn previous prohibitions on Maria Corina Machado and some other opposition politicians from running for public office." The U.S.: If you don't let our CIA-funded candidates run for office, we will go back on our deal. Democracy FTW 🙌 . Who is Machado, you ask? "Machado’s treatment by the Venezuelan government has arguably erred more on the side of leniency than severity. In most other countries, a person with her rap sheet would be behind bars. "Back in 2002, Machado signed the Carmona Decree, establishing a coup government. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had been deposed in a military coup backed by the US. The constitution was suspended, the legislature dismissed, and the supreme court shuttered. "Fortunately for democracy in Venezuela, the coup lasted less than three days. The people spontaneously took to the streets and restored their elected government. Machado, who now incredulously claims she signed the coup government’s founding decree mistakenly, was afforded amnesty." "The New York Times described the supreme court’s decision to uphold her ban as “a crippling blow to prospects for credible elections…in exchange for the lifting of crippling US economic sanctions.” In other words, the Venezuelans did not bow to blackmail and allow a criminal to run for public office." The New York Times taking the high road, as always. How in God's name can anyone think of this newspaper as liberal or "leftist" in any way? It's the state news service for an increasingly fascist empire. The U.S. uses incredible economic sanctions to squeeze Venezuela, then tries to force its candidates of choice into the elections. When those candidates don't win, they cheerily start spreading rumors that the Venezuelan elections are corrupt. They will continue to push sticks into Venezuela's spokes until they cry uncle. Cuba never did but they paid a tremendous price for it. They ended up with a good deal more authoritarianism than they would have had they been able to trade and interact with neighboring countries more freely, without the Empire's foot on its neck. [image]The same thing is happening to Venezuela. Why Venezuela? Because of its oil. And also very much because the mafia does not like it when countries pretend that they don't need the U.S. The U.S. doesn't care about the people there in any way. It pays as much lip service as it needs to in order to continue doing whatever it wants with a minimum of domestic political blowback. The U.S. only has to pretend to care about the people living on top of what it considers to be its oil, by the self-declared Monroe Doctrine. Most people in the U.S. don't even want it to pretend to care. They consider that to be "weak". There's really not a lot of daylight between U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, which is why they're best buddies. "Arguably, the US economy would benefit more by promoting commerce with some 40 sanctioned countries than from restricting trade. And the surest remedy for the immigration crisis on the country’s southern border is to end the sanctions, which are producing conditions that have compelled so many to leave their homes. Even US mainstream media has nearly universally concluded that sanctions “don’t work.”" They do work. They just don't have the effect that the elite tell everyone they will have. I imagine that someone is benefitting mightily from these sanctions. Otherwise, they would have been lifted immediately. That the sanctions never lead to the espoused goals of the sanctions, that dozens of millions suffer in sanctioned countries, that the sanctions lead to increased emigration -- and subsequent U.S. immigration -- doesn't matter at all. None of those are the real reasons for the sanctions. The sanctions are there to benefit one or more powerful groups. To repeat: if the sanctions were harming the elites of Empire, then they would have stopped immediately. There are no salient drawbacks to employing the sanctions, and there must be an upside. I suspect that there is a strong financial one for a few individuals. There is also the upside of the Empire reminding the world who is in charge. On that note, "In 2015 President Obama declared a “national emergency.” Venezuela, he claimed, posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security of the US. That was not fake news. The imperial hegemon recognizes the “threat of a good example” posed by a country such as Venezuela. As Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis observed, Venezuela is “a beacon of hope for the Global South, and Latin America in particular, an affront to US hegemony in its own ‘backyard.’”" You see? Empire's gotta burn down a store once in a while to convince everyone else to pay their protection money. But I bet they're all making mad cash on it, too. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4982 2024-02-19T22:36:38+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

(127 minutes), which is also available as "Ep. 73 The Vladimir Putin Interview" . The article "Tucker Carlson Interviews Vladimir Putin" by Tucker Carlson includes a transcript found on the "Kremlin’s website." You have to subscribe to Tucker Carlson to get the transcript... ]]>

(127 minutes), which is also available as "Ep. 73 The Vladimir Putin Interview" . The article "Tucker Carlson Interviews Vladimir Putin" by Tucker Carlson includes a transcript found on the "Kremlin’s website." You have to subscribe to Tucker Carlson to get the transcript from him. Those dirty commies in the Kremlin just gave it away for free. [image] The interview was over two hours. What follows are just some longer quotes I took from the transcript, with a few notes of my own. I've cherry-picked the stuff that Putin said that I broadly -- or even sometimes very specifically -- agree that he expressed in a realistic and historically accurate way. Where I disagreed with something that he said, I've noted it. I may have missed something; it's a long interview. He spoke completely extemporaneously, without notes or a teleprompter. It was clear that he was expressing how he personally sees these topics of international import. He didn't seem to be playing to his western audience in any way. Much of what he said, he's already formulated in similar ways -- if not occasionally identical ways -- in essays and in other speeches he's given. This is not to say that he's a hero, or even honorable, but only to say that, as the leader of a foreign power with no small amount of influence -- even if, as he acknowledges, it's not even close to that of the U.S. or China -- there seems to be a lot of opening for reasonably working with Russia under Putin. Russia asks that it not be treated as a vassal. If that cannot be guaranteed, then there is no need for negotiation and the chips will fall where they may. Putin clearly indicates that he doesn't think that Russia is holding such bad cards. Their economy seems to be impervious to U.S. machinations. Putin speaks of an economy that is working for himself and other elites, but doesn't speak at all of the troubles on the ground that affect the large majority of Russia's population. This is not unlike how the U.S. -- or probably any other nation -- reports on its economy. What is clear is that many of the roadblocks to, say, Germany having its natural gas or Ukraine having peace, have been thrown up by the west. Russia has some conditions, but they seem eminently reasonable, at least for initial discussions to begin. Still, Putin starts off with a bald-faced lie. "if you don’t mind I will take only 30 seconds or one minute of your time for giving you a little historical background." Why was that a lie? Because it wasn't just "30 seconds or one minute". He proceeded to recite a Russian history lesson with a focus on "Where does Ukraine come from?" that starts with "[t]he Russian state started to exist as a centralized state in 862." It went on for about the first thirty minutes. After a few minutes, Tucker interrupts with "I am losing track of where in history we are?" "It was in the 13th century." Putin then positively leaps forward in time to 1654. After several more minutes, Putin says "[t]his briefing is coming to an end. It might be boring, but it explains many things." The modern-day discussion begins in earnest after that, with Tucker asking Putin why, if he believes that Ukraine is such a hodge-podge of cobbled-together lands that are really mostly Russian and Hungarian, didn't he just take it back at the beginning of his presidency, 22 years ago? The answer is obvious: because it wasn't causing trouble then. Ukraine means "border"; even its name derives from being Russia's border to Europe. The Soviet Union had let go of so many other territories -- Russia's aim wasn't to regain territory, it was to guarantee a modicum of regional stability and security for Russia itself. With NATO pushing right up to Russia's borders -- through the hand-puppet of Ukraine -- that was no longer possible. That, and the nearly decade-long civil war that had been fomented in eastern Ukraine, right on Russia's border, made it long-term impossible for Russia to just stand by and watch NATO -- the U.S. -- militarize its border. The U.S. was positively braying about how it not only had the right to take up Ukraine as its ally, but also to move some of its own nuclear weapons there. It was utter madness to anyone who wasn't 100% in the tank for NATO's -- and primarily the U.S.'s -- view of how the world works. "I understand that my long speeches probably fall outside of the genre of an interview. That is why I asked you at the beginning: ”Are we going to have a serious talk or a show?“ You said — a serious talk. So bear with me please." Deep breath. We're up to 1991 now. He finishes up the history lesson. Tucker asks, "But we have a strong China that the West doesn’t seem to be very afraid of. What about Russia, what do you think convinced the policymakers to take it down?" This is ludicrous on its face. How can anyone think that the U.S. is not afraid of China? They're sanctioning them to death and encircling them with bases. Putin answers, "The West is afraid of a strong China more than it fears a strong Russia because Russia has 150 million people, and China has a 1.5 billion population, and its economy is growing by leaps and bounds — over five percent a year, it used to be even more. But that’s enough for China. As Bismark once put it, potentials are most important. China’s potential is enormous — it is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It has already overtaken the United States, quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip. "Let’s not talk about who is afraid of whom, let’s not reason in such terms. And let’s get into the fact that after 1991, when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of ”civilized nations,“ nothing like this happened. You tricked us." We move on from there to the underpinnings of the current conflict in Ukraine. Putin reiterates the history of the Minsk agreement up until the end of 2021 and mentions, not for the last time, how the west just lies about everything, that they "simply led us by the nose," which, well, he's not wrong. The U.S. -- and Europe in its wake -- sees itself always as on the right side of history and in the moral role in anything that it does, so it sees no problem with simply lying to get what it wants. The ends justify the means, if Russia is to be vanquished. "[...] the current Ukrainian leadership declared that it would not implement the Minsk Agreements, which had been signed, as you know, after the events of 2014, in Minsk, where the plan of peaceful settlement in Donbass was set forth. But no, the current Ukrainian leadership, Foreign Minister, all other officials and then President himself said that they don’t like anything about the Minsk Agreements. In other words, they were not going to implement it. A year or a year and a half ago, former leaders of Germany and France said openly to the whole world that they indeed signed the Minsk Agreements but they never intended to implement them. They simply led us by the nose." With the next treaty on the table in March/April of 2022 -- nearly immediately after the initial Russian invasion -- he describes why the Russian troops left Kiev. It was not, as detailed in the western press, because they had turned tail and run. "My counterparts in France and Germany said, ”How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev. ‘I said, ‘All right.’ We withdrew the troops from Kiev. "As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a longstanding armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe. That is how the situation has developed. And that is how it looks now." When Tucker asks him what he thinks of possible U.S. participation in the war, with actual boots on the ground, Putin responds, "This is a provocation, and a cheap provocation at that. "I do not understand why American soldiers should fight in Ukraine. There are mercenaries from the United States there. The biggest number of mercenaries comes from Poland, with mercenaries from the United States in second place, and mercenaries from Georgia in third place. Well, if somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity on the brink of a very serious, global conflict. This is obvious. "Do the United States need this? What for? Thousands of miles away from your national territory! Don’t you have anything better to do? "You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt – more than 33 trillion dollars. You have nothing better to do, so you should fight in Ukraine? Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement, already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end. And, realizing this, actually return to common sense, start respecting our country and its interests and look for certain solutions. It seems to me that this is much smarter and more rational." Tucker asks Putin why he doesn't just tell the world what the U.S. did to the Nordstream pipeline if he has, as he says, proof that the U.S. secret services blew it up. Putin chuckles and responds, "In the war of propaganda it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media are American financial institutions. Don’t you know that?" Tucker acknowledges that Russia would probably not make much headway in the western press with their allegations, but wonders then why Germany doesn't defends itself and its interests. The destruction of the pipeline put it directly in thrall to the U.S., paying four times the price that any other nation pays for its natural gas. "Tucker Carlson: Yes. But here is a question you may be able to answer. You worked in Germany, famously. The Germans clearly know that their NATO partner did this, that they damaged their economy greatly – it may never recover. Why are they being silent about it? That is very confusing to me. Why wouldn’t the Germans say something about it? "Vladimir Putin: This also confuses me. But today’s German leadership is guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its national interests, otherwise it is difficult to explain the logic of their action or inaction. After all, it is not only about Nord Stream-1, which was blown up, and Nord Stream-2 was damaged, but one pipe is safe and sound, and gas can be supplied to Europe through it, but Germany does not open it. We are ready, please." Putin mentions the "golden billion", a phrase I understood immediately, but that I'd never heard before. I'm not sure if he understands the unstated irony that he and his cronies are very much in the golden billion, but that probably most of the populace over which he rules is not. Perhaps he is appealing to them? Or to the other nations of the BRICS, like Indonesia and India? It's unclear, but he's trying to lead us to think that he truly believes that the world would be better if wealth was divided in a more egalitarian manner. Perhaps he does, as long as he personally doesn't have to give anything up. At any rate, it is safe to say that he thinks that wealth and power should accrue to the nations to which it naturally falls, either by resources or by sheer hard work, rather than to the nations that manage to take what they want. Russia and China have that in common: they are not seeking empire in the way that the U.S. very aggressively does. This much is clear. "The world should be a single whole, security should be shared, rather than meant for the ”golden billion“. That is the only scenario where the world could be stable, sustainable and predictable. Until then, while the head is split into two parts, it is an illness, a serious adverse condition. It is a period of a severe disease that the world is now going through." Putin probably has no idea how ironic it is for him to be lauding journalism, a field that he has decimated during his rule. Politskaya would like a word. "I think that, thanks to honest journalism — this work is akin to work of the doctors, this could somehow be remedied." They quickly move on -- though the subject of journalism would reappear at the end again -- to the insanity of the U.S. wielding its most important asset as a weapon that damages the U.S. more than it does its intended targets. Putin talks about the US. Dollar and economic sanctions. I've quoted liberally from this section because it's quite important to see how the stewards of the western economy either don't know or don't care that they're destroying value for no reason. This, at a time when we need every reason we can get to fight climate change, rather than to fight stupid wars -- either economic or military. "As soon as the political leadership decided to use the US dollar as a tool of political struggle, a blow was dealt to this American power. I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do, and a grave mistake. "Look at what is going on in the world. Even the United States’ allies are now downsizing their dollar reserves. Seeing this, everyone starts looking for ways to protect themselves. But the fact that the United States applies restrictive measures to certain countries, such as placing restrictions on transactions, freezing assets, etc., causes grave concern and sends a signal to the whole world. "What did we have here? Until 2022, about 80 per cent of Russia’s foreign trade transactions were made in US dollars and euros. US dollars accounted for approximately 50 per cent of our transactions with third countries, while currently it is down to 13 per cent. It was not us who banned the use of the US dollar, we had no such intention. It was the decision of the United States to restrict our transactions in US dollars. I think it is a complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States itself and its tax payers, as it damages the US economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world. "By the way, our transactions in Yuan accounted for about 3 per cent. Today, 34 per cent of our transactions are made in Rubles, and about as much, a little over 34 per cent, in Yuan. "Why did the United States do this? My only guess is self-conceit. They probably thought it would lead to a full collapse, but nothing collapsed. Moreover, other countries, including oil producers, are thinking of and already accepting payments for oil in yuan. Do you even realize what is going on or not? Does anyone in the United States realize this? What are you doing? You are cutting yourself off… all experts say this. Ask any intelligent and thinking person in the United States what the dollar means for the US? You are killing it with your own hands. "Tucker Carlson: I think that is a fair assessment. The question is what comes next? And maybe you trade one colonial power for another, much less sentimental and forgiving colonial power? Is the BRICS, for example, in danger of being completely dominated by the Chinese economy? In a way that is not good for their sovereignty. Do you worry about that? "Vladimir Putin: We have heard those boogeyman stories before. It is a boogeyman story. We are neighbours with China. You cannot choose neighbours, just as you cannot choose close relatives. We share a border of 1000 kilometers with them. This is number one. "Second, we have a centuries-long history of coexistence, we are used to it. "Third, China’s foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive, its idea is to always look for compromise, and we can see that." Putin expands on the topic of the shifting global economic picture, citing figures about the relative share of the G7 countries -- it was the G8 until Russia was expelled only ten years ago in 2014! -- versus the BRICS nations. The BRICS nations now account for more of the global economy, and certainly a large majority of manufacturing. The G7 have a much larger proportion of their share coming from banking and other financialized services. And isn't it wild that the ostracizing of Russia began in earnest (again) only a decade ago? Before that, there were sanctions, but they were milder. And before that, there was the crippling of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet. But still, Russia was still in the club a little bit, anyway. No alliances, no NATO, but they were in the G8. Then came the coup in Ukraine, provoking the annexation, and the nearly immediate banning of Russia from the G8. Their seat in the Security Council remains. "Look, if memory serves me right, back in 1992, the share of the G7 countries in the world economy amounted to 47 per cent, whereas in 2022 it was down to, I think, a little over 30 per cent. The BRICS countries accounted for only 16 per cent in 1992, but now their share is greater than that of the G7. It has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine. This is due to the trends of global development and world economy that I mentioned just now, and this is inevitable. This will keep happening, it is like the rise of the sun — you cannot prevent the sun from rising, you have to adapt to it. How do the United States adapt? With the help of force: sanctions, pressure, bombings, and use of armed forces." Tucker asks about whether a change in U.S. leadership would help? Does Putin think that the Biden administration is particularly intractable? "It is not about the personality of the leader, it is about the elites’ mindset. If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions, dominates the American society, nothing will change, it will only get worse. But if, in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time, using the advantages that the U.S. still has today, then, perhaps, something may change." Putin returns to the topic of the global economy, specifically with China's and Russia's role in it. "Look, China’s economy has become the first economy in the world in purchasing power parity; in terms of volume it overtook the US a long time ago. The USA comes second, then India (one and a half billion people), and then Japan, with Russia in the fifth place. Russia was the first economy in Europe last year, despite all the sanctions and restrictions. Is this normal, from your point of view: sanctions, restrictions, impossibility of payments in dollars, being cut off from SWIFT services, sanctions against our ships carrying oil, sanctions against airplanes, sanctions in everything, everywhere? The largest number of sanctions in the world which are applied – are applied against Russia. And we have become Europe’s first economy during this time." Tucker asked Putin about the potential for change in the U.S. through electoral action, for fresh ideas of the sort Putin thinks that the U.S. needs in order to better fit into the global order that is emerging, whether it likes it or not. "America is a complex country, conservative on the one hand, rapidly changing on the other. It’s not easy for us to sort it all out. "Who makes decisions in the elections – is it possible to understand this, when each state has its own legislation, each state regulates itself, someone can be excluded from the elections at the state level. It is a two-stage electoral system, it is very difficult for us to understand it. "Certainly there are two parties that are dominant, the Republicans and the Democrats, and within this party system, the centers that make decisions, that prepare decisions." Putin questions not only the wisdom, but also the morality, of trying to beat down any possible competitors on the global level. These competitors will exist by sheer force of numbers, no matter what. He cites Indonesia as a rising player, that just by the sheer size of its population and the accompanying manufacturing power, will take its rightful place among powerful nations soon enough. "[...] it is necessary to continue ”chiseling“ Russia, to try to break it up, to create on this territory several quasi-state entities and to subdue them in a divided form, to use their combined potential for the future struggle with China. This is a mistake, including the excessive potential of those who worked for the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It is necessary to get rid of this, there should be new, fresh forces, people who look into the future and understand what is happening in the world. "Look at how Indonesia is developing? 600 million people. Where can we get away from that? Nowhere, we just have to assume that Indonesia will enter (it is already in) the club of the world’s leading economies, no matter who likes or dislikes it." Back to Ukraine, with specifics about why Zelensky was elected and how he's betrayed the people who voted for him, who'd elected him to make peace, to end the civil war. Instead, Zelensky expanded the civil war and provoked Russia into invasion. There were many, many ways to avoid the invasion. They would have required relinquishing some power to federalist territories in the east -- as outlined in the Minsk agreements -- but that seems eminently preferable to where Zelensky is steering the ship of state of Ukraine now. "[Zelensky] came to power on the expectations of Ukrainian people that he would lead Ukraine to peace. He talked about this, it was thanks to this that he won the election overwhelmingly. But then, when he came to power, in my opinion, he realized two things: firstly, it is better not to clash with neo-Nazis and nationalists, because they are aggressive and very active, you can expect anything from them, and secondly, the US-led West supports them and will always support those who antagonize with Russia – it is beneficial and safe. So he took the relevant position, despite promising his people to end the war in Ukraine. He deceived his voters." Tucker asks why Putin doesn't try harder to get negotiations going again? If he wants peace, then why doesn't he go to the table with Ukraine. Putin responds that it is because Ukraine refuses to talk, that Russia has always been ready to negotiate -- before the invasion and war, soon after the invasion, and ever since. "President of Ukraine issued a decree prohibiting negotiations with us. Let him cancel that decree and that’s it. We have never refused negotiations indeed. We hear all the time: is Russia ready? Yes, we have not refused! It was them who publicly refused. Well, let him cancel his decree and enter into negotiations. We have never refused." At 01:50:00, he draws a comparison between the threat imposed on the world by a failure to control the production of nuclear weapons with that posed by AI. It's impossible to stop it like we couldn't stop gunpowder. There will come a time when we would need to regulate this internationally. "Humanity has to consider what is going to happen due to the newest developments in genetics or in AI. One can make an approximate prediction of what will happen. Once mankind felt an existential threat coming from nuclear weapons, all nuclear nations began to come to terms with one another since they realized that negligent use of nuclear weaponry could drive humanity to extinction. "It is impossible to stop research in genetics or AI today, just as it was impossible to stop the use of gunpowder back in the day. But as soon as we realize that the threat comes from unbridled and uncontrolled development of AI, or genetics, or any other fields, the time will come to reach an international agreement on how to regulate these things." Tucker asks about the NYT journalist who's serving time in a Russian prison for espionage. Putin basically says: you have many cards to trade for him. Do so, and he's yours. The only reason that Gershkovich is still in prison in Russia is because the U.S. refuses to negotiate and just wants him returned "for free", when the U.S. has many prisoners that Russia would like back, people that they've similarly accused of spying for Russia while in the U.S. They traded for the basketball player (Griner?); they can trade for the journalist. "I do not rule out that the person you referred to, Mister Gershkovich, may return to his motherland. By the end of the day, it does not make any sense to keep him in prison in Russia. We want the U.S. special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing. We are ready to talk. Moreover, the talks are underway, and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success. Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well, but we have to come to an agreement." Back to Ukraine and a potential settlement/peace agreement. "Tucker Carlson: So, I just want to make sure I am not misunderstanding what you are saying — and I don’t think that I am — I think you are saying you want a negotiated settlement to what’s happening in Ukraine. "Vladimir Putin: Right. And we made it, we prepared a huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He affixed his signature to some of the provisions, not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said: “We were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago, eighteen months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talked us out of it and we missed that chance.” Well, you missed it, you made a mistake, let them get back to that, that is all. Why do we have to bother ourselves and correct somebody else’s mistakes? "I know one can say it is our mistake, it was us who intensified the situation and decided to put an end to the war that started in 2014 in Donbas, as I have already said, by means of weapons. Let me get back to further in history, I already told you this, we were just discussing it. Let us go back to 1991 when we were promised that NATO would not be expanded, to 2008 when the doors to NATO opened, to the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine declaring Ukraine a neutral state. Let us go back to the fact that NATO and US military bases started to appear on the territory of Ukraine creating threats for us. Let us go back to coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly. But they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?" Just as an aside, a commentator on Twitter reflected my reaction to the juxtaposition of this interview coming out and the "diagnosis" that Joe Biden is mentally unfit to stand trial, "Vladimir Putin just spent 30 minutes going over the last 1,000 years history of Russia and Ukraine in detail without notes. "Joe Biden can't remember when his son died. "God help us all" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4950 2024-02-13T22:49:31+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

describes how the U.S. and UK opened a new front in their war on the middle east. "[...] supposedly it is Yemen that is the “aggressor,” carrying out “unprecedented attacks” on US military forces deployed in" ... ]]>

describes how the U.S. and UK opened a new front in their war on the middle east. "[...] supposedly it is Yemen that is the “aggressor,” carrying out “unprecedented attacks” on US military forces deployed in the Red Sea, thousands of miles from the US border. American imperialism, which has a military larger than that of the next 10 countries combined, claims to be waging a “defensive” war on the other side of the world against a small, oppressed and impoverished country." Not for the first time, though, right? Vietnam was sold as a defensive war -- defending against the specter of communism and the terrifying "domino theory". Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada. They were all defensive. The U.S. is always defending its interests, so every act of aggression it perpetrates is, in fact, defensive. A rather banal rhetorical trick that otherwise-intelligent people seem to delight in falling for. It follows that preemptive attacks are also defensive. Since there is always a slight -- perceived or actual -- to which one can point, everything is defensive. The Pentagon, which runs the by-far-largest military force that mankind has ever seen, stated, "We’re not interested in a war with Yemen. We’re not interested in a conflict of any kind." JFC. 🤦‍♂️ So there you go. They just spend one trillion dollars per year on occupation and war because the U.S. is defending itself. It's true, though! The U.S. thinks the entire planet belongs to it. That notion -- the notion of empire -- must be defended from anyone who thinks otherwise -- even against the other people living on it.. "For nearly a decade, the Houthis in Yemen have been subject to ruthless slaughter, waged by Saudi Arabia but armed and financed by the United States. According to the United Nations, 377,000 people have been killed in a genocidal campaign that has involved blockades resulting in mass starvation and disease. First under Obama and then under Trump, the US financed this assault with more than $54 billion in military equipment, aided and abetted by its imperialist allies, including the UK. "The devastation of Yemen is part of more than 30 years of unending and expanding war, spearheaded and led by American imperialism, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990-91. This included the first Gulf War in 1990; the dismantling of Yugoslavia, culminating in the war against Serbia in 1999; the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; the second war against Iraq in 2003; the war against Libya in 2011; and the CIA-backed civil war in Syria that began the same year. "Every single administration since that of Bill Clinton has authorized military operations, airstrikes, and destabilization operations in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aiden from Yemen, seeking to control the critical waterway leading to the Suez Canal." [image]That's a good summary of the U.S. Empire's defensive posture. Look -- people don't pay their protection money willingly. You gotta lean on 'em a bit. Sometimes a lot, for those who are hard of hearing. [The goal has always been Iran] Like Iran. "The launching of military strikes against Yemen marks a new stage in the deepening imperialist military offensive throughout the Middle East and beyond. The US and its imperialist allies are waging a de facto war against Iran, working to eliminate Iran’s military allies throughout the Middle East. The strikes against Yemen are directed at encircling Iran and provoking it into retaliation against US forces, which could be used to justify a full-scale war against Tehran." Bush II listed Iran as one of the baddies. The sanctions have continued since then uninterrupted. The only time most people hear about Iran is either when they're being accused of trying to develop nuclear weapons (they're not) or when an uprising looks ready to break the stranglehold that the mullahs have there -- not that the U.S. would support an open, democratic regime there. It doesn't need f*@kiing France there; it wants something like another Iraq: keep the cheap oil flowing under U.S. aegis, don't get too uppity, and don't think too much about stuff. It's incredible to think that the war on Iran was basically declared the second the mullahs took over and the U.S. never forgot about it. Through an unbroken chain of administrations led by both parties, the animus has remained, utterly unchanged. Biden's foriegn policy is underpinned by the same precepts as Bush I or Bush II. Obama and Clinton looked no different. They all ran wars and incursions. Reagan and Carter as well. Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy were in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua. Truman mopped up Japan. Eisenhower was in Korea, for whatever reason. He was also quite busy squashing any leftist notions all over Europe, in Greece, Portugal, and Italy, among others. If you're at all interested in knowing more, check out William Blum's Killing Hope (I read it in 2001, before I'd even started tracking my books) and Rogue Superpower (which I read in "2003" , before I'd started writing notes for books). Or, like, anything by Noam Chomsky, but most especially his latest, which he wrote together with the inestimable Vijay Prashad, "The Withdrawal" "Every war launched by the US and its imperialist allies has ended in one bloody debacle after the other, with millions of people killed. But each disaster only reinforces the determination of US imperialism to use war as a means to secure its global hegemony." That's all it is. Everything else is just window dressing. [The Biden administration is a mad dog] The article "Western Empire Bombs Yemen To Protect Israel's Genocide Operations In Gaza" by Caitlin Johnstone adds, "[...] the US and the UK just bombed the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide. Not only that, they bombed the very same country in which they just spent years backing Saudi Arabia’s genocidal atrocities which killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2015 and 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Houthis from taking power." This is all done to protect trade routes, to keep prices low. The attacks by the Houthis have resulted in no casualties. They're annoying. They cause companies to lose money. Some stuff gets to some countries more slowly. The U.S. and UK bombed the Sanaa international airport in Yemen. WTF. No declaration of war. No attempt to negotiate. No consideration of alternatives. No congressional approval. Just a dictator shooting things. This is what people were afraid Trump would do. This is what I wrote at the time that Biden would likely do. He's a merciless piece of shit. He always has been. Apparently wars in Ukraine and Gaza are not enough for the Biden administration. Nothing ever makes them think it's time to back down, or that it might be time to negotiate, or that things might be getting out of hand. Forget cold wars. Biden makes everything hot immediately. He's fighting Russians directly in Syria -- and proxy-fighting them in Ukraine. He's funding and arming Saudi Arabia to flatten the Houthis in Yemen. He's funding and arming the Israelis to flatten the Palestinians in Gaza -- and supporting tons of violence in the West Bank as well. This is mindless violence, all to quash any hopes of rebellion against the empire. All to prevent any change to the system that subjugates so many and funnels so much wealth toward Empire -- and a handful of people in it. [Learning the lesson of violence] The world organizations are also proving to Yemen that attacking merchant vessels really is the only recourse, just like Israel convinced any Palestinians who dreamed of living without a boot on their neck that the only way to get it off is violence. The article "Technicality Could Sink Genocide Case v Israel" by Joe Lauria goes into more detail, but the upshot is that South Africa brought its case against Israel without 100% proper notification prior to the case, so Israel says that there is no standing "dispute", which means that South Africa shouldn't have been able to bring the case, and that the court should actually not even agree to hear it because it didn't follow procedure. Basically, if you put your fingers in your ears and scream so that you can't hear accusations, you can pretend to have been blindsided by an official accusation, just shocked at a court summons, upon which the court has to instead reprimand the accuser, telling them to start all over. I suppose it's a neat trick, that. Of course, it just means that international law is completely and utterly toothless unless it's being wielded against poor nations to relieve them of their resources and to load them up with debt incurred to pay fines for crimes committed by dictators emplaced and propped up for decades by the same countries that now accuse, prosecute, convict, and sentence them. In other words, international law is only wielded against African nations. It's a sham, a scam -- and it always has been. The "International rules-based order" is no stupider than what it purports to replace. Lauria's article writes, "American academic Norman Finkelstein, told an interviewer: “It will completely discredit the Court if they issue a decision — we have decided not to pursue this case of genocide because we don’t think there is a dispute. That just can’t work.” " "Murray added: "“I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s ‘no dispute’ argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means ‘no dispute’. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…”" [What do NYC liberals think?] All of the good little NYC liberals are lining up behind King Biden and his wars, of course. The article "Houthis And The Blowhards" by Scott H. Greenfield is representative. It states that anyone who disagrees with him loves terrorism. He writes, "These are our children, our academics, our overly-educated and unduly-passionate true believers that the terrorists are the good guys and these Israel, that the United States, both independently and in complicity with Israel, are evil." I didn't misquote that. He is nearly incoherent in his rage. As usual, you can almost see the spittle flying over the keyboard, flecking the screen. My, but how Mr. Greenfield likes to ascribe bad opinions to what he considers to be opponents, if only because they fail to unquestioningly love the things that he loves. He loves the USA and Israel, in no particular order. His context is that the U.S. modestly tiptoes through the world, minding its own business, and sometimes horrible, petty, small-minded, blinkered animals and terrorists wish harm on it and even try to do harm to it. The same story applies to Israel. In his mind, there is no agency on the part of either of these countries. In his mind, they are always just reacting in as measured a manner as possible in order to prevent the next unprovoked, unforeseeable, completely unjustified, and utterly unexplainable attack on the unutterable magnificence that is the ship of state of these great nations. Anyone with a different context is automatically assigned the most ridiculous of opinions, the most straw-man-like of justification for their ideas, opinions, and world-view. I’ve never seen him make any attempt to grapple with the real arguments that might be made. He always takes the biggest fools at their word—who, in fighting empire and against injustice, are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons—rather than taking on a real interlocutor, even if only a fictitious one. The Houthis attacked shipping vessels, harming no-one. The U.S. and UK obliterated cities and an international airport, killing dozens of civilians. Greenfield will never analyze whether his "side" might be unjustified in doing so. It’s perfectly OK with him for his "side" to break all sorts of laws "defending itself" because laws are for other countries. The epithet "terrorist" is exclusively for other states, certainly not his own or any with which he has developed an affinity. This is not a principle. This is just the same mush-brained American-liberal mindset that has helped build an empire. It’s great that he seems to be for justice for Americans wronged by the American court systems -- that's what he used to post about, almost exclusively -- but this penchant for justice and fairness doesn’t extend beyond the border. And it certainly doesn't extend to his precious Israel. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4962 2024-02-13T22:17:53+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes about the evils of META (Most Effective Tactics Available). The author cites an essay by Megan McArdle. Neither one of these fools can think of an example of META that corresponds to actual power. That perennial dipshit McArdle thinks that a 17-year-old... ]]>

writes about the evils of META (Most Effective Tactics Available). The author cites an essay by Megan McArdle. Neither one of these fools can think of an example of META that corresponds to actual power. That perennial dipshit McArdle thinks that a 17-year-old swatting hundreds of people is a good example. Greenfield sticks to the obvious, as cited below. "If you were big and strong, you could beat up someone small and weak. You could steal their wallet, watch and jewelry. The only thing that prevented this from happening constantly was the societal belief that this was wrong and bad, and that people who did this to other people were wrong and bad. " And here's another one of his hobby-horses, "The law prohibits the use of deadly force against another except in self-defense (with certain inapplicable exceptions). Protesters figured out that they could simply stand in front of a car, which would turn into a deadly weapon if intentionally driven into a person, and there wasn’t a damn thing the car could lawfully do about it. A handful of protesters could thus shut down thousands of cars, together with the thousands of people within them, to inflict misery for their cause with this one cool trick." [image]He and McArdle agree that "dubious asylum claims" are a dastardly life-hack exploited by immigrants. The common thread in all of their examples is that they are perpetrated by people with little-to-no power who obtain power through a hack. This pisses off elitists like McArdle and Greenfield the most because they feel that "those people" should know their place. The system has been rigged against them, but they should still play by the rules. Fair is fair. Except that no-one who actually has any power plays by those rules. That is what society teaches. Fake it 'til you make it. Cheat big or go home. McArdle and Greenfield are probably more than well-off enough to be taking advantage of dozens of sleazy tax loopholes that let them enjoy much more of the benefit of their burgeoning investments than they would in a fair society. Instead, they are focused laser-like on the evils of: * Immigrants with only the clothes on their back taking advantage of a country whose immigration system is overwhelmed because it spends all of its money bombing and fomenting unrest in the countries those people come from. * Mentally disturbed teenagers who use an unhinged and unquestioning and vastly overpowered and under-controlled police force to attack innocent people. * Climate activists who prevent people from driving to their jobs by unfairly gluing themselves to the road. None of these examples of META -- let's just call them "hacks" -- are admirable, but they're chump change. These examples are fleas on the back of the dog. The same dog that's tearing everyone's lives apart is complaining about the fleas and getting its victims to side with it. Neither are any of their examples of the people who have real power in society. The real hack is to figure out how to make money without doing much of anything, or to figure out how to con the government out of a lot of money, then use that money to maintain the structure that let you get rich and to manipulate it into making you even richer. I think it's much more relevant to talk about "levers" instead of META or even "hacks". Western civilization seems to have settled on running a society that's inherently scammy. People will find ways to scam. They are encouraged to do so. The whole of modern society is a Swiss cheese of ethics and morals, where we've been taught that nothing means anything, unless you can get money. [media] It's inevitable that the parchment of laws is going to get a bit holey as everyone who gets a lot of money pops holes in it. Go read some of Vince McMahon's alleged text messages -- the article "Vince McMahon’s Disturbing Texts to Janel Grant in Trafficking Lawsuit Revealed" by Subjoheet Mukherjee includes enough of them to give you an appalling idea. Those will convince you that the problem is not at the bottom but at the top. The people taking the most advantage of the holes in society's rules are the ones who made them. McMahon's text messages also illustrate how corrupt and debased a society is for obviously deranged people like him to be able to not only succeed, but basically win. As "Some Thoughts On Vince McMahon" by Chris Seaton writes, "Why is a billionaire in his seventies who spends his days dictating his every word to professional assistants writing text messages like a drunken, horny 17 year old boy?" Or why is he "allegedly sexually assaulting a young woman with his boss while she recovered from cancer treatments." But sure, let's focus laser-like on how teenagers, climate activists, teen-aged climate activists, and desperate immigrants are tearing the country apart. A likely story (as my Mom loved to say). "Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf," as we say here in the DACH [1] region. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Deutschland, Austria, Confederatio Helvetica. I guess Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz didn't make a neat acronym. DÖS? That means nothing, unless you think it's the German version of the precursor to MS Windows. DACH means "roof" in German. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4973 2024-02-13T22:04:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4930 2024-02-11T22:23:47+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

podcast, the more it’s clear that the U.S. has never been ruled by good people -- or by smart people. They may be intelligent but their ideology makes them stupid. Or they’re just stupid. Either way, none of them are good. None of them have anything approaching... ]]>

podcast, the more it’s clear that the U.S. has never been ruled by good people -- or by smart people. They may be intelligent but their ideology makes them stupid. Or they’re just stupid. Either way, none of them are good. None of them have anything approaching universal principles. They are nearly all at least self-serving hypocrites. They are nearly all raging egos, bastards who don’t take the blame for anything. They are more than occasionally actual monsters. [The U.S. Empire hates Cuba] In Cuba's case, the institutional memory -- the institutional hatred -- is both breathtaking and persistent. The U.S. has never forgiven Cuba for its affront in throwing out its businesses. The Cuban Embargo continues, to this day. Cuba's been tenacious for long decades. They repulsed an actual invasion. Neither has the U.S. ever forgiven Iran for its revolution. Both countries will be revenged with eradication, come hell or high water. Iran's time seems to be coming around again. The monsters running the U.S. Empire are getting antsy. They think they see an opportunity for more direct intervention, as they like to call it -- such an anodyne term for what is effectively a wholly illegal assault on a sovereign nation. [The U.S. Empire hates Iran] The demonization of Iran is driven in large part by Israel, which led the charge to demand the U.S. bully Iran over nuclear weapons their neither had nor wanted. It's deeply ironic, of course, that this witch hunt is egged on by Israel, which does have nukes, but shouldn’t. The U.S. applies completely different rules -- the definition of hypocrisy. The inchoate hatred for Iran is palpable. Iran is back on the table because of the recent Israeli surge, which is shootings target in Syria and Lebanon. They will pretend that they aren’t instigating a war, then react in shock at the first, tiny response from Iran. This is par for the course. The U.S. media meanwhile describes every disturbed grain of sand in the Middle East as being due to Iran's malign influence. It's only a matter of time before they all convince themselves that they've put enough energy into building the so-called case against Iran to justify a direct assault. I don't know why they bother with all of the rigamarole. Nothing ever happens to the U.S. on an international level, anyway. Nicaragua once took them to an international court -- and won! -- but the U.S. just ignored the verdict. Israel is following this template by ignoring the recent ICJ decision. U.S. and Israeli athletes will continue to attend international competitions. They will continue to take part in unimpeded international trade. They will take part unhindered in financial markets. [The U.S. Empire is not going to help Cuba] But let's get back to Cuba. The article "U.S. Policy is Exacerbating Cuba’s Growing Humanitarian Crisis" by William M. Leogrande writes, "Since 2022, 442,000 undocumented Cubans have arrived at US borders, more than 50,000 have come as legal immigrants, and tens of thousands more have emigrated elsewhere. Cuba is hemorrhaging its young, best-educated people. Migration is also a blow to the domestic economy. Last year, more than 12,000 doctors left. In Havana alone, there are 17,000 vacant teachers positions. Even Cubans earning good salaries working for foreign diplomatic missions and international organizations are leaving because they cannot envision a future for themselves in their homeland." "The humanitarian situation on the island cries out for a US response. Washington has offered Cuba humanitarian aid before. In 2008, in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Gustav, George W. Bush’s administration offered Cuba $6.3 million of aid, $5 million directly to the Cuban government without preconditions. Just last year, the Biden administration provided $2 million in the wake of Hurricane Ian to help rebuild housing in the hardest hit communities." $2 million! My goodness. So much money. What will they do with all of that aid? "President Biden could take four simple steps to help ease the crisis:" Spoiler alert: Lifting the blockade is not on the list. "There are moments, John F. Kennedy wrote in Profiles in Courage, when politicians must choose between doing what’s politically expedient and doing what’s right." F@$k JFK. He only looks less bad relative to the psychos he surrounded himself with. He was an elitist racist. "I don't care what sort of fine words he wrote or said." <#kennedy-speech> When he had the chance, he did none of it. He was an anticommunist, sociopath-level capitalist with a bad temper and a chip on his shoulder -- just like all of the rest of them. [Joe Biden is a jerk] "Joe Biden is known for his genuine empathy for others. Right now, he is focused on the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the interminable war in Ukraine. But if the responsible senior officials in the State Department and National Security Council put Cuba on the president’s agenda and briefed him on the depth of the crisis there, maybe he would do the right thing." This is so unmoored from reality that it's barely comprehensible. Joe Biden is not "known for his genuine empathy" (writing "for others" is redundant); Joe Biden is a notorious asshole. He always has been. His sociopathy and mania are directly responsible for the Ukraine and Gaza nightmares. He is president of the United States. He chooses the people to run these policies. He chose to continue forcing Russia into a corner -- he completely ignored two proposals from Russia in 2021. He wanted the Ukraine war. His unquestioning support for Netanyahu is directly responsible for Israel's boldness in its most-recent war. He just opened a new war against Yemen -- yes, a war. What else do you call attacking another sovereign nation and killing its citizens with missiles? He's not inflicted with those situations -- he created them. He likes it this way. He doesn't give a shit about anything other than being reelected. He's a nightmare. Don't hold your breath until he helps Cuba, FFS. You've got to be kidding me. I've finished listening to the bonus episodes for season 2 of the "Blowback Podcast" , which is called "Cuba Libre". When you really learn how the U.S. has just shat on that country for almost 65 years, you can't possibly have the absolutely stupid hope that Joe Biden -- of all f@$king people -- is going to do a good goddamned thing for that island. And JFK! Don't even get me started on that guy. [Kennedy's speeches] [image]Ok, fine. So I got started. I read one of his speeches. My notes on the "Commencement Address at American University, Washington, D.C." are below. Read through and then see my conclusion to see why I think this is relevant for today. "Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that 'American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars.'" This is all true. He knew it at the time. Also I'm sure that he said the first sentence without noting the irony at all. "it is sad to read these Soviet statements--to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats." He didn’t follow his own advice. He’s just reading out loud. No-one since has listened either. He literally peppered this speech with statements that belie this one. Like the one about "find[ing] communism [...] repugnant" below. "No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue." Except Cuba -- right, Jack? U.S. elected officials are really quite advanced in their bullshit. They just spew things that have nothing to do with reality. Clinton and Obama would really follow in this guy's footsteps with their lofty rhetoric, almost none of which was true. "As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity." This is such a shockingly ignorant and simple-minded thing to say -- but people keep pointing me to this speech as indicative of JFK's enlightened mindset. "Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other." Again: so simplistic. He doesn't consider anything other than trading blows on a field to be "war". Demeaning the lives of thousands, possibly millions, just to exact petty revenges on the USSR was nothing to this man. He didn't care about anything but projecting U.S. power. He never made a concession. He considered none of this violence, none of it was war. What an asshole. "For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons." But you and your country did this ten times more than the USSR. You knew how far ahead you were. You lied about it. The USSR was always losing, always behind -- there was never a "gap" for the U.S. to fill. Kruschev said that military buildup is good for capitalism whereas it is harmful to socialism. "We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace." They are the ones that have to change, of course. The U.S. is so perfect that there is no room for improvement. All concessions and change and growth are for loser countries that haven't yet achieved the enlightenment of the exceptional nation. It's enough to make you want to throw up. "To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility." JFC JFK. This has never been the case. You’re high on your own supply. "We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people--but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth." Oh f@$k off. This is ridiculous. Going back to before I was born, U.S. presidents were all sociopathic, deluded liars, just utterly unaware of how hypocritical they were -- because their prime axiom is always that U.S. Americans are better. Correction: Elite U.S. Americans are better. They deserve to have everything as their noble birthright. Letting anyone else have anything would be a waste because they're all too benighted to appreciate it. Filthy communists. Filthy natives. Filthy poors. "The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured." Methinks he's projecting quite a bit here. Jesus, Kennedy, do you even listen to yourself? Do you even bother to think for a second whether the behavior of the nation under your control exhibited the characteristics you seem to hold so dear? Or did it do literally the exact opposite at every opportunity? News flash, JFK: since your assassination, it has continued to do so -- namely, not what you said you wanted. You never did it. And no-one since has, either. This has never been a priority. It's just pretty shit to say when we want to tell the world how we demand it think of us. Judge us by our words, not our actions. Or else. "The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort--to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are." You mean disarming everyone else, right? Because there was an armaments phase in the 1940s unlike the world has ever seen. The U.S. has never been about disarmament. I have no idea what he's talking about. It's pure fantasy. "To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it." This is great. Did we end up doing that, though? I'm seriously asking because I don't know. Did we actually stop atmospheric testing? Yup, we did. Two months later with the "Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" . Heartfelt congratulations to JFK and the team. "While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can--if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers--offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race." This never happened, though. It's hard to say whether it would have, had he not been assassinated. He talks pretty sometimes. So did Obama -- who also did the opposite of everything he ever said. I’ve learned enough history to know that Kennedy also did other than he said, especially when it counted. "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace." "The U.S. will never start a war.", will only "be prepared if others wish it." Yeah, sure. That’s not how it worked out. It’s just words. Pretty words, but the world already has enough evidence to know that it was lies. [Back to today] If you managed to make it through that analysis of Kennedy's long speech, you may have noticed that so many of Kennedy's statements are still the exact same things that U.S. administrations are saying today. The U.S. keeps saying it doesn't want war, as it bombs everyone in sight. It claims it doesn't want conflict -- because what it really wants is docile vassals that don't fight back as they U.S. plunders them. The U.S. still demands that everyone else change to satisfy it. The U.S. continues to claim that its military serves only peaceful purposes. The U.S. has the world convinced that NATO is a peaceful, defense-oriented organization. Too few people see this for the bullshit that it is. Too few people see that this mindset is kept up by the massive firehose of propaganda from the largest and most sophisticated media and brainwashing operation in history. Only so can the Empire keep all the balls in the air. Only so can the Empire convince the world that it loves nothing more than peace as it bristles with weapons and pounds everyone that disagrees into sand. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4968 2024-02-07T22:10:25+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

💕 * 01,11.2023: "Losing the plot completely" * 06.11.2023: "Some commentators are still MIA" * 10.11.2023: "Camps of various kinds" * 10.11.2023: "Norman Finkelstein is on a tear" 🎥 💕 * 10.11.2023: "Amira Hass is on a tear" 🎥 💕 * 10.11.2023: "None of them ever had the moral high ground" * 13.11.2023: "From their mouths to God’s ear" 🎥 💕 * 23.11.2023: "Moar unhinged commentary" * 19.11.2023: "Osama bin Laden wrote an online rant" * 25.11.2023: "Norman Finkelstein is shit-posting tragedy" * 28.11.2023: "Indoctrinated citizens of empire can still be innocent" 💕 * 10.12.2023: "YES OR NO" * 11.12.2023: "Gideon Levy is on a tear" 🎥 💕 * 12.12.2023: "Ilan Pappé is on a tear" 🎥 * 28.12.2023: "Analyzing Patrick Lawrence" * 26.12.2023: "There is no word for “irony” in German" * 26.12.2023: "Notice: Vivek Ramaswamy is just as full of shit as the rest of them" * 29.12.2023: "Blowback: Iraq, Israel, and no-nothing know-it-alls" 💕 * 30.12.2023: "Picking on Israel’s war crimes" 💕 * 30.12.2023: "Cheerleading for the … what’s the opposite of underdog?" 💕 [1] * 30.12.2023: "Empire decides" 💕 * 30.12.2023: "Strawman battles: rape is never OK!" * 04.02.2024: "Finkelstein and Joy on Plagiarism and Slogans" 🎥 * 06.02.2024: "Keeping the empire in line" Those are just the actual articles I wrote, mostly extracted from my "notes" , of which there is a giant post, once per week, that you're welcome to dig through for even more. But I honestly can't imagine that anyone could stand it. I write for me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] That article I like because it recaps my thoughts from early October, but in late December. I wasn't too far off in my analysis of what was to come. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4939 2024-02-06T22:45:33+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes that this just happened recently. No-one really cares -- not enough to even dream of doing anything about it. No country that the U.S. would consider listening to has even objected. France? England? Germany? Nope. Nope. Nope. You will barely read about it. Rounded down, no-one will learn that their country committed acts of war against other countries. It doesn’t matter. Why? Because those countries are defenseless. You’re allowed to bomb them. No-one says anything. The less of a danger a country is, the more likely it is that you’re allowed to bomb it without repercussions. That is how the world works. There is no rules-based order. There is no international justice. There are no democracies straining to bring enlightenment to benighted peoples. That’s just the horseshit they feed you to keep you quiet while they do what they want. There is only Empire. There is just might makes right. There is just certain countries getting to do what they want, when they want, to whom they want. "Some members of Congress have criticized President Biden for launching the strikes in Yemen without congressional authorization. “The President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle east conflict. That is Article I of the Constitution,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) wrote on X." Oh wow. He tweeted it. I’m sure the President gives a single, flying blue f$*k about that. The essay "Western Empire Bombs Yemen To Protect Israel's Genocide Operations In Gaza" by Caitlin Johnstone writes, "[...] the US and the UK just bombed the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide. Not only that, they bombed the very same country in which they just spent years backing Saudi Arabia’s genocidal atrocities which killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2015 and 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Houthis from taking power." This is all done to protect trade routes, to keep prices low. It's not even that trade is being blocked. It's just taking longer to deliver. BOMB THEM. The attacks by Ansarallah have resulted in no casualties. They're annoying. They cause companies to lose money. Some stuff gets to some countries more slowly. The U.S. and UK bombed the Sanaa international airport in Yemen. WTF. No declaration of war. No attempt to negotiate. No consideration of alternatives. No congressional approval. Just a dictator blowing shit up. This is what people were afraid Trump would do. This is what I wrote before the last election that Biden would almost certainly do. He's a merciless piece of shit. He always has been. Apparently wars in Ukraine and Gaza are not enough. Nothing ever makes him think it's time to back down, to negotiate, that things are getting out of hand. Forget cold wars. He makes everything hot immediately. He's fighting Russians directly in Syria. He's proxy-fighting them in Ukraine. he's funding and arming Saudi Arabia to flatten Ansarallah in Yemen. He's funding and arming the Israelis to flatten the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This is mindless violence, all to quash any hopes of rebellion against Empire, all to prevent any change to the system that subjugates so many -- and funnels so much wealth toward Empire -- and a handful of people in it. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4929 2024-02-04T22:02:26+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

discusses the effects of jails on the communities in which they're located. "These numbers represent real people—hundreds of thousands of people who are directly impacted by the violence of jail incarceration and detention, millions of people who are affected by" ... ]]>

discusses the effects of jails on the communities in which they're located. "These numbers represent real people—hundreds of thousands of people who are directly impacted by the violence of jail incarceration and detention, millions of people who are affected by the extraction that jail facilitates, and by the violence that is perpetrated on families and communities through policing and incarceration across the varied geography of the United States." [image]Jails and prisons are state-sanctioned violence. The society wielding these tools hope that the effect will be to lower the overall level of violence. These measures do not in any way address the conditions that led to the original violence, Instead, the negative consequences aim to reduce the likelihood of that person using violence as a solution to those original, continuing -- and likely exacerbated by incarceration -- problems. We may not have started it -- it's arguable that society is responsible to a large degree for the violence it not only contains, but can be seen to engender with its policies -- but we are definitely participating. It's a cycle of violence. "While incarceration has always been wielded as a class-war project [...]" "As John Irwin noted, the jail “was devised as, and continues to be, the special social device for controlling . . . the lowest class of people.”" True. The rich don't get arrested; they barely even go to jail. They get fined, at worst. Poor people lose their lives for mistakes or as exaggerated reactions to societal transgressions that have far less reach and impact than rich-people crimes. When a poor person robs an apartment, that's one victim. When a rich person steals a company's pension fund, that's thousands of victims. If the poor person is caught, they lose their family, freedom, livelihood, future. If the rich person is caught, they sit out a pre-trial period at their luxurious home or homes, then plea-bargain for a fine and no admission of guilt. Of course they get to keep the money. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4838 2023-12-30T22:35:43+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, the content below appeared in my "Links and Notes for October 13th, 2023" , which I managed to publish on October 23rd. I've edited things lightly, but I'm publishing these reactions again to have them in a separate... ]]>

, the content below appeared in my "Links and Notes for October 13th, 2023" , which I managed to publish on October 23rd. I've edited things lightly, but I'm publishing these reactions again to have them in a separate article and because I think my initial take has aged relatively well. The article "The Spiral of Violence that Led to Hamas" by Peter Singer writes, "Hamas reportedly holds roughly 150 hostages, and has said that it will kill one every time Israel bombs a Gazan home without warning. Hamas leaders surely remember that in 2011, Netanyahu, as prime minister, was willing to free over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of them terrorists, in exchange for the release of a single captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. Against that background, they may believe that Israel will not be prepared to sacrifice the lives of the hostages in order to achieve its military objectives." They would be wrong, I suppose. It looks like Israel is calling them on it, telling them to put their money where their mouth is. That they hope for a prisoner trade has been the expressed intent of the kidnappings from the very first statement by Hamas, but we can, of course, disregard their actually stated goals and reasoning and instead imbue them with the goals and reasoning we'd like them to have instead. It makes things easier, I suppose. Israel has thus far been quite tight-lipped about the hostages -- it seems almost as if they're already treating them as martyrs. [1] "When Hamas attacks Israeli civilians, it knows that this will lead to Israeli counterattacks in Gaza that are bound to kill and injure many civilians. Hamas locates its military sites in residential areas, hoping that this tactic will restrain Israeli attacks, or at least lessen international support for Israel." "How far Israel will go with its declared intention to deny electricity, fuel, food, and water to the two million citizens of Gaza, many of them children, is hard to know. What is certain is that Hamas’s brutal crimes do not entitle Israel to starve children." We know a bit more about how serious they are. They seem to be deadly, deadly serious about it. The first trucks went in -- 20 of them for 2.3m people -- just yesterday, about 10 days after the shutdown. There were concerns about whether Egypt would try to smuggle weapons to Hamas amid the food and water supplies. These are reasons that sound like they make sense until you realize that the alternative -- doing nothing for days on end -- probably meant the suffering and/or expiration of thousands of innocents, of children. We have international treaties for a reason, but they're not worth the paper they're written on when signatories ignore the rules to which they'd agreed when it pleases them. They would, of course, like the rules to apply when they are in need, when they are being oppressed, but Israel, like the U.S., can no longer conceive of a world in which they would be on the back foot. They're not on the back foot now, not really, stop blowing smoke up my ass -- so they don't have to care if the whole international legal structure collapses. It doesn't benefit them anyway. [2] Just like for the U.S., these international agreements that what they now perceive as weaker leaders of the past having signed are just getting in the way of their plans, of their empire, of their colonialism. [3] If they would take a step back, they might be appalled to realize that they are being held back from doing horrific crimes by ethical and moral codes to which they in more clear-headed times agreed. In the current bloodthirsty atmosphere, such concerns are swept away before a sheet of red that obliterates all but vengeance. [4] "And now what? Restore deterrence? How, exactly? Self-punishment in the form of a renewed occupation of Gaza? A land invasion is difficult to imagine. The atrocious level of destruction and casualties this would entail is one reason, with the many Israeli hostages now in Gaza providing additional insurance. The risk of Hezbollah opening an additional front from Lebanon in the north is another. Hezbollah’s capabilities dwarf those of Hamas, and a two-front war, with Iran possibly backing Israel’s foes, is an apocalyptic scenario. This is exactly why US President Joe Biden warned Israel’s enemies “not to exploit the crisis.” To drive home the point, Biden has ordered the US Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean." Singer's certainty here now seems unwarranted. It's unlikely that Hezbollah will join the battle. Israel is already bombing Syria and Lebanon preemptively, something that they are presumably allowed to do without reprobation by the international community. They haven't dared attack Iran directly yet, but I'm really wondering whether the reaction of Europe would even be negative. After all, Israel is allowed to defend itself, is it not? [5] They may force the point, by forcing the U.S. to put its money where its mouth is, following up with force on the side of a deranged, reckless, genocidal power that already had overwhelming superiority over its declared foe. "Netanyahu’s machine of poisonous political disinformation is already at work disseminating a conspiracy theory according to which leftist army officers were responsible for the negligence that led to this dirty war. No one should be surprised that Netanyahu would resort to the infamous “stab in the back” narrative – a conspiracy theory also peddled by the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s. How else could the inciter-in-chief explain his criminal negligence?" "Israelis will question the conceptziyya that they can reap the benefits of a Western nation-state while being inured to the hardships their neighbors seek to inflict on them." The phrase "seek to inflict on them" seems a bit out of place considering the overwhelming power that Israel has. They are the only nuclear power in the region. They have managed to display a deranged, anything-goes approach to foreign policy in which no slight is ever forgiven, no matter how small, in which every slight is answered a dozen-fold. No sane nation-state would attack Israel first, knowing that it is quite likely that a mushroom cloud will rise over their capital city, rising silently to the applause of all European and American leaders. So, no, I don't think the Israeli fear of invasion by its neighbors is to be considered very likely. [6] Naturally, Israel will take a page from Dick Cheney's book, citing the 1% => 100% doctrine, rounding up a vanishingly small danger to a certainty that warrants preemptive attack -- just to be on the safe side. It's balderdash, of course, but it will be sold as a perfectly normal way to reason about things, a perfectly just way of handling the situation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next article "The Insane Idea That Nations Get To Do War Crimes Whenever Something Bad Happens To Them" by Caitlin Johnstone writes, "Dropping military explosives on children is just as wrong now as it was on October 6th. Wars of aggression were just as wrong on September 12th 2001 as they were on September 10th. But there’s this idiotic belief in mainstream culture that a nation experiencing a traumatic event means it gets to go on a murderous rampage until it feels better. "As soon as the Hamas attack occurred we were inundated with messaging from the western political/media class which conveyed the idea that because something bad happened to Israel, Israel now gets to do a little genocide, as a treat. This is stupid nonsense, and should be rejected by all thinking people." "If you saw your friend stumbling around with his car keys in one hand and a bottle in the other after losing his job, you wouldn’t tell him you stand with him and support whatever it is he’s getting ready to do. You’d understand that people can make unwise decisions after something bad happens to them, and you’d do what you can to help steer them away from it." "The death toll from Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza has already more than doubled the death toll from the Hamas attack, and we can expect it to keep multiplying because there’s no meaningful opposition to the bloodshed. The United States, who as an indispensable backer of Israel could end all this with a word, has refused to draw a single red line on what Israel may or may not do if it wishes to retain US support — even its indiscriminate use of white phosphorus, which violates international humanitarian law. War crimes are being committed not just openly but announced in advance as Tel Aviv commits itself to the collective punishment of Palestinians with a complete siege of Gaza, and Israel’s allies have no objection to this." There are two points here: Hamas blew its whole load on October 7th. There will be no more meaningful resistance now. Perhaps they will be able to launch some of their rockets (Norman Finkeltstein said he'd read claims that they have 100,000 of them), but they're unlikely to hit useful targets, like chemical factories, that could do real damage to Israel. Gazans are buttoned down and will suffer what Israel sees fit to mete out. [7] [image]The other point is that this is exactly what the major powers want to happen. They don't green-light war crimes because they're confused about what war crimes are. It's because laws against war crimes are only there to be wielded against enemies. They don't apply to anyone inside the circle of trust. If you're useful to empire, then you get to do what you want. Empire will decide which laws apply to you based on your usefulness. If you're useful, you get a free pass to do whatever you like -- and you never have to answer for it. If you're not useful, or if you have something useful that Empire wants without paying for it, you are forced to pledge fealty to Empire, to mouth the words that it wants you to say, to "condemn" terrorists. To make nuance-free statements that are nowhere near to expressing your actual beliefs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "International Hypocrisy: The U.S., Once Again, Leads the Way" by Robert Fantina contains many interesting citations from "Palestinian Ambassador to the U.K., Husam Zumlot" from his interview on BBC News. "How many times have you interviewed Israeli officials (question by Ambassador Zumlot to the interviewer)? How many times? Hundreds of times. How many times has Israel committed war crimes, live, on your own cameras? Do you start by asking them to condemn themselves? Have you? You don’t." "You know why I refuse to answer that question (why he won’t condemn Hamas for its violence of last week)? Because I refuse the premise of it. Because at the very heart of it is misrepresentation of the whole thing. Because it is the Palestinians who are expected to condemn themselves." "You bring us here whenever Israelis are killed. Did you bring me here when many Palestinians in the West Bank, more than 200 over the last few months (were killed)? Do you invite me where there are such Israeli provocations in Jerusalem and elsewhere?" The only time you will be given a voice is to say things that Empire wants. Empire cannot learn new things from you because it already knows everything there is to know. It knows that it is Empire and that you are not. What could it possibly learn from you? Your only job is to say the things that Empire wants you to say when it wants you to say them in order to enjoy a slight benefit, to bask in the warm, though oft wan and temporary, beneficence of Empire, to not lose your livelihood, your home, your family, your life. This is the implicit bargain of living with Empire -- the implied threat for non-compliance is always destruction of everything you hold dear. Empire doesn't care because it doesn't cost Empire anything, whereas it amuses Empire to throw your pitiful life away for its purposes, for its own enrichment, even if it's a total waste -- it still feels good to use its power. And don't go looking for consistency. Superficially, there is none. Bianca Graulau writes, "Filter the propaganda through this lens: the US empire will always choose sides based on its own interests." That is 100% the correct context through which to process information coming from Empire. More long-windedly, but still worth quoting, Fantina writes, "The U.S. isn’t interested in human rights, international law or self-determination. Certainly it has no interest in peace in the Middle East. It is interested in power over the entire world and the profits that that power will bring them. So what if its hands are dripping with the blood of Palestinian children? Biden cares no more about that than George Bush cared about the blood of Iraqi children. No, the geopolitical goals of the U.S. are always front and center. Human rights and international law are nowhere on the U.S. list of priorities." This has been obvious for the long part of my lifetime during which I've paid attention to international affairs, with a focus on the affairs of Empire. It is of no value to listen to what Empire says; you must watch what Empire actually does. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Called it. 21/2 months later, the hostages are one of the main things causing protests and resistance inside Israel. [1] Called that one too. [1] Check. [1] Well, well, well. I could write for Ha'aretz. [1] This is where we seem to still be headed. Israel just assassinated one of Iran's highest-ranking generals. [1] I still stand by this. The fear of invasion is mostly a fairy tale Israel tells its citizens to keep them quiet. Maybe they'll finally piss off the neighbors enough to make them suicidal, but i doubt it -- I hope not. [1] This is pretty much what has happened. Hamas's rockets have had a relatively negligible effect. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4834 2023-12-30T21:49:10+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which I managed to publish on October 21st. I've edited things lightly, but I'm publishing these reactions again to have them in a separate article and because I think my initial take has aged relatively well -- especially as... ]]>

, which I managed to publish on October 21st. I've edited things lightly, but I'm publishing these reactions again to have them in a separate article and because I think my initial take has aged relatively well -- especially as compared with that of European leaders like Frau Baerbock of Germany. The article "Netanyahu regime staggered by Palestinian uprising" by Alex Lantier was published on October 8th and writes, "The World Socialist Web Site condemns the vicious and obscenely hypocritical statements of President Joe Biden and leaders of the European Union denouncing the Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” while supporting without any reservations Israel’s onslaught on Gaza." "Pledging “rock-solid and unwavering” support for Israeli military operations against Gaza, Biden said: “The United States unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, and I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the government and people of Israel. [1] Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.”" OMG 😱 the U.S. is so delighted to be able to wholeheartedly endorse the further tightening of the noose that they've been funding for years, but this time, because of the Palestinian attack -- unprovoked, of course! -- they feel like they can also reclaim the moral high ground, without doing any work at all. This is such a slam dunk that of course all the EU and US leaders are going to take it. They don't give a shit about anybody but themselves, but pretending to care about Israelis is not only lucrative, but more than occasionally politically necessary. No-one ever lost an election for not caring about Palestinians. Quite the contrary. Check out Baerbock, one of the truly worst, most ruthless, and most disgusting women in politics since ... Hillary Clinton? Margaret Thatcher? Condaleeza Rice? Susan Rice? Samantha Power? "German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock declared: “The odious violence of Hamas against civilians in Israel is unprecedented and unjustifiable. This terrorism must stop immediately. Israel has our full solidarity.”" Unprecedented! Not only unprovoked, but unprecedented! This, from a fucking German! A German is saying that Palestinian violence is unprecedented. You can't make this shit up. She is the foreign minister -- the top diplomat -- of that once progressive country. "The hypocrisy of these statements is staggering. As always, the sympathies of the imperialist powers are with the oppressors. Any manifestation of resistance by the oppressed is greeted with frenzied denunciations. The media ignores the fact that the Israeli government is led by a criminal, whose coalition is dominated by fascistic racists, and is engaged in efforts to suppress the constitution." The attacks are an act of desperation, of course. They knew exactly what would happen in response. I'm not sure whether they were just trying to tip Israel's hand, to force them to actually do something so awful that even a reprehensible c*#% like Baerbock would have to shut the f*#% up and sit down while the adults do the talking. "On Saturday night, in a bloodcurdling address to the nation, Netanyahu told “residents of Gaza” to “get out now, because we will operate everywhere and with full force.” Since his government blockades Gaza and does not let anyone leave, this is a declaration that Netanyahu sees Gaza’s entire population as a legitimate target. Asserting that “Hamas wants to murder us all,” Netanyahu pledged to “fight them to the bitter end” and that cities where Hamas operates would turn into “cities of ruin.”" Netanyahu will target civilians. He and his predecessors always have. The western world doesn't care at all. The money continues to flow. [2] Of course, no-one will actually pay any attention to what the "enemy" has to say about why it's doing what it's doing. Putin knows the feeling. We fail to listen to our own detriment. This is not about capitulation to violence, but in learning what it would take to avoid it and to determine whether that price is too high. If we categorically refuse to even learn what the price might be, we are dishonorable, reckless, and exceedingly stupid hypocrites. Here is a part of Hamas's declaration. [image] "“As the Israeli occupation maintains its siege of the Gaza Strip and continues its crimes against our Palestinian people, while showing utmost disregard for international laws and resolutions amid US and Western support and international silence, we have decided to put an end to all of that. We announce a military operation against the Israeli occupation, which comes in response to the continued Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and violations at the Al-Aqsa mosque.”" They are referring of course to the multiple attacks inside a mosque carried out by Israeli police over the last couple of years. Most recently, people swept through, spitting on people. On Biden's watch, by the way. Utterly vile, but a neat tactic for provoking a violent response without actually striking first. If history is any guide, Gaza is truly going to get curb-stomped, probably worse than they've ever been before. [3] As noted in "Violence Begets Violence" by Raouf Halaby "Hamas and its supporters will no doubt claim Saturday’s attack on Israel to be a victory. And in truth, taking on one of the mightiest armies in the world is beyond belief. Breaking out of their open-air prison and with slingshots (Kalashnikovs, motorcycles, and a bulldozer), as compared to Israel’s infinite military might, the fifth strongest military in the world with proven air, land, and sea prowess, will be celebrated by Hamas and across the Near East as a victory. "At best, it is a pyrrhic victory, one for which Palestinian citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, as happened in the past, will pay dearly. Since 2008 Israel has launched four major wars on Gaza, each of which was more brutal than the preceding one. I fear that the current Israeli avenging war, unlike the previous ones, will exact a very heavy price on the 376 square-mile enclave, the world’s largest open-air prison in which 2.3 million Palestinians exist." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next article "A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer one" by Haviv Rettig Gur was already laying the groundwork for what was to come. "Hamas did everything it could to shock Israelis, to humiliate and horrify, kidnapping children, desecrating corpses, and then crowing about it to the world. "And Israelis watched it all, minute by agonizing minute. And they agreed. Their weakness had become clear, unavoidable. "And very, very dangerous." "And it will soon learn the scale of that miscalculation. A strong Israel may tolerate a belligerent Hamas on its border; a weaker one cannot. A safe Israel can spend much time and resources worrying about the humanitarian fallout from a Gaza ground war; a more vulnerable Israel cannot. "A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer Israel. "Hamas was once a tolerable threat. It just made itself an intolerable one, all while convincing Israelis they are too vulnerable and weak to respond with the old restraint." This is both true and a rallying cry. It's also amazing that the author is expecting us to believe that either the current or any previous Israeli leadership has lost any sleep about the humanitarian fallout. I mean, I'm sure that there has been some restraint from just outright murdering every Palestinian that crosses their paths, but, from out here, in the real world, it doesn't really look like much restraint is considered at all. If there's any concern about humanitarian fallout, it's lost in a rounding error. Israel has been exposed as weaker than it projected and it will react in the same way that the U.S. did, when a similar thing happened to it over 22 years ago. The younger people of Israel face the same choice that we Americans did at that time: seek understanding, wonder what those scarred wizened visages meant by "chickens coming home to roost", or double down, look inward, and lash out. [4] It's quite obvious what Israel, led by Netanyahu, will do. It remains to be seen how much of the population of Israel follows, in their heart of hearts. Most Americans followed. Some questioned. Those who questioned didn't matter. Their opinions never do. There is no solace in being right when the world burns for so many others. [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The last article "The Violence in Palestine and Israel Is the Tragic Fruit of Brutal Oppression" by Seraj Assi writes, "The tragic scenes unfolding in Gaza and Israel are a chilling reminder that occupation and oppression bear a price. For the truth is that when you imprison two million people in 140 square miles, placing them under a merciless siege with no end in sight, with no way in or out, with drones and rockets buzzing overhead night and day, with constant surveillance and harassment, with scant control over their day-to-day lives — ultimately, the dispossessed will rebel. "The violence was not unprovoked, as the mainstream media has depicted it. It has been brewing and festering in every corner of the country. "In the West Bank, the Palestinian town of Jenin is still reeling from the devastation of a recent unsparing Israeli attack, which left the town a razed ghostland. The small town of Huwara has yet to recover from the deadly horrors unleashed by settlers on its residents." It's not that Hamas didn't commit war crimes. It's more that the world shouldn't be surprised that it did. "During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, settlers stormed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem, staging provocative tours, harassing and beating worshippers, and spitting on Christians." It doesn't justify the rocket attacks, but it goes a good way towards explaining them. If you want the rocket attacks to stop, you should consider all of the options: you could turn the screws even tighter, to make sure that no-one can get rockets. Or you could see what you would need to do for people to not even want rockets. That ship has probably sailed, but it might not be bad, as a thought experiment. "The ongoing explosion in violence is the ugly reality of Israeli apartheid, the culmination of decades of occupation of a stateless people deprived of basic human rights and freedoms. Unless the root causes are dismantled — the siege lifted, the apartheid system and occupation ended — violence will continue to tragically haunt Palestinians and Israelis for years to come. [6]" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] 21/2 months later and Biden has stuck to his word. [1] Called it. [1] Two for two. [1] We know which way they chose by now. [1] Three for three [1] That's the path they're on, predicted 21/2 months ago (not by me, that's a citation from the author of the article). ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4881 2023-12-30T17:34:00+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "There is no principle that enables Schumer, or Biden, or any liberal, to find common ground with people who can make excuses for rape, together with the litany of horrors perpetrated by Hamas." I've written about the author a few times because of the... ]]>

writes, "There is no principle that enables Schumer, or Biden, or any liberal, to find common ground with people who can make excuses for rape, together with the litany of horrors perpetrated by Hamas." I've written about the author a few times because of the extremely sharp turn he took on October 7th, 2023. See "Losing the plot completely" , "Some commentator are still MIA" , and "Moar unhinged commentary" . At the beginning of December, Greenfield was still setting up his strawmen and then knocking them down. I hope he’s having fun over there, but it seems much more like he’s going down a rabbit hole like James Howard Kunstler did a few years ago. "The litany of horrors perpetrated by Hamas." As if the things that happened almost two months ago are the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone ever—and as if nothing equally bad has happened since that we might also be paying attention to. Nope, just wallowing in misery and not all interested in any solution that doesn’t offer more misery. Now, he’s off and running on the RISE OF ANTISEMITISM. "The same failure of principle that infects this ideological schism at its core, where decisions are made based not on substance, but on identities and which box they’re in. Black people are still very much subject to discrimination. Looting is wrong, even when done by black people. Rape is a heinous crime. Rape is still a heinous crime even when done by Palestinians. Even when done by Palestinians to Jews." He starts off strong here. It’s a topic he’s admirably addressed in the past. He’s a strong defender of the idea that identirarianism has been damaging to nearly everyone but its most adamant advocates. [image]But then he gets to the second part, which I’ve highlighted. Who’s he talking to here? Is there anyone worth listening to who’s saying that rape is sometimes OK? Is there anyone at all? Maybe a handful of yahoos who aren’t worth listening to? Is there any reason to continue to treat this idea like there’s a danger of it overtaking the Zeitgeist? What the hell are you arguing about? Having doubts about whether people were raped before they blasted to smithereens with hellfire missiles is not the same as thinking rape is OK. Even the Israeli government stopped pounding the rape drum weeks ago. Why does Greenfield still mention it all the time, when even the Israelis have given up on that story? Did he not get the memo? Does he really think he needs to fight the good fight, standing up for the rarely held principle that it’s not OK for Palestinians to rape Jews? Is he getting a lot of pushback on that? Or what is going on? Once he’s worked himself up into a lather about this, he drops his final stroke of genius, "[…] there is far more in common between the progressive left and the Nazis and Klan than there is with a principled liberal." Put up the straw man, then knock it down. Way to go! I did not see that one coming. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4832 2023-12-30T17:24:18+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

mentions Francis Fukuyama, citing him at length on what he meant by "the end of history". "“Liberal democracy,” Fukuyama wrote, “replaces the irrational desire to be recognized as greater than others with a rational desire to be recognized as" ... ]]>

mentions Francis Fukuyama, citing him at length on what he meant by "the end of history". "“Liberal democracy,” Fukuyama wrote, “replaces the irrational desire to be recognized as greater than others with a rational desire to be recognized as equal.” “A world made up of liberal democracies, then, should have much less incentive for war, since all nations would reciprocally recognize one another’s legitimacy. And indeed, there is substantial empirical evidence from the past couple of hundred years that liberal democracies do not behave imperialistically toward one another, even if they are perfectly capable of going to war with states that are not democracies and do not share their fundamental values." [image]This is all just fine, sound, and admirable reasoning, It's just that the elites in the U.S. -- in their nearly unparalleled hubris -- assumed that Fukuyama was talking about their country. In fact, given Fukuyama's premise and definition, the conclusion should be that the U.S. cannot possibly be considered a liberal democracy. It is, in fact and instead, an empire. It's like the nearly incessant babble about free markets: it's a good idea, in principle, but inapplicable because we don't have free markets. We never have. Ritter went on, citing Marx as counterweight to Fukuyama, "Karl Marx, who famously observed that, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”" The "Fukuyama school of thought" -- such as it is -- is just something invented to ostracize official enemies. "Political scientists in the Fukuyama “end of history” school view this conflict as being derived by the resistance of the remnants of Soviet regional hegemony (i.e., modern-day Russia, led by its president, Vladimir Putin) over the inevitability of liberal democracy taking hold." It's an adorable fairy tale for an empire to tell itself, but it's an even more useful tool to convince its conquests to give up with less of a fight. These conquests know they're in for a lot of pain if they don't bend the knee. What better way to convince them to do it sooner than a fairy tale that will actually come true for a handful of elite members of the conquered? Instead of fighting the empire, the target of conquest ends up fighting against itself over table scraps. And so it goes. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4836 2023-12-30T17:12:59+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is about a guy who is very obviously intellectually disabled. He is not ready for the world as she is. He had the kind of life that no-one would want... ]]>

is about a guy who is very obviously intellectually disabled. He is not ready for the world as she is. He had the kind of life that no-one would want to have, not in a million years. [image] "Zack suffered a litany of horrors in his childhood. His lawyers wrote in a court filing that his mother drank heavily throughout her pregnancy. He was hospitalized at the age of three for drinking about 10 ounces of vodka. He endured extensive physical and sexual abuse from his stepfather, including forcing him to drink alcohol, injecting him with drugs, running over him with a car and creating devices to electrically shock him if he wet the bed. Zack’s older sister killed their mother with an ax." But it's cool, because he's apparently not considered to be intellectually disadvantaged enough to get protection under the law. An intelligence test invented by shysters in the 19th century that continues to be used today has decided that he's 9 points too smart to be retarded enough to not be able to be killed. Score another big win for Florida, the state loved so hard by Republicans and Libertarians alike. "The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) notes, “Unlike almost all other states, Florida rigidly required an IQ of 70 or below to demonstrate intellectual disability, with no allowance for the test’s margin of error.” Zack at one point scored 79 on an IQ (intelligence quotient) test. IQ tests have been demonstrated to be inaccurate in measuring intelligence." The average IQ is 100. If you've ever had the pleasure of discussing anything more complex than whether you want your receipt with someone with an IQ of 100, then you should really brace yourself for what a conversation with a person who scores 79 would be like. This isn't to say that the IQ test is accurate necessarily, but that it will give you a ballpark idea of what that person is going to be capable of. Zack's statement, quoted in the article, seems literate enough -- eloquent even -- but I imagine that he had quite a bit of help with it. Ron DeSantis is happily signing death warrants for severely mentally challenged individuals. Bill Clinton also happily signed death warrants for the same, so maybe DeSantis is hoping to follow his example into the White House. Read about "Ricky Ray Rector" , who'd done terrible things, but who'd effectively lobotomized himself in a botched suicide attempt. There was no need to imprison the guy, to say nothing of executing him. He needed a different kind of care. The man that Rector had become after his suicide attempt was on the mental level of a dumb child. Rector had no idea what was going on. He might as well have been Old Yeller. According to the Wikipedia link above, "For his last meal, Rector requested and received a steak, fried chicken, cherry Kool-Aid, and pecan pie. As noted above, Rector left the pie on the side of the tray, telling the corrections officers who came to take him to the execution chamber that he was "saving it for later."" Clinton took time off of the campaign trail to go watch him die. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4887 2023-12-30T16:53:51+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4904 2023-12-30T11:27:20+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. [1] Racism is a superset of antisemitism. I've already seen billboards in Switzerland that read "Gegen Razismus und Antisemitismus", which is redundant. If you're against racism, then you're against antisemitism, which is a subset. [1] I'm having a hard time drawing a bead on Jeffey lately. I think his heart's in the right place -- and he may even have been intending a deeply satirical take in this essay, in which case it was too deep for me. I couldn't tell the difference between him and the raving lunatics making the same arguments in Israel. I give him the benefit of the doubt because I've agreed with him in the past. [1] I am being 100% serious here. Israeli firms are the world leader, if that's the kind of thing you're looking for. [1] As noted in the footnote above: maybe he does and he's just too subtly satirical for me. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4919 2023-12-30T09:56:57+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

end-of-hear series has been. The episode "Best of 2023: Living and Reliving the U.S. Invasion of Iraq / Rasha Al Aqeedi" was a counterexample. I thought Rasha's analysis was more superficial than the standard set by the other episodes. ... ]]>

end-of-hear series has been. The episode "Best of 2023: Living and Reliving the U.S. Invasion of Iraq / Rasha Al Aqeedi" was a counterexample. I thought Rasha's analysis was more superficial than the standard set by the other episodes. * She says no-one should cheerlead a war, especially when they’re not involved, that any war is a tragedy, a diplomatic failure … but then she says that she’s totally pro-Ukraine. ARRRRGGGGHHHH. * Don’t be pro-anything. Be pro-peace in Ukraine. God, why can’t people stay ideologically pure for one goddamned second? * I also can’t tell if she’s kidding that Iran and Syria are in the "Axis of Evil" — I think she might believe it. * Chuck, of course, calls her on none of these inconsistencies. Because I don't think he even sees them as such. In fairness, he almost never pushes back on his guests, so this is not an exception. * Now she’s jabbering about "terrorist attacks in the U.S.". Did I miss something? She linked those directly to Trumpism … holy crap! Is she angling for a job at CNN? * This is one of Chuck’s personal selection for best interviews of the year. * C’mon Chuck. You’re as bad as Jeffrey, who's pretty much gone around the bend these days. * Now she’s saying that the U.S. was just hoodwinked by duplicitous Iraqis! Wow! The poor U.S. was thwarted in its good intentions. Just overwhelmed by the vagaries of a war they never wanted, but were forced to fight. * This is incredible. She’s full of shit. And Chuck loves it. "Chuck: Was it a combination of incompetence and arrogance? Rasha: Absolutely. That’s a perfect way of describing it." Ah, so nice to be able to remove agency. The U.S. was just floating helplessly down the stream of history, just like the rest of us. OK OK OK. Now, they’re vibeing about privilege. She talks about her having been privileged to have grown up as a Sunni in a country with an oppressed Shia majority. But neither of them talks about how the problem that most people have with discussions of "privilege" is that it doesn’t explain everything like people wish it did. She didn’t mention the sanctions regime once. She’s a bit like a lot of people of that generation and class—she can recognize that her class separates her from most of the other citizens of her country, but she still kind of judges them for wanting to go back to the old days, when there was a dictatorship. [image]Look, middle-aged and older people in Iraq might very well remember that their country had one of the highest overall living standards in the Middle East and Africa. You have to deal with that, without telling them that they can now vote every four years. She doesn’t quite get around to saying that they don’t really have a democracy. She just says it’s a failure of democracy. It’s not a language barrier. She’s totally fluent. She now lives in Fairfax, Virginia, which is, quite frankly, the heart of the empire. She says very explicitly that she's never going back or moving back to Iraq. Maybe I'm completely misinterpreting her, but she doesn’t seem to place much blame on America, even for the continuing muddle that is Iraqi domestic politics. The U.S. is still heavily involved there, but gets no mention. I understand that we want to focus on the people of Iraq taking responsibility for their own country, but the reality is that there is only so much room to maneuver that they're going to be allowed by the U.S. If Iraq wanted to establish an Islamic state, that ... would not be allowed to happen. I don’t expect her to be ululating "Death to America", but she barely even acknowledged the U.S. influence. Maybe it’s because I just finished season 1 of Blowback, which recounted a lot of Iraqi history, with a preponderance of American influence in the last 50 years. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4917 2023-12-29T22:50:43+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. It's an American history podcast, but with a focus on foreign policy. I started listening to the fourth season, which is about Afghanistan. It's in progress and up to episode 8 of 10 as of yesterday. When I'd caught up to episode 7, I started... ]]>

. It's an American history podcast, but with a focus on foreign policy. I started listening to the fourth season, which is about Afghanistan. It's in progress and up to episode 8 of 10 as of yesterday. When I'd caught up to episode 7, I started in immediately on their inaugural podcast, S01, which is about Iraq. It's not just about the invasion of in 2003. It starts in the early 20th century, explaining how British machinations kicked off the whole modern-day colonization of Iraq. "Blowback isn't a bug; it's a feature. It's part of the algorithm of Empire." Don't skip the bonus episodes because the interview with Naomi Klein was fantastic. [1] She noted that members of the Trump administration were absolute pikers as plunderers of public coffers, when compared with the Bush administration, which stolen dozens of billions at once. It's a very worthwhile podcast. I like to think that they -- perhaps subconsciously -- named the podcast after the excellent and important book by Chalmers Johnson. The following essay is a mix of notes that I took while listening to the podcast interwoven with real-life experiences talking to people about similar topics during that time. [The utter sociopathy] In the first half of S04E07, the hosts discuss America’s attack on Afghanistan, illustrating very clearly why America doesn’t care about Israel’s cruelty. America recognizes that Israel's cruelty is nothing compared to its own. I wrote part of this before I'd listened to S01, which just piled on the shocking cruelty and disdain for human life inherent in every move made by the American Empire. The hubris, the greed, the pettiness, the small-minded focus on personal gain -- it's breathtaking. I lived through all of this; I was politically awake, paying attention. The names are all familiar. Most of them have been recorded multiple times on this blog (search "Wolfowitz" , "Cheney" , "Bush" , "Condaleeza" , or "Rumsfeld" ). But the power of the podcast is such that it's so well put-together that it's more overwhelming when seen all at once. [Calling a spade a spade isn't judgmental] While some might see an anti-American slant in this history podcast, there absolutely isn't one. It's just an honest assessment of what happened, complete with testimonials by the major players. They hang themselves with their own words. The podcast even includes America's own justifications but, shorn of their mythical power, they're made to stand on their own, which they do, in a way. They are obviously purely Machiavellian considerations of personal and national and empirical power -- but there is no way to read any moral or ethical standing in them. These people did it for power and because they're powerful. They did it for the money. That's also the point of discussing the situation in Israel. It's only complicated if you lend any credence to obvious propaganda. Just focus on the facts. There are enough facts to decide. Once you've looked at history -- at what actually happened rather than what Israel says happened or the justifications they give -- Israel does not come out looking like an enlightened, democratic, or moral nation-state. Instead, it seems to decide things based on protecting what it considers to be its own and lending as much empathy to human beings outside of their group as they would to stones in their front yards. In all of those ways, Israel is just like its big brother across the Atlantic. That's not judgmental! It's just accepting reality. Once you've learned history -- and this history isn't controversial; no-one's denying it; they brag about it! -- you can't unlearn it. Like Israel, the U.S. also has special rules for special people. It has different laws for how Americans are to be treated versus foreign nationals. Do you remember the whole debate about spying after Snowden's revelations? The only problem was that they'd been accused of invading the privacy of Americans. The rest of the world is just fine. Gotta keep an eye -- and an ear -- on those psychos in the rest of the world. There's no telling what they might do. Better to get them before they get us. Most Americans think that the Constitution applies only to American citizens. This is the attitude of nations like this. It's not pretty, but there's nothing judgmental about recognizing it. You'd be a fool not to, given the overwhelming evidence. [Chatting about Israel] The Israeli government itself offers only half-hearted and incredibly obviously mendacious defenses of its own moral basis for this system, but it doesn't really care who believes it. Israel's defenders, on the other hand, are incredibly invested in talking about anything but what has actually happened. I was given a muddled history lesson on the Balfour Declaration of 1917 one night, as if that has anything to do with what is going to happen next -- or with what has happened in the last 40 or 50 years. It's incredible how focused people are on vaguely justifying Israel's behavior when they (A) don't seem to understand what that behavior actually is -- i.e., the depths of depravity to which they go -- and (B) how little that has to do with determining what happens next. What is the world going to do about an obvious genocide unfolding in a very important place? Some countries have cut off diplomatic ties, while others offer full-throated support for genocide, including regular weapons shipments. They will all be judged by history. People who are not involved have a chance to remain outside of the fray, but have a duty to inform themselves and understand what is actually, really happening -- and what has actually, really happened. Which events are supported by incontrovertible evidence? Which ones are not? Why are the ones without a shred of proof taken at face value while those with a preponderance of evidence are ignored? Those are the interesting questions. [Calling bullshit] It is not discriminatory to notice when someone is being an asshole and to then point it out. Israel has trained the world to believe that focusing on its actions is antisemitic. There are other countries that do the same or much worse. Yes, that's true! But those countries -- e.g., Saudi Arabia or Myanmar, for two examples -- don't also demand that we simultaneously treat them as enlightened democracies, as leading lights of human civilization. They've had it both ways for many decades. It's just coming to a stop now (hopefully). It doesn't matter that the U.S. never seems to get its comeuppance. That's relevant only in a discussion of relative justice. The fact that the U.S. gets away with worse stuff all the time doesn't absolve Israel of its own crimes. That's not how crime and punishment and justice works. Myanmar is apartheid; they have official second-class citizens. So does India, actually, with its caste system. A "bunch of countries" have some form of apartheid or another. But they don't claim to be better than that -- or they're not surprised when they're not taken seriously. We know that they are the way they are. Israelis wants to be an apartheid theocratic state, but wants to identify as a democracy. How very modern. We should not allow that. It makes no sense for us to accept all of those claims. We don't have any skin in the game, so we don't have to accept it. [Israel learned it from the master] What strikes me the most is how similar the U.S. military attitude is to war crimes to the one that Israel has. Israel isn’t covering new territory here. The U.S. has done everything horrible that Israel is doing—and more. The U.S. gets away with slaughter on levels that Israel could never dream of. It discusses its war crimes just as brazenly as Israel does. No-one who matters dares open their mouth about it. It's shocking the level of U.S. sycophantism you'll encounter in Europe. They're totally blind to U.S. war crimes, almost all of the time. When challenged on it, they'll usually admit it -- but their default attitude is to never think about the Empire or the degree to which its crimes have damaged the world. They support NATO, convinced that it's a defensive organization. They don't see NATO as being the hand-puppet of the U.S. This cripples the politically and gets them unquestioningly supporting very dubious, immoral, and self-destructive policies. The Israelis bombed Palestinians on supposedly safe roads to which they'd directed those refugees? They learned it from the U.S. Look up "highway of death" from the first Gulf War in 1991. Iraqi forces were retreating from Kuwait, as directed by the U.S. They had given up. It was a hodge-podge of civilian vehicles and half-broken-down military vehicles. The U.S. bombed every last one of them while they were trapped in a giant column in the desert. Fish in a barrel. There was nowhere to go. U.S. jets incinerated them all. There are close-up pictures of people carbonized behind the wheels of their vehicles. [image] Bombing civilians? There was the nuclear-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was the fire-bombing of Tokyo. There was the relentless fire-bombing of Dresden. Israel regularly cites all of these as precedent. They're just doing what Daddy did. [media] Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. No justice ever for any of those civilians. I get it! It must be frustrating for Israel. They can truly whine about being under the magnifying glass when their benefactor never seems to suffer the same fate. That's because the Empire determines where the magnifying glass goes. They run all of these international agencies. They threaten to withdraw funding if those agencies don't focus on the official enemies. There is no way you can focus on the U.S. and, usually, Israel. Now, after multiple decades, the wall of support is crumbling for Israel. Israel is no longer getting away with having its cake and eating it, too, as it has for almost six decades. So they cry "antisemitism". [Inhaling Israel's Propaganda] It's absolutely Israel's prerogative to call everyone who disagrees with any of their most-cherished policies an "antisemite". But you're a fool if you allow it to influence your thinking in any way. It's not a fact of history. It's subterfuge. It's chaff. You'll just tire yourself out fighting an endless stream of lies. Still, The U.S., France, Germany, and Britain are falling all over themselves to make derogatory talk about Israel -- let's face it, anything less than fawning is basically unsupportive and therefore hostile -- equivalent to anti-semitism. If you're going to end up being called an antisemite the second you no longer express full-throated support for every Israeli policy, then you might as well get it over with early. Don't waste a second of your time with information that isn't factual or is evidence-free. Don't waste a second of your time trying to please an entity that's going to throw you under the bus the second you're no longer useful to it. I get to hear about students chanting antisemitic slogans on college campuses. Interesting. Is there video? No? Not even after a month of allegations that this is happening? Not a single video? Not a single recording? Huh. That's weird. Misdirection. Chaff. Subterfuge. Dissembling. Bullshit. I guess I don't have to take it seriously then. If this phenomenon was as prevalent as they say, so prevalent as to be worth prioritizing as a real concern, it shouldn't be difficult at all to show a few seconds of evidence. And yet...there is none. So, you can just ignore the allegation until some evidence shows up. It's remarkably easy. That didn't stop a Soviet-style show-trial in Congress, though. [Stop pigeonholing. It's lazy.] You don’t have to be that moron that engages in a discussion just long enough to figure out which of the two possible sides to an argument they will put their opponent in. Instead of having a discussion about what each person knows and where there are opportunities to learn something, these people are there to teach the other person one thing: why the speaker is right and the listener, should they disagree with any detail, is, at best, misguided, and, at worst, the enemy. And so it goes. Even if you try to hold yourself above the fray, people will struggle mightily to put you in a box, a pigeonhole. Oh, do you not believe every Israeli lie with your whole heart? Ah, then you must be pro-Palestinian. Pro-truth and pro-justice and pro-fairness is not an allowed position. I've done a tremendous amount of reading and thinking about world affairs over the last 20--25 years, and more than my fair share of writing. I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to distill my entire viewpoint into a one-dimensional sound-bite or tweet within the first minute of our conversation. I’m personally not specifically against any country. Most countries are filled with lovely, innocent people -- especially if you just leave them alone. I’m against countries doing horrible bullshit at the expense of their own or other countries’ peoples. I will admit that it especially sticks in my craw when it’s mixed with hypocrisy. On this point, the Israelis are occasionally refreshingly open—when they’re not lying their faces off. The U.S. generally tries to stay on its high horse much longer. This pigeonholing has got to stop. When I recently heard someone recite the history of the Middle East that they learned from their right-of-center, very neoliberal newspaper from Switzerland (NZZ, if you’re wondering), then I don’t think to myself "this person is obviously pro-Israel." I think to myself that this person has put in some time to learn about the history, which is great! But they spent their time with a reliably partisan source, from which they won’t learn enough real history. It meant that there was an irrational focus on the Balfour Treaty—like anybody today gives a shit what the British think now, or thought then—and on agreements that the Palestinians had failed to sign. [They brought it on themselves 🤷‍♀️] They say, now do you see? Do I see what? What argument are you actually making? That the Palestinians' suffering is actually all their own fault? That's your argument? [image] Stop beating around the bush, then. Just come right out and say it. You can't? Why not? Because it sounds fucking ludicrous when you say it out loud? Because it utterly lacks empathy? Because you've never imagined what it would be like for you to have to agree to something like the Palestinians were being asked to agree to? You know, after they'd been bent over the last few times they signed things or had things signed for them? (Now the Balfour Treaty is relevant. 😉) A failure to agree to penurious conditions enforced on one in a quasi-legal, but obviously coercive process is sold to people by publications like the NZZ as the Palestinians being unable to agree to live with Jews. [Their bullshit detectors are kaputt] I found myself thinking that these people are in such a hurry to learn what their viewpoint is expected to be—learning history takes time and effort and they’ve got other shit to do—that they leave their empathy, common sense, and bullshit detectors out of it, entirely. When someone tells you that the history of Israel is of the poor Jews/Israelis just trying to figure out how to fit into a place that they consider their ancestral home and the current residents being greedy with their land—no bullshit detector goes off? They don't wonder whether that's the whole story? These people don’t ask themselves—empathetically—what they themselves would do if someone came along and just said that half of canton Zürich just belonged to a bunch of Ukrainians now! Would they sign those documents making the annexation legally binding? Of course not. But they very quickly believe exactly that story when it's told about somewhere else. I don't think that they're pro-Israeli (as they quickly accused me of being pro-Palestinian). [2] I do start to think that they lack empathy and common sense. They don’t wonder where 75 years of history went in their story. They don’t bother to try to find out what’s happening today. Their only defense would be that they are utterly unaware of what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. If they know, and they still think that’s OK, then they have completely lost their ethical and legal moorings. You’d have to forget about talking about the Middle East and determine what their attitude is toward justice, fairness, human rights, international law, or equality. Because if you think Israel has any right to do what it’s been doing for decades, then you can only believe that might makes right. In that case, you are a giant, giant hypocrite because you would never want to switch places with the Palestinians. You don’t have principles. Principles are those rules that you apply equally, regardless of whether the target is a friend or foe. If it’s bad for Iran to be a theocratic state, then why is it OK for Saudi Arabia or Israel? I'll wait. [The militaristic binary: with us or against us] Oh. Because we have an empire to run. No you don't! You live in Switzerland! You don't have to kowtow to Empire! You don't have to buy into this militaristic us-or-them binary. Be. An. Adult. [3] The person I was talking to the other night about Israel also laid out for me that the only solution to the current situation was for Israel to occupy the Gaza Strip again, to tighten the noose on those unruly bastards again. That will bring peace. I mean, what an idiotic idea! It’s completely belied by literally every single instance of such a situation in the past! It has literally never worked that way. But it doesn’t stop fools like this from constantly proposing that the only possible solution is to provide even more weapons and money and support. Well, actually, he said that the solution is to cut off funds—but he meant to the Palestinians! He’s convinced that they’re the ones getting tons of support! It’s incredible. Just an utterly broken bullshit detector. Either that, or he has literally no idea what the power differential there is, what’s actually going on. In that case, it’s more a dereliction of duty, as he was the one who horned his way into a conversation about Israel to let us all know how it really is. I tried to stop him, but at least I got an interesting essay out of it. [Our global system is plunder [4]] In a highly related matter, the article "Made in the USA" by Jeffrey St. Clair discusses the closing of the Red Sea by the Houthis. "The 10 Nation Red Sea coalition effort–called Operation Prosperity Guardian includes the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, and Spain. Not one country on the Red Sea agreed to join and only one Arab country–Bahrain–is a member. How’s that for diplomacy?" "The US and Saudis have been “hitting them hard” enough to cause the deaths of 400,000 people (through bombs, drones, starvation and disease) since 2014. The US “escalation dominance” in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban stronger than it was before the war. It’s one thing not to have learned lessons about the self-defeating arrogance of Imperial power from Tacitus. It’s another level of stupidity altogether, for Atlantic Council gunslingers like Kroenig, to have elided the memory of the last 20 years of murderous futility, from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan." But this is how every one of these morons thinks. This is how nearly everyone thinks. They split the world into "our side" and evil. Anything that gets in their way must be eradicated by military means, never by means of trade or just paying for stuff that other people have that you want. What a concept! No. Plunder is the only way they know. A shockingly large part of the so-called civilized world cannot think outside of the confines of this binary: with us or against us. Anyone who refuses to allow themselves to be mugged by us must be against us. It is therefore valid to eliminate them before they eliminate us. So we kill them, the money pops out like in GTA, and we continue along our way, whistling down the sidewalk into a rosy sunset, full of love for ourselves and our piety. Everyone goes into a pigeonhole. With us or against us. Most people are NPCs. They don't understand anything about the world other than what's been programmed into them. If you don't agree with Party A's talking points, then you must be in Party B. And vice versa. Think outside the box! What if the world just stopped selling weapons to the Saudis? What if the world paid to restore Yemen? The Houthis would knock it off immediately. That literally doesn't even offer itself as a solution. It's not military, so it's not possible. It's giving in to their violence -- rather than them giving in to ours. These people have no principles, no morals, not ethics. They are rudderless and garbage human beings. I don't think they're incapable of changing, of rehabilitation, but they need a lot of work before they can consider themselves to be moral beings, civilized members of a civilized society. Their inherent lack of empathy and knee-jerk, unthinking racism colors everything they do. [It's more than sort-of racist] Is it racist? Yeah, it kind of is. They tend to think differently when the victims are brown than when they're white. When the perpetrators are white or European (or Israeli), they are very generous in their interpretations, very forgiving of perceived crimes. When the perpetrators are official enemies, they believe anything and everything unquestioningly. Yeah, it seems that people in Europe and America are pretty unilaterally being told that history began on October 7th and they’re absolutely delighted to believe it. I spoke to one person who winced when I said that history didn't start on October 7th, so he's definitely been primed to pigeonhole the shit out of anyone who uses that phrase. It was like watching the Manchurian Candidate awaken. These people swallow loads of Israeli lies like they’re working a bathroom stall in a truck-stop bathroom. They don’t question because they don’t really care. Their instincts -- bred into them by decades of propaganda -- have already told them what they're going to think. They think that the worldwide protests are a bunch of Jew-hating, whiny young people who don’t understand how to fight terror. Typical pussies, the youth. No stomach for genocide when it's necessary and right. [Time is a merciless, uncaring wheel] And we're back to Blowback. It's the same thing all over again. it's the same same story as in Gulf Wars I and II. it's the same story as in Afghanistan, as in Syria. These people don’t care about being catastrophically wrong again and again, as long as they themselves feel good about their opinion, as long as the solution is exclusively a military and not a moral one, and as long as they don’t pay a single tiny bit of a price for it. And why should they care? They all fail upwards. They are rewarded for their behavior because ours is a savage, uncivilized world. In that sense, we keep hearing about atrocities -- and then we...don't. They just kind of go away. Our lives basically don't change. The U.S. or its clients commit war crimes. Some people get mad. It goes away. Nothing happens. GOTO 1. So I can understand these people’s point of view: Palestine’s been a humanitarian crisis for a long time -- our whole lives, for most of us. It’s worse now, but these people have never been forced to give a shit before, so why should they give a shit now? People don’t think about justice, about fairness. They think about which opinion have they been told to have. [It's easy being an uncaring fool] They have the luxury of having whatever opinion is the most convenient, because it has no effect on their lives anyway. And their consciences are clear because they honestly don’t care if idiots whose opinions they don’t care about think they’re bad people. They never have. They have no moral compass, not really. They don’t get worried about things. They never doubt that they’re right. They spend a couple of hours watching TV—which has never lied to them before—and then start calling everyone else antisemites and terrorist-lovers and "Putinversteher". It’s so easy to be a goddamned moron. And they almost always end up backing the solution that will actually end up making the thing that they’re complaining about worse. When it gets worse, they complain about it more, and then believe the first fucking solution offered by the same idiots that made it worse the last time. They never learn. They can only think in terms of "bigger, better, faster, more", where what satisfies those conditions is spoon-fed to them by the companies that stand to profit the most. If something doesn’t go the way they only just recently started believing it should, then we should blow up whoever’s impeding it until they get out of our way. Blow them up with the military! Sanction them economically! Starve those socialists! Kill those pesky Houthis! They're blocking my Amazon shipments! They're bad for my business! Growth is king. There is no other solution to any problem. You can only grow or invent your way out of problems. You can’t ever wonder whether we’re on the wrong track. Reduction is never an option. [I hope they can be saved] And the people that they claim to admire! It's impossible to even fathom that they know anything about what these people really stand for -- I have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're just wildly uninformed about their heroes rather than that they're true monsters. You can tell that I'm talking about people I care for -- otherwise I might be less generous. They love Trump, Biden, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama -- all sorts of monsters. They have no problem with entire cabinets full of the most dickish, mendacious monsters. I have to cling to a shred of hope that my friends and family simply don't know anything about history, they know nothing about what these people have said, what they've done, what they stand for. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The review of Iraq-war movies with Matt Christman was pretty good, too. [1] This has been happening to me for over two decades, so I'm used to it. But discussions where you're constantly forced to waste time explaining that you can't defend viewpoints that you don't have, that have been ascribed to you by the person demanding justification -- those discussions aren't very fruitful. It's bad enough when there is a massive information imbalance -- I'm usually at fault here, as I have a lot more time and discipline to read hundreds of pages of news per week -- but when your interlocutor is shooting for a quick and cheap checkmate, it's even worse. I've been told I love Obama, John Kerry, Joe Biden, etc. It's all very tiring. Just read the several thousand pages of my blog to find out what I really think, already. God, what the problem? The YouTube algorithm is getting better! Just after posting this article, I was offered this video that illustrates perfectly what it's like to be labeled and pigeonholed by a know-nothing know-it-all. [media] [1] I was reminded of this silly thing again when I read an article called "US Congress recommends placing assets at Lagrange points to counter China" by Eric Berger about the LaGrange points—and that China is trying to take over the one on the dark side of the moon. There is no notion of cooperation. There is only competition. Either "we" get it or the Chinese do. There is no non-military, no non-aggressive solution. Children in a fucking sandbox. We're doomed. [1] h/t to Naomi Klein in the Blowback bonus episode who provided me with this word. I've been calling it "piracy", which is correct by its classic definition, but is kind of bound up with other principles these days. "Plunder" is much better. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4882 2023-12-28T09:36:48+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

starts off with this anecdote about Walter Lippmann. "Lippmann, the celebrated editor, commentator and author attended a dinner party in Manhattan one evening, and at the port-and-cigars stage of the occasion the host announced an intellectual amusement. All those" ... ]]>

starts off with this anecdote about Walter Lippmann. "Lippmann, the celebrated editor, commentator and author attended a dinner party in Manhattan one evening, and at the port-and-cigars stage of the occasion the host announced an intellectual amusement. All those who advocated socialism were to stand on one side of the dining room, and on the other those who favored the capitalist system. The guests duly divided. And when they were done sorting themselves out, Lippmann sat pointedly alone at the table—the ultimate in either indecision or a refusal to stand for one thing and against another. "[...] since hearing or reading the story I have thought many times about Lippmann as he sat by himself at the dinner table. One could argue he was a pitiful waffler, refusing to take a stand on a critical question of the day. Of what use are such people, you might ask. On the other hand, you may have it that Lippmann did take a stand, this stand being that there are virtues in both of the social and economic systems at issue, and it was his right to defend his position, a constituency of one." [Just sit this one out, if you can] Or perhaps Lippmann truly thought it was a stupid game, without nuance, played for and by children. If you have the luxury of not being forced to swear allegiance to a side, then you should take it. If you don't have skin in the game, then you don't have to make that choice. If you're faced with someone or many someones directly trying to kill you -- kill or be killed -- then you will have to commit yourself wholly to one "side". If you don't have skin in the game, then you should indulge in the luxury of nuance. Is there something useful to capitalism? Of course. Ditto for socialism. If you could have only one of them, which would you choose? Silly question. Any conceivable socialist society contains capitalist elements, and vice versa. It's like asking whether you'd rather keep your brain or your heart. Let's talk about something substantial instead. [Nuance and facts, not loyalties] Lawrence continued, "We live in an era of violence, viciousness, injustice and cruelty that, if not unprecedented by way of scale and magnitude, is down there with the worst for its craven immorality and inhumanity. This adds another to the numerous responsibilities we bear in exchange for some time on Earth. We are called upon to declare ourselves and what we stand for. We are obliged —whether or not we accept this obligation, and the majority of us don’t—to act on what we stand for. We ought to make clear to what we dedicate our loyalties." OK, Patrick, let's move to the "dedicate your loyalties" topic of the day: Palestine and Israel. Both sides want Israel to stop bombing. Israelis and their supporters wish they were able to stop bombing, but they don't feel safe yet. They feel that Hamas might spring -- whack-a-mole-like -- from the ground again at any moment and reap another 1200 Israelis. Palestinians just want the bombing to stop. But they also want the occupation to stop. Israel's proposed solution seems to be to move the Palestinians anywhere else but Israel. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." Palestinians can pinky-swear that they won't attack again, but it's an empty promise, one that they can't really make. Because how can you promise your oppressor that you'll never strike back without negating yourself? How can you promise that no-one among you will do so? So there is no "sitting at the dinner table alone" in this question (calling back to Lawrence's reference to the story about Lippmann), I suppose, but there is a requirement that we understand all sides and arguments -- no matter how immoral we find them to be. We should be sure we understand before we decide. If there are people on both sides who truly believe that the only solution is to eradicate the other ... then we have to accept that as the starting point. Understanding will help illuminate potential solutions -- escape routes, if you will -- as well. [Determine the baseline] We also have to look the situation squarely in the eye and see it for what it is. As Lawrence puts it, "[...] Israel began, with plentiful American support, its barbarous campaign to exterminate as many of the Palestinians of Gaza as it can before world opinion forces it to stop, while permanently displacing those it has not murdered. What we witness as the Israel Defense Forces attack Gaza is the exercise of power with[out] the merest pretense of decency, morality, or humaneness to veil it, to dress it up for the pitiful wafflers among us. It would take a Hannah Arendt to tell us if the deployment of power in this fashion is unprecedented in modern history, or in postwar history, or according to some other parameter. I would compare it, at a minimum, with America’s barbarity in Southeast Asia from the mid–1950s to the mid–1970s." Well, I think Israel has a long way to go in sheer numbers, but the indifference and single-mindedness -- the arrogant presumption of infallibility -- are very comparable. So, the proposal is to get rid of unwanted people by slaughter and forced emigration. Hauptsach weg. We have to determine how large that group is, how intractable their opinion, and what solutions they would consider acceptable. If we're honest, then we would have to plumb the depths of their solution space and determine how that affects our ability to plan a way for the future. Does the future contain them? Can it? If they're made aware that they're the problem and that the solution set being considered does not contain them, does their level of intractability change? If it does, if short-term self-preservation forces them to act against their own interests, to what degree is this a ruse from which they will retreat when the pressure is off? [Dealing with the plainly unreasonable] How much influence do voices like this one have? "Simcha Rothman, a member of the Israeli parliament for the Religious Zionism party, part of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition told the BBC this week that the UN has kept Palestinian refugees in Gaza for 75 years in order to hurt Israel and that the Gazans should be relocated in other places." He's a member of parliament. He believes that Palestinians are a disease from which Israelis need to be freed. It's an uphill climb if you have to deal with that as a starting point, I'll grant you that. In the Israel-Palestine conflict, there is no easy solution. There is one side with the absolute plurality of power and an absolute deficit of ethical underpinning not only for their current methods but also for the ways forward proposed by their most unreasonable representatives. The temptation there would be to round up to punishing the "criminal" en masse -- collective punishment because they're all so unreasonable. In this, one would become just like the Israelis, treating them just like they treat the Palestinians, in their feigned mad hunt for Hamas terrorists in every living room and hospital lobby. No, the solution has to consider the damage that has been done to all citizens of that area, whether or not they happen to have an elected representation over which they purportedly hold sway. Just as Palestinians are not the worst of Hamas, Israelis are not the worst of their government. We have to offer everyone a way out, a way to be their best, most reasonable, and generous selves. What does that mean? If Israelis continue to believe that there are only upsides to exterminating or exiling a population from their land, then they have to be disabused of that notion. If they think that they can just take the land, settle it, and grow as they have, without any real drawbacks to their standing in the international community, then it should be made clear that this is not the case. We have to be open to the idea that it is entirely possible that they will not care. Like children who understand that their parents cannot stop taking care of them, they might just push to get whatever they want in the short term. Perhaps shame and appeals to justice won't work. We have to try, because I kind of have to believe that it will work. The world just has to be firm that the other, easier avenues are no longer available. The world has to convince Israel that it needs the world. It's not an easy job. Right now, Israel feels that they've built a moral justification for ethnically cleansing Gaza first, then the West Bank. It is banking on its own people being OK with that. It is banking on the international community not daring to punish it in any way that would dissuade it. So far, it's been right. Dead right. [A beaten, demoralized, and starved population] The Palestinians have no power and no leverage. They have to be convinced that we're serious this time, that we're really going to help them survive, get back on their own feet. It's an uphill climb there, too. Just the sheer physical situation is already working against us. This is a population so traumatized and intellectually reduced by war and occupation that it may possibly already be too late. A population of children who have only known occupation and trauma and malnutrition and war will not have developed any of the tools and nuance that they need in order to tread the narrow and winding path forward, avoiding the pitfalls that will deliver justification to an equally skittish Israel to leave the path. Just the malnutrition and dehydration alone, during their developmental years, are going to mean that the crop of the best and the brightest that they need for this endeavor is necessarily diminished. That's just nature. I'm not saying that they could never have done it! I'm saying that exigencies and deprivation of the sort these generations have experienced leave scars. They take primacy. It becomes all you know and you need a lot of breathing space and time to get to a place where you're equipped to be diplomatic with the people who did that to you. That's if, as outlined above, you haven't been biologically diminished during formative years. Any that manage to crop up anyway can be mown down with impunity. This serves to guarantee that only the least likely to struggle up past the ignorance imposed by occupation will survive. So, the Israelis target lawyers, scholars, doctors, journalists, and other thought leaders, until all that is left are exactly the slavering zombie-like hordes of haters they've been accusing all Palestinians of having been all along. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. [What about Hamas's intolerance?] There is Hamas, which has, at various times, espoused their hatred of Jews and desire to eliminate them all. There are also more recent, official statements that are a good deal more moderate. There's something to work with on both sides, if you deal with the more moderate parties. However, let's round Hamas up to an intolerant organization that wants to eliminate anyone who isn't cis-gendered, straight, male, Arab, and Muslim. That makes them the intellectual equivalents of Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz, Ben-Gvir, and the like on the Israel side. There is shocking intolerance everywhere. I've heard people say that the youth in America who support LGBTQA, BLM, etc. should not support Palestine because Palestine is actually against them personally. Those people are relentless in their efforts to conflate concepts. They conflate Judaism with Zionism, and they conflate Palestine with Hamas and ISIS and Wahhabism. They see no distinction. The simple fact is that there are thousands of people being murdered and millions being made to suffer depravity for no other reason that they're in the wrong place, of the wrong ethnicity and the wrong religion, and espouse the wrong opinions: namely, that they wish to exist without being subjugated to the sovereignty of rulers they did not choose. It is this that people are responding to. [An unfair focus on Israel?] Netanyahu responds that it is antisemitic to focus on war crimes committed by Israel when there are so many other war crimes to choose from on this planet. The youth of Europe and the U.S. are focusing laser-like on what Israel is doing. It's a cute point, actually. He admits to the atrocities, but then says its antisemitic to notice only those atrocities. His solution would be, of course, to not notice any atrocities or, at the very least, to ignore those of Israel. Look, people have their political awakening at different times. They didn't listen when Yemen was briefly a topic. Congo was never a topic. It is the right thing to do to get Israel to stop what it is doing. It is wrong to stop there. But let's take one thing at a time. An empathy toward the Palestinians is a good start for a generation we'd thought had lost that capacity. You can also go ahead and express empathy for the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who've been uprooted by their own government's murderous policies. You can empathize with an Israeli population that is now suffering existential fear because of those selfsame policies. You can empathize with the families of those innocents killed on October 7th. But you can't do only that. You can't just see the suffering on one side and not acknowledge the suffering on the other, not if you're interested in a long-term solution. Short term, though? Yeah, Israel has to stop bombing. This is ridiculous. Nothing good can even begin to happen as long as that goes on. The protesters are right that there needs to be a longer-lasting ceasefire. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4912 2023-12-26T23:01:20+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is just one example among many recent ones, where both the German government and its cultural institutions are in increasing lockstep in controlling the narrative -- controlling how its citizens are allowed to... ]]>

is just one example among many recent ones, where both the German government and its cultural institutions are in increasing lockstep in controlling the narrative -- controlling how its citizens are allowed to think. [image]In the case cited in the article, Masha Gessen will still receive the Hannah Arendt award, but it will be presented "without the participation of the Heinrich Böll Foundation", whatever the hell that means. [1] Maybe they withdrew the cash prize? No idea. It doesn't really matter. What matters is how demonstratively stupid, petty, and anti-intellectual the actions of the grand viziers of German culture are. Right now, I guess, but maybe they've always been this way and the moment has allowed them to emerge (entpuppen), spread their filthy wings, and soar. I mean, I don't really care about Masha Gessen particularly. I stopped reading her a long time ago, after they [2] went off the rails for Russiagate. I haven't heard whether they've retracted any of the hysteria or fear-mongering from those years. But here they're being punished for being on the right side of history, for writing absolutely factual information. Here is part of what they wrote, "For the last 17 years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time—in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every 10 minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of 10 Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety." None of this is disputed. Israeli newscasters would proudly read that paragraph out loud in a primetime newscast. The intelligentsia of Germany seems to have read that far, and then decided that it was beyond the pale to compare any possible situation -- either in the past, the present or millennia into the future -- with the awfulness that was a Jewish ghetto under Nazi occupation. To them, Nothing will ever compare. Anyone who attempts a comparison is dead to Germany. They consider it antisemitic to even suggest that anyone has ever suffered or could ever suffer as much as the Jews. Jesus, it's like watching that albino monk [3] castigate himself with that cat-o-nine-tails in The Da Vinci Code. Gessen did go on, though, to differentiate the situations, properly crediting Germans for their unsurpassable cruelty and Jews for their unsurpassable victimhood -- granting those features the fealty that Germany expects. "The Nazis claimed that ghettos were necessary to protect non-Jews from diseases spread by Jews. Israel has claimed that the isolation of Gaza, like the wall in the West Bank, is required to protect Israelis from terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians. The Nazi claim had no basis in reality, while the Israeli claim stems from actual and repeated acts of violence. These are essential differences. Yet both claims propose that an occupying authority can choose to isolate, immiserate--and, now, mortally endanger--an entire population of people in the name of protecting its own." I'm quite convinced that they made these sweeping declarations about Gessen without having read -- or perhaps without having understood -- their essay. If this is a sign of things to come, then Germany has already gone completely off the rails. They've "lost the plot". There is no coming back from where they're going, not if they don't control themselves soon. They can spend another century in the wilderness if they want to keep up this bullshit. I've always said that Germany plummets headlong after its Lord and Master the United States, their slavish devotion to their conqueror a national fucking embarrassment. Now, they're full-bore emulating U.S. anti-intellectualism and love of Israel. I'm really quite shocked that the German art and literature world is so riddled with idiots. I'd hoped for better. The article leads with an unsourced tweet: ""The irony of calling for the suspension of a prize named after an anti-totalitarian political theorist in order to appease the authoritarian government of a rogue state currently committing genocide against an already-subjugated people seems to be lost," said one critic." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I don't know who either of these people are, whether they even exist, and they're almost certainly not associated with Heinrich Böll, but that's the picture that came up when I searched for "German intelligentsia". It had "ultranationalist" in the title, which seemed appropriate. It looks like they're plotting to suppress people's freedom of expression, so I think it works. [1] Them's her pronouns and, since I'm aware of them, I'll use them where habit doesn't force me into a mistake. [1] Look, it honestly doesn't matter what his name was -- it was Silas -- but I guess I could give a shoutout to the incomparable Paul Bettany in that role. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4903 2023-12-26T22:34:57+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

"Mr. HIMES. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio for having this critical conversation today. "Just outside this Chamber, on January 20, 1961, a new young President by the name of John F. Kennedy said, ‘‘We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.’’ "We would pay any price, bear any burden, and meet any hardship to ensure the survival and success of liberty. "What has happened to America that we shrink from our traditional role of standing up against tyrants, dictators, and genocidal maniacs in favor of liberty? What has happened to us? "Why did Kennedy say those words? He didn’t say those words because he wanted to replicate the pain and tragedy of the world war in which he had distinguished himself as a war hero. He didn’t say those words because he wanted young Americans to die in East Asia or around the globe in the service of liberty. "He said those words because he understood what he had learned in the 1930s and the 1940s, which is that brutal dictators don’t stop; they are stopped. They are stopped by those with the moral fortitude and courage to stop them. "If we accede to where half of the Republican majority is today, which is that we are not going to support Ukraine in this fight, Putin will not stop. Soon, the United States will have no choice but to step in to stop Vladimir Putin. "We hear these excuses: There is not enough accounting. There is not enough oversight. "We didn’t hear that when we were supporting the Afghani regime, which is profoundly corrupt. We didn’t hear that about Iraq. We are only hearing that about Ukraine. "We hear that we would like to know what the plan is for victory in Ukraine. Did anybody ask Winston Churchill, the hero of World War II, what his plan for victory was? No, they did not because he wasn’t sure. We stood by him because he stood for liberty and the moral clarity that this institution has now lost. "If we think for one moment that Putin is the only one who is enjoying this moment, think about what President Xi of China is learning; think about what the Iranian mullahs are seeing; and think about what the North Korean dictator is coming to understand: That this Congress, when faced with the demand that we fight for liberty and freedom, we cut and run. That is what is being learned. Anybody who reads an iota of history will understand the tragedy that is behind that. "It is time for this Chamber to find an iota of the moral courage and clarity that John F. Kennedy elaborated on just outside these doors. We do it because it is right. We do it because if we fail the Ukrainians, it may be the next generation of Americans and Frenchmen and British who have to stop Putin. "Be assured that we will have to do that later in far, far more tragic circumstances than we have right now to stop—as John F. Kennedy called us to do—the march of tyranny and stand up for liberty." He hits all of the expected points: * He talks about "cutting and running" from the fight for "liberty and freedom". * He hand-waves a coming third world-war if Congress doesn't fund right now. * He says having no plan for what to do with the money as a good thing because Churchill didn't have a plan either. * He plays the "moral clarity" card, when nothing is morally clear. * He cites the axis of evil * "Putin" of Russia * "President Xi of China" * "Iranian mullahs" (I guess he doesn't know any names there) * "[T]he North Korean dictator" (again, the name seems to have escaped him) In Greenwald's segment, he compares this impassioned speech to the recent revelation that Russia has lost 85% of its troops. OMG we're almost there! We can't quit now! [image]But, wait....if Putin has lost all of his troops and hardware and stands before imminent defeat if we don't lose our resolve, then why is Jim Himers telling us that Putin's going to win not only Ukraine, but take over Europe if we don't stop him? How could he do any of that if he has barely any military power left? Which one is it? Both? It can't be both. I bet it's ... neither. Stop blowing smoke up our asses. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] It's funny. I'd stopped the video to write most of the rest of this article. When I restarted, Glenn continued with, "He sounds exactly like Nikki Haley, exactly like Tom Cotton, exactly like Marco Rubio, exactly like Liz Cheney. Do you see how identical the Democrats and Republicans are? The establishment wings of those parties, when it comes to foreign policy -- first of all, everything is Hitler, everything is World War II again. Oh, we didn't ask Winston Churchill what his plan was; why would we ask the United States government what its plan is in this war? "Because we've been caught in so many wars with no exit strategy, with no clear strategy, and all it's done is eaten up American resources, destroy American standing in the world, and ended up causing us to lose so many wars. Because we had no plan, but you see how everything is World War II, everything is either: you support war and you're Winston Churchill or you oppose it and you're giving in to Adolf Hitler, just like Neville Chamberlain did. "Beyond that, this is the same worldview as Republicans have. We're faced with an axis of evil, composed of Iran, China, North Korea, Russia. This is standard Republican foreign policy orthodoxy that is coming out of the mouth of these desperate Democrats to fuel this war in Ukraine. But he also lied when he said there were no calls for safeguards or investigations into where the money went for Afghanistan and Iraq. There were all kinds of investigations about where the money went in Iraq and Afghanistan and what we found was, when we have no safeguards, billions of dollars disappear." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4910 2023-12-26T22:14:14+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

about the trial of the cops who beat the ever-loving shit out of "Rodney King" , the act that sparked the "LA riots" . Below, I cite part of the joke from the link above "Officer Coon looks in the camera and actually says, ‘Oh, that Rodney King beating tape? It’s all in how you look at it.’ "[...] "‘All in how you look at it, Officer... Coon?’ "‘That’s right. It’s how you look at the tape.’ "‘Well, would you care to tell the court [incredulously] how... you’re lookin’ at that?’ "‘Yeah OK, sure. It’s how you look at it... the tape. For instance, well, if you play it backwards you see us help King up and send him on his way.’ "‘Hmmmm. Not guilty!’ [gavel bangs]" Vivek didn't stop there. He started repeating every wild myth about Chinese Uighur concentration camps, talking about how that's what we should concentrate on instead of Israel. That those are far worse than Palestine. Ramaswamy is like all the rest. He's an asshat, an assclown who knows nothing, has no empathy, and has no principles. He doesn't care about stopping crimes before they happen, especially when it's his friends -- or countries that he knows he has to be friends with in order to get elected as president -- that are doing them -- or where he thinks he can gain personal economic or political advantage. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4896 2023-12-12T22:50:15+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "Amira Hass is on a tear" , and "Norman Finkelstein is on a tear" , so I put this one in the series. [media] [image]I don't know whether he chose his shirt to signify that he feels like he's in prison, but it sure as heck looked... ]]>

, "Amira Hass is on a tear" , and "Norman Finkelstein is on a tear" , so I put this one in the series. [media] [image]I don't know whether he chose his shirt to signify that he feels like he's in prison, but it sure as heck looked like a prisoner's uniform. 0:00 Intro o1:10 The Four Food Groups of News 16:21 Ilan Pappé interview 16:53 Becoming and anti-Zionist 21:41 Israel is a plan of ethnic cleansing 34:04 Historical context of Oct 7 52:16 Alleged antisemitism on college campuses At 39:00, Pappé and Aaron discuss how the Israeli government, if not most citizens are perfectly aware of the situation -- it's just that everything they've ever learned is that they should be just fine with it. In essence, "Yes, we understand that they have every right to want to kill us for what we've done to them, which is why we have to kill them first. What is so hard to understand about that?" "For what shall it profit a man though he should win the whole world, if he lose his own soul? " As Pappé says, the logic of the argument is ironclad given a certain worldview, given a certain lifelong indoctrination. The solution domain is very simplistic; it is zero-sum -- one side dies or the other. This is Starship Troopers come to life. It's tedious. You don't have the moral high ground. Your argument is that some pigs are better than others. Yeah, yeah. Dudes: we've considered and rejected such moralities. Try to keep up. Matthew 16:26 (in the New Testament, which is maybe why it went unnoticed) says, "For what shall it profit a man though he should win the whole world, if he lose his own soul?" "[...] this is very worrying because what the Israelis want to do is to use that event to absolve them from all their criminal policies before the 7th of October. And definitely to provide this moral support for what they're doing now. And this is why we should insist on the context because otherwise you remain with a pretext [...]" "Aaron: I want to read you a quote that I know you're familiar with. This is from Moshe Dayan. He is a famed Israeli military leader and in 1956, he spoke at a funeral for an Israeli soldier, who had been killed by some Palestinians living in Gaza. And Dayan said this, he said, "'let us not cast the blame on the murderers today. Why should we deplore their burning hatred for us for eight years? They've been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and Villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our estate.' "That's Moshe Dayan in 1956 so I wonder if you can talk about that quote and the significance of it in Israeli history I know it's very famous. He goes on to say though that rather than making peace with these people, we need to be basically be even more aggressive. "Pappé: this is probably you have to be an Israeli to to understand why it sounds so logical to Israelis to say that the Palestinians have all the right to hate us, to fight against us, even to kill us -- and that's why we have all the right to do the same to them. "[...] "If you go deeper you can see that this is actually a dehumanization of the Palestinians. It's almost like a hunter who would say, 'I really respect the bravery of the lion that I'm going to kill.' It's not a respect for human beings." Pappé continued talking about how his otherwise-scientific and rigorously intellectual colleagues in Israel have an ethical structure composed nearly exclusively of logical fallacies in which they must believe so that the whole house of cards that justifies their belief that ethnic cleansing and genocide is not only OK for them, but they don't have ever doubt whether they're the good guys. Of course they are. "[...] that this is the way to solve the issue -- by expelling even more people -- from someone who is dealing with law and international law is, again, if you face them with this astonishment about the immorality of these logical statements, [...] I generally think they don't understand what you're talking about. They think they're really building a logical kind of scientific argument here. No Palestinians in the West Bank = no problem [in] the West Bank, right? How the Palestinians are not there? Doesn't matter. but they're not there. This is very difficult to deal with because the inner logic of these people says to them that [it's] not only logically right but also morally right." I have a few Israeli friends and work colleagues. I spoke with a couple of them on the First Chanukah. They remarked how the next week of planning days fell on Chanukah, to which we responded that the holiday is so long that it's hard to avoid them all. One of them said, sure, sure, and you guys are taking off 10 days at the end of the year, and that's somehow different? To which I responded that that is a very fair point. Touché. Anyway, I wanted to get to the persecution complex. Look, I understand it's not completely unwarranted. I get that. But when the other guy remarked that they had so many holidays because every holiday was a commemoration of a time when someone wanted to kill all the Jews, it felt jarring. It felt like it came out of nowhere, but I don't think it felt like that for them -- because that's the default mindset. That's just something you say all the time. No-one questions you on it. The worst thing in the world is living in an echo chamber -- with no-one to call you on your bullshit. They probably just forgot temporarily that the idea sounds like a massive persecution complex when you're not suffused in that propaganda, day after day, year after year. I didn't take the bait. I mean, I thought it was a bit tone-deaf for an Israeli to complain about how persecuted they are when they've been running a literal human zoo for several decades ... and they hate the animals in there. They have more weapons than God and have a giant brother who supplies more and more and doesn't even own a leash. I can understand thinking that situation, though, if you only read and watch the correct news. As "Gideon Levy" pointed out in his interview: you get nothing else on Israeli TV but IDF-supplied news. Dozens of millions of Americans manage it every day. Hell, half of Congress is still waiting for Vietnam to apologize for having killed American soldiers, so I understand how Israelis might fully be drinking their own Kool-Aid. It's just a pity because I wish my friends were smarter than that. Although sometimes smart guys don't pay attention. I have another colleague from Argentina who doesn't follow the news at all. He probably doesn't even know that his home country has its very own Trump now. At 01:12:20, Pappé talks about what he sees as the current genocide, which differs only in from what he calls the more insidious, incremental genocide that's taken place over the last 56 years. "The United Nation definition of genocide -- contrary to what people may think -- genocide is not always a total elimination of all the people of a certain identity. It's also an elimination of people in small groups, if the elimination is because of who they are, not because of what they did. And it's very clear that if Israelis say that everyone in Gaza -- whether they are babies in incubators or doctors in a hospital or teachers in a school -- are a legitimate target. "I don't remember who it was -- one of the Israel General said, 'you know if we kill three citizens alongside every terrorist, that's okay.' Then this is genocide. This fits into the [definition of] genocide. "What we did learn from the siege is the idea of an incremental genocide. Namely, that it doesn't look like it if you look at it on a daily basis. The fact that babies die because there's no food or because there's no infrastructure in the -- I'm talking about before the seventh of October -- and there's no infrastructure in the hospital or mother die at birth at checkpoints in the West Bank and only two mothers in one week, then you don't get the picture. "But if you accumulate these incidents, these cases, and you look over a period of 56 years, you can see that there is a destruction, there's an elimination of people and the only reason they're treated that way is because of who they are. And then it becomes incremental genocide, to my mind." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4894 2023-12-11T09:19:53+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

and "Norman Finkelstein is on a tear" , so I put this one in the series. Starting at 24:00, the Gideon Levy interview is just... ]]>

and "Norman Finkelstein is on a tear" , so I put this one in the series. Starting at 24:00, the Gideon Levy interview is just 100% gold. Katie and Aaron ask good questions, but it's really more of a lecture on Israel, as she is in 2023. [media] 00:00 Intro 01:43 The Four Food Groups of News 19:52 An Ode to Henry Kissinger 24:00 Gideon Levy interview 28:05 How Israeli's live with occupation 35:27 Can the truce hold? 45:47 Is there any hope for peace? 56:15 What do young Israelis think? The first 24 minutes are a bit uneven. I really like Aaron Maté and Katie Halper. I think they're intelligent, witty, and have their ethics in the right place. But they drew several conclusions in the first 20 minutes that were absolutely the correct ones, but justified them with completely specious reasoning. It's the kind of thing that makes you so assailable. You don't lock down your point because you made it in a way that someone who's looking to disagree with you is going to be able to use to continue the discussion long after it should have been shut down. I think that's my problem with "Mo Gawdat" as well -- his interactions have encouraged him to be lazy in his justifications for what I agree are the correct sentiments. This means I can't really use anything he says as ammunition in my own arguments. It's a pity. Anyway... This is a brilliant lecture by Gideon Levy. Katie and Aaron ask good questions, but from 24:00 onwards, it's the Gideon Levy show. It's just an incredible interview. I copy/pasted so much out of the transcript because nearly every word out of Mr. Levy's mouth was interesting and pertinent and well-phrased. I'm glad he, too, noticed what great questions both Katie and Aaron asked. If you can make your friends watch one 80-minute video about Israel, this is the one. As for the transcript? It's OK, but needs a lot of cleanup to make it truly legible. It has no punctuation, has odd capitalization, and the poor thing just can't bring itself to write the word "apartheid". I'm not going to read anything into that. I've cleaned up the transcription considerably, but I've not corrected any of Levy's unique prepositions or formulations because I'm transcribing his speech, not translating it to SWE (Standard Written English). At 28::30, he says, "Look: you cannot maintain such an occupation -- such a brutal reality -- in your backyard without believing in some kind of of lies that you invent to yourself in order to make it easier for you. Because, finally, we are all human beings with emotions. And I don't think that a normal human being can live in peace with such a brutal dictatorship in its backyard. Even if you don't see it, but you know it's there, in your backyard, just half an hour away from your home. "So, you have to live in denial. Otherwise, you cannot stand it. So, first of all, Israel covered itself -- protected itself -- with all kind of walls of denial. "Above all, the media which doesn't show anything right now, anything from Gaza. You can hardly see Gaza on Israeli TV or [in] Israeli newspapers, and you can hardly see the occupation in Israeli mainstream media. "But that's not enough okay? So, you don't see anything and you don't want to know anything and all those agency helps you not to know. That's not enough. You have to have also some kind of ideology, some kind of explanation, some kind of justification. "So, the first thing you mentioned was really being the chosen people. We got it with the milk of our mothers. We were told from childhood that -- even though most of us are secular or we think we are secular -- that that we are the chosen people. And the examples, the expressions, are endless. "Let's take the international law. The international law was born after the Holocaust, after the World War II. And Israel, obviously, supports the international law. It's something very important. It should be implemented everywhere -- except of one place: Israel. "For Israel, it shouldn't be implemented. Why? Because we are a special case. You cannot deal us with the same tools that you deal Syria, Iraq, Russia -- all kind of occupying regimes. No. We are not one of them. We are something special. And you see it again and again. You can also not tell us what to do because we know better. "If you met Israelis, you always feel this arrogance. We know better. Why? Because we are better. Because what do you know folks? I mean who? Americans, Germans, French, Swedes -- who are you to tell us? "Secondly, is obviously this notion of victimization. As the late Golda Meir phrased it -- in a wonderful way -- after the Holocaust: 'the Jews have the right to do whatever they want.' In other words, we are the ultimate victims of history. But not only the ultimate victims. We are the only victims. "Try to tell an Israeli that there were some other holocausts. He will be deeply offended. You cannot call the Armenian Holocaust the Holocaust because Holocaust is only ours and we are the biggest victims. Being such victims enable us to do whatever we want and nobody can stop us. "Katie: [...] and the third one is the dehumanization of Palestinians. "Right. And that's the most obvious one. Because you cannot colonize and you cannot brutally govern another people with the belief that they are equal human beings to you. Because then, who gave you this right to treat them like -- I don't even want to say animals, because animals, [Katie:] they're treated better, [Gideon:] absolutely -- who gave you the right? "So the only way to live with it in peace, is to keep on telling yourself that they are not human beings like us. The Palestinians don't love their children. Therefore, they are not -- it's not a big deal for them to see them dying. They were born to kill. They have nothing in their mind except of pushing the Jews to the ocean. "That's their nature. They are barbarians. I mean, that's their nature. It's not that it's for a certain purpose. That's them and they are not like us. We are human. We are human beings. And that's the way to treat them because then they -- there's no question of human rights, if they're not human -- so why do they deserve human rights? "You see it, by the way, in any occupation. I mean, obviously the Germans dehumanized the Jews. But, also, in many other cases, you cannot maintain an occupation without dehumanizing the other. [...] In Africa look how they treated the colonies in Africa -- total dehumanization. Because otherwise, how can you stand it and explain it to yourself?" As an American, this rings true of how America ticks, as well. The U.S. also constantly speaks of itself as "exceptional". It also does not recognize any higher authority than itself. It also dehumanizes every last one of its occupied peoples -- Afghans, Iraqis, the list goes on. They dehumanize every last immigrant. Americans also think they're better than everyone because they absolutely believe the story of exceptionalism. This brainwashing works so well that they can visit foreign countries that are obviously running things better than in the U.S. and they will feel sorry for those benighted peoples because they don't have the same TV programs, or they can't drive everywhere they want to -- they have to take trains! Or busses! -- their food isn't the same. The level of brainwashing is incredible. At 34:00, he says, "Now Israel is 24 hours, 7 days a week only in news programs. There are no other programs, so it's an ongoing broadcast, which shows almost only either the agony of the families of the hostages or the hostages coming back or the soldiers in Gaza or telling us about the achievements in Gaza. "Now there is the pause, so you see less from Gaza. But only the army. You will see once in a while some very small piece of one [or] two minutes showing some ruins in Gaza, just you know to -- as a lip service: 'here we showed Gaza.' But it's not really showing Gaza. "We know very well that everything is also about framing. And this is always framed as something marginal, as something that we have to show you, but let's get back to business. The bomb that fall on a house in the South and scratched the terrace -- that's the story of the day. By all means, not 5,000 children who were killed in Gaza. This is not in our agenda. "So when it is being done systematically -- that's brainwashing." This also checks out in comparing with the States. The U.S. kids itself that it has two silos, but to a sane person, they look pretty much the same. They only disagree on relatively minor issues. I don't mean that abortion rights is absolutely minor but that it's minor when compared to a $1T-per-year military that stamps its bootprint on the world, over and over. At 36:00, he says, "The national sentiment right now -- and polls show it -- is in favor of continuing the war. And in a very clear majority. Israelis, after the 7th of October, feel that they cannot get back to normality before punishing Gaza and punishing Hamas and smashing Hamas -- crashing Hamas. That's almost common in Israeli discourse, that this should happen." At around 44:00, he talks about how the Kibbutzim were mostly old socialists, peace activists, who now feel betrayed by the Palestinians. The Kibbutzim are lumping Palestinians and the most militant Hamas all together, but this was inevitable. They, too, are going to succumb to some of the brainwashing. The Kibbutzim feel that they're helping someone, and then that someone bites the hand that feeds. This is powerful. Levy says that the core of the left, the peace movement, is breaking up and moving to the right now, as well. He says that this is not surprising, but that it's one of the most lamentable side-effects of the attack and counterattack -- there will be even less political air to breathe for anyone pushing for a reconciliation or an equitable and just one-state solution. After that, he talks about the shame Israel feels about having been taking by surprise by a few hundred people on motorcycles. This shame and embarrassment drives the intensity of the counterattack, as well. At 46:30, Katie asks if there is any hope for a one-state solution -- with equal rights, because there already is a one-state solution, just an apartheid one. He says, "not for the foreseeable future." He continues, "Israelis will not wake up one morning and say, 'oh, this occupation, this apartheid, we don't like it so much. Let's put an end to it. This will never happen happen. It will only happen when Israelis will pay for it, will be punished for it. And this is not going to happen because the International community basically supports the occupation. The United States supports the occupation, actively, passively [...]" Katie asks how the U.S. could end the occupation. Levy responds that, "What is easier than this? Israel depends so much on the United States. The aid is so generous -- more than any country in the world. God knows why, but Israel gets more than any other country in the world and, believe me, Israel is not the poorest country or the country that deserves...but that's the choice of the United States and that's your own choice. You have to decide to whom, but why not to condition? It was never conditioned. This is so outrageous. "[...] "Why not, for example, condition the aid by at least stopping building settlements? You want our aid? You have to stop this criminal project. What is so complicated in this? No American president, no administration, went for it." At 51:00, he says, "I guess you know that in Israel there are not many political discussions anymore. In the last decades, nobody speaks about the long future. [...] Everybody's only in the present. Ask an Israeli, "'Where do you want to go? Where are you aiming? Where is your state aiming? What is the end game? What is your goal? What will be here in 20 years time? In 30 years time? [...] What do you want to happen here?' "You will not get an answer, except [from] the very right extremist, who will tell you, very clearly to expel the Palestinians from here, and then we'll have a real Jewish State between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. That's our plan -- we are aiming there. But that's, until now, a minority. All the rest have no plan and and there is no debate. There is no debate." At 52:00, he says, "[...] you come and see campaigns to the elections. The occupation is not present at all. Election after election, people speak about the most minor and stupid issues -- and the occupation is not on the table at all. Not in favor, not against -- doesn't exist." "[...] don't forget that I've not been in Gaza for the last 15 years because Israel doesn't let any Israeli journalist to go to Gaza. So most of the contacts are also much weaker now because it's 15 years that I've not seen none of my friends there." "What we see here, that generation after generation, they become more ignorant about the conflict. They know nothing. They really know nothing. You will be surprised. I can ensure you, any average American student in University or in college -- for sure. any European -- knows much more about the conflict than an average Israeli. We live in denial. And therefore, we don't want to know anything. Not only about life in Gaza today -- about the whole history. the context. The context is not present. "[...] "I'm amazed, again and again, how little -- there are obviously very knowledgeable young people in Israel, yeah -- but the majority, they know nothing. And they don't want to know nothing. And they hate the Arabs like hell." This checks out with Americans as well. Just the most shocking, willful ignorance about their own recent history. They just forgive themselves of their own crimes by allowing their propaganda to quickly and efficiently erase any of their home country's crimes from their memories. At 01:15:00, "I say it for many years I never made a poll and it's not systematic, but I can tell you that many more Palestinians that I met want to live together with the Jews -- in equality, in justice -- but are ready to live with the Jews. "Most of the Israelis that I know -- including the leftists -- wants separation. We are here. They are there. So that's, first of all, a difference in their sentiments. Obviously there is a bigger majority for the one-state solution among the Palestinians rather than among the Israelis, who, for them it's unacceptable at all." I think the really important thing to remember is that there already is a one-state solution right now. It is an apartheid one. There is only one state: Israel. There are a lot of people living in Israel who have different rights from the ruling class. This is not unlike other countries, like Switzerland, where over 30% of the resident population cannot vote because they do not have Swiss citizenship. Of course, the path to citizenship, if not easy, is, at least in principle, possible. I just wanted to point out that most countries exist somewhere on this spectrum, from 100% perfect equality to outright apartheid. Israel is quite far out on one extreme. Levy continues, "Now, what any American or Israeli should know is that nothing -- but nothing -- in our lives -- in your lives -- looks the same like someone in your same age, same social-economical background in the West Bank. And we are not speaking about the cage of Gaza. We are speaking about the West Bank and we are not speaking about times of war, but the routine. "The routine of the occupation is the most cruel one because, at any given moment, the army can penetrate to your home -- mainly at night -- with dogs, wake the whole house up, make a search without any legal supervision -- obviously. At any moment, the army is -- the raids are every night, everywhere. At any given moment, you can be arrested with reason. without reason. "At any given moment, your parents can be humiliated in front of you and children can be beaten in front of you. This can happen in any moment and. above all. Your life is so cheap and you can be so easily shot at any circumstance. You don't have to do much in order to be shot." I'm thinking that there are certain echelons of U.S. society who can absolutely understand this feeling. Mr. Levy should read more news about U.S. policing. I'm sure it's worse in the West Bank, but man does this situation rhyme with the one facing the poor and minority populations in the U.S. "[...] much worse than this, is the lack of dignity. You know that any 18-year-old soldier can do with you whatever he wants. And the same for an armed settler. He can do to you whatever he wants and nothing will happen to him. [...] You are totally helpless. You have no one to come to save you. No, I mean everyone in every other society in the world can call a police, can call an ambulance, can call soldiers. army. someone to come and guard you, to protect you." I understand that he knows his own country the best, but Israel absolutely does not have a lock on police repression of minorities. Or on citizen lynchings of minorities. I'm quite sure that people all over Europe and the U.S. would definitely be able to tell of similar experiences. Do you think people are setting the banlieues in Paris on fire for fun? Does he not read any news from the U.S. about police brutality? Maybe he should read "The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2012)" . "Life has no perspectives for anything -- and everything we say here is so much better in the West Bank than in Gaza." Katie's final question was about why a two-state solution is no longer feasible. Levy answered, "In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, there are over 700,000 Jewish settlers. Part of them are armed, all of them are represented in Israeli politics as the strongest political pressure group. They have ministers. They have members of parliament They have high officers in the army, in the media, everywhere. They are a very well-organized, very powerful group in Israeli society. "There is no reality in which anyone will be able to evacuate them from their settlements. 700,000 people you cannot evacuate. If you don't evacuate them, there is no viable Palestinian State. Anyone who had visited the West Bank understands that there is no room -- no room! You cannot drive in the West Bank more than 10 minutes without seeing another settlement. What kind of Palestinian state will it be when in every corner there there is an armed militant violent outpost. Who is going to to challenge it? And how will it be a Palestinian state with 700,000 settlers?" At the very end, he addressed the de-facto one-state solution, summarized better than I'd done above. "[...] what is lasting already for the last 55 years is a one-state [solution]. We are all living in one state. A refugee in Jenin. a shepherd in Hebron, and me in Tel Aviv, we live under the same regime, under the same authority: the government and the military of Israel. He is more under the military. I more under the government. "But, finally, we are living in the same state. He's using the same currency that I use. He is registered with the ministry of interior exactly like I do. He is living under Israel, like me, under the state of Israel. "So the one state is here. The only problem is its regime and its regime is anything but democracy. I will not get into it, because it's late, but it looks like apartheid, it behaves like apartheid, it is apartheid. I don't know anyone who went to the West Bank, saw a settlement -- the Jewish settlement -- on one side, a Palestinian village next by. The Jews have all the rights in the world. The Palestinian next by have no rights whatsoever and we'll be able to call it any other name but apartheid." I've been trying to figure out who he looks like. He's an Israeli Robert de Niro. [image] ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4893 2023-12-10T17:20:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, about a video of hers from 2016, where she interviews Israelis in the streets of Jerusalem. In this video, there was some interesting stuff,... ]]>

, about a video of hers from 2016, where she interviews Israelis in the streets of Jerusalem. In this video, there was some interesting stuff, but I felt that they accompanied each other down the rabbit hole a bit too much. [media] They formed their own little echo chamber. It was a fine discussion, but no progress made to figure out how to reach people who don’t already think the way that they do. They just laughed about how stupid everyone else is. I get how frustrating it can be when you see that people are literally denying a holocaust and then claim that they have no idea what’s going on, that you’re the crazy one for even believing something so horrible. Being gaslit is no fun. But, man, you’ve got to stop cutting off friends who don’t already think right. You’ve got to stop thinking that people are evil rather than ignorant. That’s not the way to get your minority to be a majority. Maybe they know much worse people than I do. Maybe they have much more contact with people who don’t think like them. At one point, Saul says, "Israel is a safe space for sexual predators." Um, ok. You sure about that? Or are you just believing anything that your silo publishes? I looked it up and found the article "With pedophiles seeking sanctuary in Israel, one way parents can protect kids" by Melanie Kidman , which writes, "According to Jewish Community Watch, at least 34 pedophiles in their sex offender database have moved to Israel in the past decade under the Law of Return, one of the Israel’s founding pieces of legislation, which guarantees every Jew a place in the country. An additional 12 pedophiles have moved to countries other than Israel." Ah, OK. 34 people over 10 years. And the “right of return” applies to everyone Jewish, regardless of your criminal record. That’s their law. How could the Jewish state have been founded on a law that rejects the right of return to Jews who’ve been judged by the societies that they are ostensibly fleeing? I mean, can we conceive of a situation in which a society accuses a Jew of pedophilia in order to arrest them? You know, Saul, as a black man, should be able to conceive of a situation in which an ostracized minority has false charges thrown against them. But, instead, he laughs about how awesome it is that Israel turns out to be utterly evil. You really can’t give in to that temptation. They’re veering very close to objectifying all Israelis as their country. What would they think of people who did the same to them, as Americans? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4892 2023-12-10T16:16:58+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

wrote the following about a survey about the Holocaust. "The question in the survey asks respond[ant]s whether they "strongly agree," "tend to agree," "tend to disagree," "strongly disagree," or "neither agree" ... ]]>

wrote the following about a survey about the Holocaust. "The question in the survey asks respond[ant]s whether they "strongly agree," "tend to agree," "tend to disagree," "strongly disagree," or "neither agree nor disagree" with the statement that "the Holocaust is a myth." In the sample as a whole, only 7% picked "strongly agree" (2%) or "tend to agree" (5%). But among young people (age 18-29), the figure was 20% (8% "strongly agree" and 12% "tend to agree"). This is the figure that has understandably caused consternation. "Some of that outrage is justified. The Holocaust is one of the worst events in all of human history and one of the best documented. There is no even remotely plausible reason to consider it a myth. Such claims are in the same boat as those of people who think the Earth is flat, or that the Moon landings were faked." The upshot is that too many people agreed with the statement that "The Holocaust is a myth." [Stupid questions] What a stupid question that is, though. So simplistic. It’s like the moron Congresswoman in a recent hearing who kept asking university professors to answer the question of whether it breaks the honor code of the university to call for genocide on campus. She equated intifada with calling for genocide, but demanded that they answer YES OR NO. But Congress is filled with idiots who know nothing of history or, indeed, of words. They are busily equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism—now part of U.S. law—and now want to equate “intifada” with “genocide”. They just want to punish speech, force mindsets, control the narrative. Most of them probably have no ideas why they're even doing it anymore -- other than they're convinced that their self-preservation is inextricably bound up in it. They don't care at all that their stupidity is steamrolling things more worthy than they. If one is forced to choose an answer to the question of "do you think people should be prevented from calling for genocide?", then the answer is NO. I know, the question was more like, "Is calling for genocide banned by the code of conduct on your campus? YES OR NO." The presidents couldn't say YES OR NO because they were afraid that their answer of "NO" would be wildly misinterpreted. That was silly, of course. You might as well say what you believe because those assholes that want to are going to wildly misinterpret you anyway. Speech is free. Or, at least, it should be. Anyone can say any old dumb thing that they want. But the requirement to answer yes or no is utterly without nuance. * Do you think it’s OK to rape someone? No. * Do you think it’s OK to murder someone? No. * Do you think it’s OK to kill someone? Yes. On the last one, most people would want to add some examples where they think it might be OK to kill someone. You know, so no-one thinks you're a psycho. YES OR NO. It’s the same with the question about the Holocaust. Is the Holocaust a myth? YES. Indubitably. It is one of the strongest, most enduring myths that the western world has. The rest of the world cares a lot less about it, understandably. Is it based on events that actually happened? YES. Indubitably. Is the juxtaposition of the Jewish Holocaust granted much higher precedence than the other mass killings that occurred at the time or have occurred since? Gays, Gypsies, Socialists, Communists, Cambodians, Congolese, Rwandans, etc.? Of course it is. That’s the mythologizing part. Was what happened to Jews during the Holocaust more horrific than what happened to everyone else at the time? YES. Was it exponentially worse? Debatable. Hard to say. Need more data. [History is not science] This takes me to the next part, where Somin compares believing that the Holocaust is a myth to believing that the Earth is flat. That is an utterly specious comparison. The Earth is clearly not flat. There is no way to exaggerate its roundness to make it seem less flat. The myth of the Holocaust has been carefully constructed over decades to be what it is today, with the societal impact it has today. Historical fact does not have the same character as scientific fact. The statements 2 + 2 = 4 and "the Holocaust was the worst thing that every happened to any group of people" are not in the same epistemological ballpark. There are many other slaughters and cleansings that have no impact on modern thought, like the Armenian genocide, the Nakba, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam. What the U.S. only stopped doing as recently as 5 years ago in Iraq devastated an entire country. Libya is gone. For what? No-one talks about that in the same hushed tones as the Holocaust, which was perpetrated three generations ago by the Germans. The one on our temporal doorstep, perpetrated by the U.S. — this one doesn’t get mythologized. Not yet. The moon landing is like the Holocaust. It is anchored in undeniable fact, but it, too, has been mythologized, the rough edges of actual history worn smooth to ease the retelling. I find it sad when otherwise intelligent people fail to see the traps laid by such infantile surveys. They are gotcha questions. Anyone with any subtlety of thought would refuse to participate in it, leaving only literal-minded and unquestioning respondents, eager to give the “right” answer. That shows the value of surveys such as these, to be honest. [You're either ignorant or a monster] Somin goes on, in his all-knowing way, "Some people who believe the Holocaust is a myth really are anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, or adherents of other horrible ideologies. But many are probably just ignorant without being malicious." See? For him, there is no category of person for whom such a YES OR NO question is far too simplistic to express one’s position. There is no room for nuance. "It is also important to emphasize that ignorance about the Holocaust is a facet of more general widespread public ignorance of history, politics, and economics." I wholeheartedly agree with him that people don't know enough about history, politics, economics, etc. As I wrote above, we should be lamenting the fact that U.S. citizens know nothing about the holocausts perpetrated by their own country rather than lamenting the fact that they don’t know about a horrible event that happened 80 years ago on a different continent. Hell, as Gideon Levy says, many—if not most—Israelis have no idea what’s being done in their name just dozens of kilometers away from their homes. Things have come full circle for the Jews residing in Israel. They have become that which they despised in the Germans: they sit by while atrocities are committed in their name. Their media ensures that they cheer it on, rather than trying to stop it. Americans are no less guilty of doing the exact same thing in they myriad foreign wars fought by that Empire. [Wild accusations] Coming back to the inquisition of the university presidents, the thing I think that too often goes unremarked is that people seem to so easily accuse others of wanting genocide, of having called for it deliberately. There seems to be no downside to making this accusation; the onus is on the accused to wriggle out from under it. Accusing someone of wanting genocide is pretty is a very strong accusation. Does it matter what you think you're saying? Or does it more matter what people think they're hearing you say? That is, are you responsible for shutting your mouth because some people will misinterpret what you're saying? You know, because they're stupid? Or just don't understand your language? Or they're disingenuous and trying to shut down any statements that don't correspond to what they already believe? I think it's perfectly possible that a lot of the fools I've seen recently would be completely incapable of understanding any line of reasoning I have, even the one outlined above. [1] They would see no reason for nuance -- because they themselves are incapable of it. Instead, we get the kinds of inquisitions that Congress is having with increasing regularity. From "Israel Supporters Would Defend Literally Any Israeli Atrocity" by Caitlin Johnstone : [That's a Whuppin'] * Arbitrarily declare that common innocuous pro-Palestine chants are actually calls for genocide. * Pretend there’s an emergency epidemic of university students calling for genocide on campus because they use those chants. * Kill pro-Palestine speech on campus. "That's a whuppin'" by Caitlin Johnstone [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I wholly acknowledge that maybe I'm not being as clear as I think I am, but that doesn't mean I mean what you think I mean. That's also why I hid this admission in a footnote, which no-one reads. Aw, who am I kidding? No-one reads my blog. I can be as monstrous as I like, hidden in plain sight. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4810 2023-11-29T22:37:12+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which is about subverting democracy in exactly the ways that the author fears that Trump would. These people are rudderless, adrift. They have no sense or irony, no morality, and no... ]]>

, which is about subverting democracy in exactly the ways that the author fears that Trump would. These people are rudderless, adrift. They have no sense or irony, no morality, and no self-awareness. It makes them so stupid. This mess is just embarrassing for everyone involved. This gleeful horseshit where people are delighted that they've found some old clause of some document that seems to kind of maybe apply to Donald Trump if you take all of the allegations at face value -- while reveling in the fact that the article you've found applies without a conviction, so you don't have to bother with the pesky interference of a justice system -- has got to stop. [Burning American Flag]These people don't realize that their fervor in preventing what they deem to be the greatest threat to democracy ends up making them do things or support things or say things that make them actually a much-greater one. If you think your job is to stop Donald Trump from being elected, then do it by finding an alternative that people find more appealing, not by shoving a turd sandwich in their mouths and ordering them to chew. What the hell, people? You're perfectly happy doing something so anti-democratic in order to get your way and claim that you're "protecting democracy". If that's the best you've got, then please shut up and sit down while the adults hash this one out for you. If you're interested in more detail, then the article "Donald Trump Should be on the Ballot and Should Lose" by Steven Calabresi talks about how the constitutional angle is almost certainly a non-starter. "[...] the University of Pennsylvania Law Review law review article by William Baude and Michael Paulsen, The Sweep and Force of Section Three, which argues that former President Trump is disqualified from running again for President.  A draft law review article taking issue with Baude and Paulsen, co-written by Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tilman, entitled Sweeping and Forcing the President into Section 3: A Response to William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen makes a good case that what happened on January 6, 2021 was not an "insurrection" and that the Baude/Paulsen reading of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is wrong.  I think Josh Blackman and Seth Tillman are more likely right than not. At a minimum, this is a very muddled area of constitutional law, and it would set a bad precedent for American politics to not list a former president's name on election ballots given the confused state of the law surrounding Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment." Anyway, this was a couple of months back, and I haven't heard anything about keeping Trump off the ballot anywhere. I just hear about how he's polling much better than all of the other Republican candidates combines -- and polls much better than Joe Biden. Instead of keeping Trump off the ballot, I've heard that the remaining Koch brothers are backing Nikki Haley -- who's even more cuckoo for cocoa puffs than Trump. It wouldn't matter if she ended up being the Republican candidate. Just like there is half a country full of people who would never vote for Trump, there's half who would never, ever, ever vote for Biden. Biden's a shit sandwich. Even his own party hates him. God knows why they're running him, but they are. You know the New Hampshire primary? The first one in the nation, ever election? Yeah, that one. Well, the DNC didn't like Biden's chances there, so they pulled him off the ballot in the Granite State. They then announced that the first state to vote next year would be South Carolina, which loves Biden for whatever reason. Funny story: some other dude's slated to win the Democratic primary in New Hampshire -- because the Granite State does not like to be told what to do. Now the DNC is backpedaling and, since it's too late to add Biden to the ballot, they're running a write-in campaign for Biden in NH. I am not kidding. [1] It's almost like the Democrats are trying to let Trump win. Maybe they feel sorry for having stolen the election in 2020. [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See, e.g., "Biden supporters' New Hampshire write-in campaign risks underscoring the president's vulnerability" [1] This footnote is for, * the irony-challenged * those who are not strong native readers of English * those who don't know me or my politics For the record: I do not believe that the election was more crooked in 2020 than in any other year. I think both parties work very hard to steal every election, with varying rates of success. It is technically true that the Democrats stole the election in 2020, but that is true of nearly every election in the U.S. Bush stole it in 2000 and 2004. The Democrats spent years bitching about having had the election stolen by Trump in 2016, until they segued into the Russiagate farce. Trump and his coterie of hangers-on are bitching about it having been stolen in 2020. They're all right, but that's how it works. Election theft is baked in. There is so much gerrymandering, obscene campaign contributions, and voter-disenfranchisement ... how could you think these elections weren't stolen? Or do you still believe that the U.S. has an actual, functioning democracy? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4835 2023-11-28T22:50:41+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. These comments are from an ordinarily lucid reporter writing on October 11th. We didn't know then what we know now, but we did know that collective punishment is wrong, and that there is most certainly such a thing... ]]>

. These comments are from an ordinarily lucid reporter writing on October 11th. We didn't know then what we know now, but we did know that collective punishment is wrong, and that there is most certainly such a thing as the concept of a innocence. Lawrence in this article seems to be arguing for a pretty strict restriction of the definition of that word, as illustrated below. "To assume the responsibilities that fall to us is to preserve some claim to innocence, it seems to me. To develop within ourselves a sense of empathy, or whatever is the opposite of indifference, is equally to retain or regain our innocence. Again, there is no defending the shootings at Re’im. But only those among the revelers who understood and assumed their responsibility for Israel’s conduct and all the Yoav Gallants running the apartheid state can fairly be counted innocent of what we must recognize as a criminal regime. There is an honorable movement of such people in Israel, let us not forget. It is hard to imagine any of its members partying on the Gaza border, but let us allow for the possibility. For the rest, they must be counted as complicit." So, if you're a racist against Palestinians or Arabs, if you were aware of what the Israeli state was and is doing to Gaza, then you're not innocent. So what? You're still a civilian, right? You're not innocent, but...what is he saying? That they deserved what they got? That seems pretty breathtakingly stupid. It is the argumentation of Osama bin Laden, it is the logic of Netanyahu and the Israeli state right now. [A callous indifference] "To consider the Re’im attack as an event in history, it seems to me there is something very off about a group of young and privileged Israelis having a carefree weekend in the sand hard by a land of daily, incessant suffering, a place where the innocence of its children and youth has been stolen by the state wherein the partiers do their partying. Something very off: By this I mean the revelers betrayed themselves as profoundly irresponsible, so it seems to me. Maybe unconsciously and maybe not, to me they displayed that indifference toward the lives of others for which many Israelis have unfortunately made themselves well-known." Ok, so that's a slightly different thing that he's saying in the last part. It is the least-generous interpretation possible, but it unfortunately has got more truth in it than we'd like to admit. I would just like to add that Israelis are hardly unique in this regard. This is what all kinds of people do. We become very accustomed to a situation, no matter how unethical, not matter how immoral, not matter how racist and eugenic. The situation for Israel is that they have been taught that they are the chosen people, living in relative luxury, the world jealous of them. Perhaps I can empathize because this is the story that Americans are told as well. When you benefit greatly from a situation, when your quality of life is good, you can easily look away from the giant heap of skulls and bones on which your so-called civilization is built. [1] There are untold places in the "civilized world" where the rich live cheek-by-jowl with wildly impoverished neighborhoods, places of to-the-rich completely incomprehensible and unimaginable suffering and desperation. Gated communities. Favelas. Slums of all kinds. Of course, of course, Palestine is, by all accounts, much, much worse than most places. It is, as Norman Finkelstein says, a "concentration camp", an "open prison". Nearly all residents were born into a concentration camp and have known nothing but prison their entire lives. The majority are younger than 18 years old. The majority never voted Hamas into power. [Most of us dance on a heap of skulls] Even if we don't live cheek-by-jowl with the oppressed, we still benefit every day from them, casually, both in our own societies and in others. * We know who makes our phones, don't we? * Is that a nice Nike running sweater you have on, made in a Bangladeshi sweatshop? * Do you enjoy typing on your laptop, manufactured in China and/or Taiwan, under probably appalling conditions? * Did you enjoy that Starbucks for which you paid an entire hour's salary of the person who you completely ignored behind the counter, who will possibly sleep in their car that night? * Was it made with beans that don't grow within thousands of kilometers of you, harvested by excruciatingly poor people, ripped off mercilessly by giant multinationals that make obscene profits every year? * Did you have some chocolate with it? [We are self-deluded pirates] We want desperately for Hamas and the Palestinians to be uniquely savage terrorists, alone in their ability to inflict unspeakable harm on innocents -- so that we can help ourselves forget our complicity in these acts, done in our name, or for our ultimate benefit. We need their attacks -- and the attacks of all whom we deem enemies, but who are really just "other people who have stuff that we want to have for free" -- to be "unprovoked". We want to ignore all the evil that we've done, while highlighting the inhumanity of everyone else's. We can't have done anything to have aroused anyone's ire. We can't be made to even consider changing anything about ourselves or our lifestyles that would prevent something like this from happening in the future. We are an unsullied people. There is nothing we have done that might be considered untoward that we should perhaps stop doing in order to prevent future attacks. These are the only justifications for any change in our behavior: it's getting too expensive -- or difficult -- (to steal stuff from others), or it's getting too dangerous (to steal stuff from others). We never consider the path of "stop stealing stuff from others so much" because it would (A) possibly change our quality of life in a way that our lords and masters -- who benefit even massively more from this whole situation -- have told us would be detrimental and (B) would mean that we would have to admit that we had been doing bad things all along (i.e., stealing stuff from other people). The life of a pirate involves a lot of self-delusion. We want the Israelis to be even worse deniers of their privilege, to be uniquely deluded hypocrites and racists, so that we can absolve ourselves of our own failings in this regard, were we to even admit them. And why admit such trifles about our excellent selves, when the others are so, so much worse? [Religion is a cheap excuse] And you can disabuse yourself of the notion that religion has anything to do with it, other than serving as a convenient and well-established reason for hating and othering. Religion is just one of many ways of justifying why it’s OK for you to steal somebody else’s stuff -- be it land, food, water, physical goods, safety, or well-being. The U.S. doesn’t really declare classically religious wars—-like actually based on a holy book—-but what is the difference between Jihad and the blind, hate-filled fervor with which the U.S. pursues it’s interests, claiming to be anti-communist or whatever the flavor of the week is? [It's not just Israelis. Not by far.] We should be careful not to let our anger and indignation get the better of us, to let our anger make us say things that are patently wrong, or wildly hyperbolic, that would threaten to distract us from the fact that we're all hypocrites. It's a spectrum. Some people lean hard into it, for sure. But Israelis are not unique in their hatred of the other, in their ability to dance while others suffer. Young Israelis know nothing other than that there is a mysterious place on their border that their state has under control. They know that they've been told to live their best lives -- because why not? It is what affluent, young people have always done. They are not unique in being wildly ignorant of or failing to be empathetic to those around them. Racism and discrimination doesn't help. of course, but they've also never really known anything else. There is no advantage to be had by not being racist against Arabs. There is much to lose. It reminds me very much of the U.S. in the 50s and 60s. [2] Israelis are heavily, heavily indoctrinated to believe that Palestinians -- and Arabs in general -- are sub-human animals, no more of consequence than a lizard or a goat, perhaps even less so, because animals can't be terrorists. Here's a five-minute video that provides a bit of background. [media] This is also not unique. Perhaps Israel is at the top of the list for racism, but the U.S.'s foreign policy is also horrifically racist. Their soldiers used -- perhaps still use -- the epithet "sand niggers" for Arabs while deployed in the Middle East. Again, having grown up in the U.S., I understand how stupid and evil propaganda can make you. You have to actively resist it the whole time. You will be ostracized from some places. You might lose your job. You will feel gaslighted. You will wonder why you stand alone so much. You will doubt yourself. You will wonder why you ruin your own life for a principle no-one else seems to believe in. [Ripping off Omelas] Imagine a town with a square in the center. In the center of that square, there is a pit. At the bottom of that pit lives another group. The group above knows about the group below. They keep them alive, but barely. They use the pit as a sewer. Every few decades, a piece of poo flies back out of the pit. Inconceivable. The villagers above cannot comprehend the effrontery. They are terrified that it will happen again. They drop boiling oil down the pit to root out the poo-flingers. What would we think of the above-ground villagers? Would we think it possible for them to be unaware of the morality of the situation? What if they'd never known anything else? What if they'd been told every day that this is the only way for the world to work, for God to be satiated, for society to continue as it does? [Israelis and Americans: partners in delusion] What does the average Israeli know about their country? About their government? I don't know. Do they vote? I don't know. I come from a country where a lot of people don't vote, they complain all the time about the government, but they don't vote. The largest voting bloc in the U.S. is non-voters. Most Americans think we won the Vietnam War. That's if they even know what the Vietnam War was. Or is, for that matter. If they don't know what it was, then they might just as well think that we're still fighting it. We have bases everywhere. A lot of people know that. They know that their young go to Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, South Korea, ... everywhere. So why not Vietnam? Is there a war there? Maybe. There are wars in a lot of places. Just not the U.S. And just not Israel, where things were pretty quiet, until recently. So, maybe a lot of Israelis don't read newspapers, or believe what they hear, and think things are just hunky-dory. That's maybe how they can so easily be convinced that "those fuckers [Hamas] came out of NOWHERE." [M.I.A. as an example] Most people in the U.S. -- of those who know about it -- think that we won the Vietnam War. They're just waiting for Vietnam to apologize for having killed so many of our soldiers. You think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. There are still P.O.W./M.I.A (Prisoner Of War/Missing In Action) flags up everywhere. There are V.F.W.s everywhere (Veterans of Foreign Wars ... what other kind are there? Oh, yeah, the Civil War). They're still waiting for our boys to come home. I'm not kidding. The life expectancy of a man in Laos was about 33 years in the 1970s, and that's for a local who's not in prison. None of "our boys" are alive anymore, not by any stretch of the imagination. And yet they wait. And yet a bill passed in 2019 that requires every post office in the U.S. to fly an M.I.A. flag. Bipartisan. Co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren. So, no, I don't make any assumptions about what the citizens of a country might know about what their country is up to. [Watching a country go mad] I watched my whole country go mad with revenge fantasies, then destroy two countries over two decades. For nothing. Nothing was gained. Much was lost. I am familiar with all that sordid bullshit and the bullshit excuses we make to ourselves, of the horrible anti-humanistic things we say and do because we can’t contain our rage, our lust for revenge, because we are animals but want to be seen as good, but also still want to hate the other, to blame all ills on someone else. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I know that racism still exists in America -- it's everywhere and affects everything. But it's better than it was. It just objectively is. That the statistics of wealth disparity, life-expectancy disparity, arrest and harassment disparity are still wildly off-kilter and unfair and horrifying is a fact for anyone with any sense of justice and a brain in their head. That it used to be worse is a fact. It may be just as insidious in some places, but there are far more places where it isn't. So I said the 50s and 60s because then you could really just be openly racist against black people and you would suffer nothing. In fact, if you weren't racist, you were suspect. I just heard about "Paul Robeson" . He is, by any measure, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. No-one knows about him in America. He's been erased from history. He was a black socialist. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4869 2023-11-25T19:46:21+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, but also in many "Links & Notes" stretching back... ]]>

, but also in many "Links & Notes" stretching back over 10 years (with several from the last six weeks), from when I reviewed the film "Lemon Tree" in 2016 or when I reviewed the film "Defamation" in 2013. He's usually absolutely strictly no-nonsense, but when he cracks, he has a wicked and dark sense of humor. Here is series of tweets he wrote recently, during the absolute theater that was Israel's taking of a hospital that they claimed was a command-and-control center for Hamas. [image] "It is reported that Israel is about to invade al-Shifa. Don't be surprised if they finds copies of Mein Kampf in the incubators." Right on cue, Israeli president Herzog reported that the IDF had found a copy of Mein Kampf in Arabic in a child's room. [image] "NEWSFLASH: Entering Secret al-Shifa Passageway, IDF Discovers Kim Kardashian Blow-Up Doll in Hamas Jacuzzi" [image] "NEWS FLASH: IDE Discovers Saddam's WMD Hidden in al-Shifa Basement. An IDF spokesman stated: "It's clearly labeled in black-and-white: SADDAM'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION."" [image] "As the IDF busily loads al-Shifa hospital with "Hamas weapons," the New York Times prepares its headline: "Conflicting evidence..."" [image] ""The official said that soldiers had found weapons and evidence of a militant headquarters, but declined to provide further details and said that proof would not be provided until after the raid had ended." (NY Times)" [image] "Why all this digging and excavating? Didn't the Times report just two days ago that the IDF provided them with photographs of the clearly marked entranceway inside the hospital that led directly to the Hamas command-and-control center?" [image] "I posted the warning on this Twitter account last night. But despite this advanced warning, Hamas didn't take the weapons to its command-and-control center beneath al-Shifa. No, it decided to leave these weapons lying around in the radiology ward so as to give Israel a photo-op." [image] "It is now 24 hours since Israel invaded al-Shifa hospital. No sprawling Hamas command-and-control center. No arms caches in the tunnels. No secret passageways. No nothing except: DEAD BABIES IN INCUBATORS WITHOUT FUEL." [image] "Senator Schumer Reacts to News that Ten More Babies Died in Al-Shifa Incubators." [image] "Never to Forgive! Never to Forget! "Israel -- and the Biden administration -- justified the suffocation of infants in al-Shifa incubators by asserting that a ramified Hamas command-and-control center was located beneath the hospital. "How did this sprawling command-and-control center vanish?" [image] That's the tunnel. To the command-and-control center. [image] "Have no fear: It's certain that Israel will figure out how to deactivate the booby-trap -- after it finishes constructing the tunnel." According to the article "Complete and Utter Carnage" by Jeffrey St. Clair , "Israel found their own bunkers… "Amanpour: “When you say [the bunker under al-Shifa] was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak? "Ehud Barak: “No, decades ago, we were running the place… we helped them to build these bunkers.” "Amanpour: “OK. That’s sort of thrown me a little bit.” "Hours before the Operational Pause began on Friday, the IDF destroyed the electrical and oxygen generators at al-Shifa hospital, smashed MRI and x-ray machines, blew up the sub-basement rooms which were supposedly Hamas’s HQ before any international investigators could examine it, and arrested the hospital’s director, along with three Palestinian paramedics." So, Norman was wrong -- but only because he didn't guess that Israel wasn't still digging the tunnels -- but that they were certain that there was a tunnel or two down there because they'd built them themselves, decades ago. They had to blow everything up so no-one would find out that no-one had been down there since then. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4833 2023-11-23T23:15:23+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

and my heart sank. I wrote about why in "Some commentators are still MIA" , where the author featured prominently. [1] I don't even have anything to cite from this article because it's so insipid. I just wanted to keep in my notes that,... ]]>

and my heart sank. I wrote about why in "Some commentators are still MIA" , where the author featured prominently. [1] I don't even have anything to cite from this article because it's so insipid. I just wanted to keep in my notes that, once again, an ordinarily useful writer and thinker simply cannot keep his shit together or think of justice when his team's been attacked. Greenfield is Jewish. He loves Israel. He cannot stand to hear a single bad word about anything that Israel does. Every time there is a larger altercation, he comes down rabidly on the side of Israel against Palestinians. He deems the Palestinians animals, heedlessly slaughtering innocent Israelis, who've done nothing to deserve even reprobation, to say nothing of violence. Read his responses to the comments on the post. Those are the comments he's even allowed to appear, after moderation. It's a shame, because he writes so much that is useful about law and justice and oppression in the U.S. On the topic of Israel, though, he's an utter fool, a complete and unquestioning tool for the oppressor. [Two wrongs don't make a right] Look, two wrongs don't make a right. Palestinians and their militant wing Hamas are humans and are thus capable of shocking cruelty and savagery when they get the chance -- especially against what they consider to be an utterly demonic enemy. They also don't recognize that civilians are illegitimate targets. But neither does Israel. And they get a lot more chances to prove their savagery. If, like Greenfield, you only pay attention -- or care -- when the opposing team does it, then, ... yeah, you're going to look like a total asshole who can't read a newspaper -- who thinks that Israel heard about Palestine for the very first time on the morning of October 7th, 2023 -- and then you're going to sound off in an utterly unhinged way. [Netflix wants me to watch the Mossad] In other news about unhinged support, there's this: [image] This recommendation popped up about a day after what might have been the start of the next Intifada. Netflix thinks that I should watch a movie or series about heroic Israeli secret agents who are hunting nefarious Palestinian terrorists. Cool, Netflix. Nice to see where your loyalties lie. [The Babylon Bee's mask slips] There's also the satirical site Babylon Bee, which often claims that it takes the piss out of everyone, published the only possible thing that it could have published: "White House Issues Condemnation Of Attack Biden Funded". [image] I was confused for a second because I couldn't figure out that the Bee was accusing Biden of having funded the Palestinians. But the picture shows what looks like a bombing in Palestine, presumably by Israel? But the text is the exact opposite? In my world, this is ludicrous -- the Biden administration funds Israel nearly infinitely more. In the Babylon Bee's world, where Biden is wrong about everything, he is a massive supporter of Palestine and probably delights in dead Israelis. This is, again, what it looks like to be so partisan as to not be able to think straight. Biden would, of course, go on to make subsequent statements that make this accusation seem even more ridiculous. It was ridiculous from the beginning, though. Again, only if you can muster the energy to read a Wikipedia page or two. [Greenfield is still "section eight" ] After having noted in the footnotes of the article "Some commentators are still MIA" that Greenfield was once again publishing normal -- not unhinged -- stuff, he recently wrote the article "Ceasefire Follies" by Scott H. Greenfield . It shows pretty well where our long-ailing blogger is at, mentally. He writes, "Note for future terrorists. Take some hostages atop your rapes and murders, and they give you huge leverage to stop your victims from coming after you. That, and convincing the useful idiots to march for the sake of the babies you use as shields so you can perpetrate terror but they can’t do anything to stop you." Once again, you can see the spittle speck his lips as he slams the keyboard in utter indignation. He goes on to express his incredibly sarcastic indignation at thinking that anything at all could be expected of Israel. "[...] those demanding a ceasefire from the side that didn’t break the ceasefire on October 7th." He really seems to believe that Israel is the sole aggrieved party and never did anything wrong and has no power to change anything other than to defend its sworn enemy into the deepest, darkest hole it can, filling it with bodies until ... well, until there are no more bodies around, one way or another. Next, he positively whines that no-one cares about Israeli lives -- Jewish lives -- especially in America. Dude, what? How can you possibly believe that is a thing? "Oddly, Gazan lives matter. Israeli lives, not so much because they deserve to die for being a Jewish state. The connection there with Jewishness seems not to matter much, even as they indulge in sophistry to differentiate between Zionism and Judaism so they won’t feel like the hypocrites and fools they are." Differentiating between Judaism and Zionism is sophistry? What a horribly antisemitic thing to say. Does Greenfield even know what a poisonous creed Zionism is? At the very least, as it is practiced by the extremely radical Zionists who have the reins firmly in their fists right now? Has he ever read or heard an interview with actual Israelis, to say nothing of settlers? I can't imagine he would think that he has anything in common with that worldview, but he's using his bully pulpit to defend Zionism as the same thing as Judaism. "As for the Gazan children, they’ll be martyrs as far as Hamas is concerned [...]" So, yeah, Greenfield's not doing so hot. He still hasn't put a second of his time into finding out what has been going on in Israel over the last decades, what is going on there now, or what would be a possible solution that doesn't involve more tragedy. He seems to be on the same page as the Israeli settlers: dead Palestinians, no matter their age, aren't tragic. They're just dead terrorists. Cool ethics, bro. There is no speaking to someone who's out of the gate with that kind of viewpoint, unless they're family or friends or someone you need to invest time in. Everyone else doesn't have to deal with them, can instead just back away slowly and hope that someone like this doesn't have too much influence on anyone else. The poor guy is still absolutely livid, incoherent, and about as grounded in reality as a Trump-Uncle at Thanksgiving. You know, the kind that sends me political cartoons of Joe Biden giving away the U.S. to China. Just batshit. I wonder if Greenfield knows that he's writing at the same intellectual level as the Babylon Bee these days? For example, maybe he could steal the snarky headline "Hamas Offers To Release Hostages If Israel Agrees To Not Exist" from the Bee for his next post. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Actually, the examples in that article came after the ones in this article -- except for the update at the end -- but I published out of order. Sue me. I thought it was still interesting to publish a few more examples. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4867 2023-11-19T13:32:38+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

discusses a recent flare-up in the mainstream, western (mostly U.S.) media and governing bodies whereby there were several calls to ban TikTok because it's radicalizing the youth. At issue, of course, if the failure to indoctrinate them... ]]>

discusses a recent flare-up in the mainstream, western (mostly U.S.) media and governing bodies whereby there were several calls to ban TikTok because it's radicalizing the youth. At issue, of course, if the failure to indoctrinate them properly to be able to ignore war crimes and still sleep at night. So, what you need to do is to make a lot of noise about a world-girdling social network -- 😱 RUN BY CHINAMEN 😱 YELLOW PERIL ALERT 😱 -- is corrupting the youth, turning them to the dark side of terrorism. They are all, apparently, in love with Osama bin Laden right now, woe betide the future of our great nation, etc., etc., etc. As you can hopefully tell from the sarcasm, this is entirely untrue. It's about as true as the COLD HARD FACT that the IDF found an Arabic translation of Mein Kampf in a schoolkid's bedroom. It would be comical if it weren't part of the propaganda campaign for an unfolding tragedy -- and if so many otherwise-productive and reasonably intelligent members of society didn't just gobble it up like candy. Anyway, Broderick argues that the usual suspects -- the powers that be -- are jumping on this particular myth that they just invented to ban what they consider to be a thorn in their side: not just the dastardly Chinese version of uncontrolled media streams, but any uncontrolled media streams. "Baseless generational in-fighting, aging millennials who refuse to accept the new status quo of the internet, easily monetizable rage bait, lazy TikTok trend reporting, and bad faith political actors swirled together to create a perfect storm this week. We have invented a version of TikTok that simply does not exist and now many people in power are ready to tear apart the foundation of internet to prove it does." In the U.S., that means you only have to convince a couple of hundred of the most venal, stupid, and hypocritical people who've ever walked the Earth to pass some antidemocratic laws. It's honestly not even that big of a job. All you have to do is shit-talk a whole generation, gaslighting them into thinking that they're the crazy ones for finding a few kernels of truth in what amounts to a 51/2-page screed / philippic / rant / diatribe / jeremiad / tirade on everything under the sun. [Which philippic?] Which jeremiad, you ask? You can read it for yourself at "Osama Bin Laden's Letter to America: Transcript in Full" by Giulia Carbonaro . Young people claim to have been reading this 20-year--old letter that used to be available at the Guardian before they took it down. Why would they remove a piece of historical documentation that they'd hosted for 20 years? Because people were drawing the wrong conclusions from it, and the Guardian had to somehow stop abetting that from happening, so it threw its copy down the memory hole. Newsweek has generously and courageously republished the letter. Luckily, the memory hole doesn't exist yet. I know I've read this thing before [1] -- probably around when it first came out -- but I'd forgotten how long it is. I was quite pleasantly surprised for a few seconds to think that the younger generations, even though they were drawing facile conclusions, were at least reading again. But, alas, no. As outlined above by Ryan Broderick, not all that many young people are actually reading this thing, and those who claim to have, read only about the first 5%, up until bin Laden mentioned Palestine, whereby they skimmed that sentence, misinterpreted it, and started using bin Laden to support their existing viewpoint , which is that the subjugation of Palestine is bad. Well done. I hope they at least got some fancy Internet Points for it. Right idea, wrong cite. But how would they know that Osama bin Laden is a bad man whom one should not read? They'd probably been taught nothing in school or by their family -- and they certainly wouldn't have learned anything by osmosis either because bin Laden cannot be used to sell things or to promote a hyper-consumer lifestyle. [On to the text] There are so many sections and sub-sections -- four levels! -- that I wish that Al-Queda had taken an HTML course -- or that someone would have bothered to convert the damn thing to Markdown from what is obviously formerly a Word document written by someone who doesn't know how to use styles. I guess we have more in common with the terrorists than we'd like to think. Hey, maybe our utter inability to use the basic productivity features we've had at our disposal for decades is common ground. But I digress. Again. There is a lot of religious gobbledegook that I suppose would be considered to be killer arguments (no pun intended) if you actually believe in that sort of thing. Otherwise, it's pretty meaningess. Every once in a while, though, a sentence like this one bubbles up out of the froth, "(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world." While pretty much spot-on -- as far as it goes -- to pretend that that's the point of the document is to cherry-pick, to be honest. For example, why wouldn't I assume that this next citation was the most important he was making? "Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this." While this is probably a zinger for the devout, my confirmation bias leans more in the direction of the next citation, a bit further on. "(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down." This is 100% accurate, but...in an essay where bin Laden says a ton of things, some of them are bound to be true -- or at least be something with which the reader can agree. I challenge anyone to claim truthfully that they disagree with absolutely everything in bin Laden's document. That doesn't mean you approve of 9--11 or terrorism. It just means that you know how to read and you know how to separate the message from the messenger. Or what about this one? "(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures." I mean, I can agree with about 80% of it being absolutely correct, that it's an effrontery that the U.S. empire subjugates muslim countries to guarantee its supply of cheap energy. But then there's that part about the Jews that was wholly unnecessary, in my opinion, but which I feel might the most necessary part in the opinion of the author. [Agreeing with bad people] It's like being at a bar and chatting with a fellow beer-drinker about the overbearing government. You might be in total agreement that they take all of our money and that we see nothing for it. Him: Damned taxes are too high! You: No kidding! And what do we get for it? Him: Nuthin! You: Pissin' it away on foreign wars! Him: That's right! And for what? To protect a bunch of Jews! You: ... [Homer backing away] It's like laughing at a good zinger by Donald Trump. While you're laughing and acknowledging that he's got quite a flair for nicknames, or whatever, you also have to acknowledge that he writes shit like this: [image] "In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran's Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" He's absolutely not alone in his idiocy. The tweets below are the actual words of an actual human being who graduated from Harvard and is now a multi-term U.S. Senator. [image] "Joe Biden wants to ban menthol cigarettes, which are favored by black smokers. Meanwhile, he wants to legalize weed for white college kids and mail out free crack pipes." "The administration's ban is paternalistic, it's hypocritical, and it creates a huge black market for Mexican cartels and Hezbollah. "And all because Mike Bloomberg told him to." That's just mental illness, is what that is. That man needs help. I'm sure I could find a statement that Cotton made with which I could agree, though. I bet I can find things that RFK, or Marianne Williamson, or Nikki Haley, or Tulsi Gabbard said that I can agree with wholeheartedly. It's just that, if the conversation goes on just a little bit longer, I'm backing away into a hedge pretty quickly. So, sure, bin Laden's words get scraped off the Internet, so the kids can't read them, but Trump, Cotton, RFK, Haley, Gabbard, Williamson, Biden, etc. get to write and say whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want. This applies to many, many more people than that handful, but I hope you understand my point. [2] [Eliminating the concept of "citizen"] It's the same with the bin Laden letter. He spends an inordinate amount of text explaining how, when attacking a democracy, it's perfectly legitimate to use collective punishment because there are no innocents in a democracy. He claims that each individual is equally responsible for the actions of their democratically elected government. This is patently ludicrous because it presupposes a power that no democracy or republic has ever granted to its populace. He is, however, absolutely not alone in this line of thinking. There are many high-ranking members of the Israeli and U.S. government and media who espouse exactly this principle, one that was so central to bin Laden's justification for the 9--11 attacks. Which citizens would bin Laden consider it to be OK to eliminate? In a democracy, you can be a voting citizen and still not get anything you want. If a majority decides to oppress the Palestinians, but you're wholeheartedly against it -- too bad. You don't always get your way in a democracy. Does bin Laden claim that his great and good Allah approves of slaughtering those civilians who were already trying to get the right thing done? To what end? Not only is this evil, but it's counterproductive. All you'd be doing is increasing the majority that's already enacting policy against you. This is just stupid. [Lowering the bar] Bin Laden also makes the same logical mistake that so many others have made before him, and continue to make. In trying to argue for the righteousness of his cause, he compares himself to other war criminals like George Bush and Ariel Sharon -- and then justifies his own war crimes as valid and legal because they got away with it, too. He essentially argues that anyone who refuses to condemn Bush and Sharon must also then approve of Bin Laden's actions. Obviously, this doesn't mean that bin Laden is right, but that he's just as wrong as those other idiots. [Recruiters always lie] After all of these dialectical histrionics, he slowly starts to wrap things up with a bit of missionary work, "It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honor, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their color, sex, or language." I wish this were practically true, but the Wahhabism that bin Laden practiced was absolutely not blind to gender/sex. This is just bullshit. Perhaps bin Laden is arguing from the purity of the message in the Quran that has been warped in its application to actually-existing Islam -- as he himself practiced it! -- but I'd be surprised. I just think he's lying here because he really got going on his rant and he -- like so many other people -- just couldn't help himself: he couldn't just say everything else is bad and worthy of destruction; he couldn't just quit while he's ahead; he had to double-down and claim things about his religion that it doesn't even espouse. His next plea is to "[...] reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest." Ok, so usury is pretty bad, agreed. And gambling is generally pretty socially harmful, sure. But intoxicants? And ... homosexuality? Dude, c'mon. How do you reconcile the statement above, where you wrote that "without regarding their color, sex, or language", but then you write NO QUEERS. Seriously -- that's just stupid. [The problem is "no Shariah"?] So much of this is just like that. A little further on, he addresses the U.S. again directly, "It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind [...]" Hey, OK. There's an argument to be made there. There are a lot of contenders, but the U.S. Empire has certainly done its damnedest to climb to the top of the heap. The only reason people might think that this is a facially ridiculous claim is because they have literally no idea what their country is up to. But then, just as you're trying to come up with reasons to disagree or to cautiously agree, bin Laden follows it up immediately with this, "(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the lord and your Creator." That's just ridiculous. He argues that the problem is that the U.S. invents its own laws? That's not the problem. The problem is that the U.S. doesn't adhere to laws that it finds inconvenient.. Bin Laden's advice to stop thinking for yourselves and let a thousand-year--old book make all of your decisions for you wouldn't help because the U.S. would just ignore those rules too, even as it continued to pretend to espouse them. The problem is hypocrisy and lawlessness, not that the U.S. hasn't found the one, true law to follow. Hey, bin Laden: maybe you should shut up and sit down while the adults are talking, ok? [Blowjobs and climate change] He's winding up now, but feels the need to deliver a few examples of Western/U.S. depravity. There is a wealth of history to choose from -- but he spends an inordinate amount of time on Bill Clinton's oval-office blowjob. You old horn-dog, bin Laden. That story really got to you, huh? You just can't stop imagining that cigar and that thick, Jewish girl? Then, in the middle of a long list of highly debatable social detriments, he whips out this one about climate change: "(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries." Yes! Correct! "(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy." Yes! ... no, wait!?! What is with you and the Jews, man? Back. Away. Slowly. [The wheels are coming off] Deep into the last pages of the essay, there are still reasonable points being made, but in an increasingly incoherent manner. "What happens in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?"" As with a lot of essays by people writing in a language that is not their native one, the prose falls apart more and more the longer the essay goes on. By the last 20%, it's only barely comprehensible. You can almost see the spittle dotting his lips as his fingers fly over the keyboard. "[...] discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which yourself must adhere to." I mean, I get what he means, but I had to read it a few times. [Winding things up] It's basically done now. Excepting a few more paragraphs of quotes from the Quran -- as if anyone reasonable considers that kind of thing to be slam-dunk proof of anything -- it's over. This thing just has way too individual points for a blog post. It's both too long, but also too short, if that makes any sense at all. It really could have used some serious editing down, to punch it up and make sure it's focused on its main points. I fear, though, that then it would have just been a three-paragraph tirade against the perennially beleaguered Jews, most of whom are just like the rest of us, just trying to go along to get along. Sure, they've got some raging assholes, but those are everywhere. Hell, I'm reading a long letter by a raging Muslim asshole right now, but I don't think that means that all Muslims are raging assholes. I'm not an idiot. At least, I don't think I am. But then, who does? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The article "Osama’s Latest Hit" is as close as I can get. That article is about a tape that was released, but the content was probably very similar. [1] You may even be smugly wondering to yourself whether I even see the irony that it might apply to me! That I'm part of the problem, not just those other bozos! That I'm an Internet bozo too! In my defense, there should be no way that you accidentally stumble across this article. It's reasonably well-hidden and hosted on such weak infrastructure that it would quickly no longer be accessible if it "went viral", as the kids like to say. So, if you're reading this, well, you came to me. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4866 2023-11-13T22:08:53+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

swam against the current, describing the reality of Israeli life and culture, although a bit more pessimistically than I would -- but what do I know? He says that there is no left to speak of in Israel, that there are just the right-wing Zionists without conscience who want to eradicate or remove the Palestinians -- and those Zionists who are still interested in reconciling what they consider to be their own basic morality with their desire to live in a racially pure country. For this, the second group is willing to give up land, whereas their counterparts are not. As Barkan puts it: they both want the same thing; they just differ on how big the country will be when they're finished. [image] I think there is a peace and reconciliation movement. When he was still alive, I read everything that "Uri Avnery" [1] wrote for the last couple of decades of his life, and learned much about the peace organization he'd founded: "Gush Shalom" . There are many more [2], I think, but the ones I know who express what seem like humanistic opinions are Gideon Levy and Amira Hass [3], both columnists at Ha'aretz, a highly respected, if oppositional newspaper in Israel. "Barkan has described himself as “among the group of the over-privileged in this struggle for Palestinian rights, acting against a system that has at its very core the Zionist principle of differentiation.” He describes the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as apartheid, identifies himself as “anti-Zionist,” and refers to Israel as “the Jewish-supremacist entity...founded on the basis of ethnic cleansing and ethnic segregation.”" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See "Israel on the High Seas" (2010), "Our Gift to the World" (2010), and "RIP Uri Avnery" (2019). [1] See, for example, some of the people featured in the following video: [media] [1] I recently wrote about an excellent interview with her in "Amira Hass is on a tear" . ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4861 2023-11-13T14:15:43+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4863 2023-11-12T12:12:59+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. It's a bit hard for me to tell, but I think that Ramaswamy is playing the "heel" here. Listen to that crowd booing. You can almost see them standing and shaking their fists. This is an actual debate, featuring real-life, adult human-beings who are running for the office of the president of the United States, the center of the current global empire. This is a sad joke. If you don't agree, consider that your standards may have been steadily lowered by decades of awful, awful people in politics and media. I understand that people have a different way of expressing themselves when speaking than when writing. I'm aware that grammar rules for speech are, shall we say, looser than for text. Still, there are limits. I've included several [sics] where the way they are speaking indicates for me not only that they're not adhering to grammatical rules, but that they simply aren't aware of them. I accept this in most people around me -- many of whom speak English as a foreign language -- but I hold candidates for the office of the President of the United States to a higher standard. We used to have eloquent candidates. Now, we have candidates whose thoughts are not only muddled from the outset, but who cannot even express them in a manner that a third-grade teacher would consider to be correct. We're heading toward "Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho" from the movie Idiocracy. * Ramaswamy doesn't know about plural/singular agreement ("looking families in the eye[s]" and "next generation of Americans [is]...") * Why would any candidate make fun of another for having joined one of the largest social-media networks in the world? What relevance does that have? Other than in the fantasy world where the dastardly Chinese are using it to spy on Americans? * Haley doesn't even know basic idioms, e.g., "leave my daughter out of your voice!" No-one says it like this. "Keep my daughter['s name] outta yer mouth!" is more like it, but why would Nicky Haley know that? She's clearly trying to use a vernacular that she thinks will appeal, rather than one to which she's accustomed. * That unintelligible bit from Ramaswamy is also unintelligible in the official transcript. He's mumbling so badly on-stage, during a debate, that no-one can understand him. 🤦‍♂️ In the other party, there's this awesome statement of batshittery. "RFK, Jr., founder of the Children’s Health Defense [sic] Network: “Israel is a bulwark for us… it’s almost like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. If Israel disappears, Russia, China, and BRICS+ countries will control 90% of the oil in the world and that would be cataclysmic for US national security.”" 🤦‍♂️ So many excellent choices. The U.S. enjoys a bountiful harvest of candidates. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4812 2023-11-11T00:00:29+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is interesting and thought-provoking -- as Adam Curtis often is. Of course, I had notes, which I've interspersed with citations from the article. "As one Russian journalist said to me, London now does feel a" ... ]]>

is interesting and thought-provoking -- as Adam Curtis often is. Of course, I had notes, which I've interspersed with citations from the article. "As one Russian journalist said to me, London now does feel a bit like Moscow in 1988. My primary goal was to tell the story, but I also wanted to convey that disenchantment with democracy can have its roots in corruption. And there’s quite a lot of corruption in Britain, Canada, and the United States, especially since 2008. I still don’t think we got our heads around what quantitative easing was about, which essentially entailed a massive wealth transfer to a tiny elite, creating what is now known as the “asset class.”" I couldn't agree more about the transfer, but disagree that we don't understand it. We understand exactly what it is. He just described it succinctly. There's nothing more to it than that. An elite guilted the world into giving it all the money. Having all the money allows them to sustain this situation indefinitely. Just because they called one of the scams they've used "quantitative easing" doesn't make it special. They already took all of your money; don't give them all of your time, too. You're only looking for deeper meaning because you have to believe that you weren't fooled for a bagatelle. "I think we may look back at the last ten to twelve years and say that the rise of the “asset class” was as powerfully significant as the rise of the oligarchs in Russia from about 1992 onward. They’re not the same, it’s not the same kind of society or the same kind of corruption, but it is the same extraordinary transfer of power and wealth to a tiny elite. I don’t think we’ve got our heads around that yet." He's right again. It's not the same in the U.S. as in Russia. It's worse. There's more to steal. I don't think we can wrap our heads around how much they're stealing, every day. We don't know what billions even are. We think shoplifting by poor people is a capital offense, but then shrug our shoulders at wage theft, which is 1000 times worse. [image] "[...] the person in charge of creating that democracy overnight, a man by the name of Yegor Gaidar, came out of the technocratic establishment under the Soviet plan. I think he was trying to bring democracy to Russia in a “rational” way, and it was completely mad. He thought that if you got the right things in the right place it would work just like a machine. But as I’ve shown, it was ruthlessly exploited by the oligarchs for their own advantage, and it led to a total and utter, cataclysmic, disaster." Exploited? Or encouraged, and then exploited? With corruption and a complete lack of scruples, you never know. I don't buy most of these "good intentions, but bad outcomes" stories. There's almost always at least a kernel -- if not much more -- of personal interest that leads to the outcome that sucks for everyone but the perpetrator. At best, the person has utterly convinced themselves that a decision made in a way that is personally lucrative is also fortuitously the moral thing to do. "It is extraordinary that politicians seem unable to stop the corruption — we all know it’s happening and they know that we know it’s happening. And they know that we know that they don’t know what to do about it. It’s absurd." I don't agree that it's extraordinary. I think it's absolutely ordinary. It's not true that corruption exists despite the politicians. It exists because of them. Politicians are in on it. They don't stop it because they don't want it to stop -- it benefits them personally. I think it's extraordinary that someone who's made as many documentaries as Adam Curtis can still describe the world through a lens of "how can we stop these poor politicians from being corrupted despite their best intentions?" "We all know it’s happening. We know the politicians don’t know what to do about it, but none of us have any idea of what an alternative solution would be." Dude, your prime minister is Rishi Sunak and you're mystified about why he's not part of the solution? He's the main problem, a massive force of corruption and greed. Again, I don't agree. We know the solution. It's just not easy to see how to implement it because the biggest part of the problem -- capitalism and its fetishization of wealth and power, regardless of how it was acquired -- will actively prevent us from replacing it. "[...] somehow it became a way of avoiding having to face the fact that none of us, whether it’s Donald Trump or nice liberals, have any idea of how to create an alternative, fair, and just society that would work. We have a lot of dreams, but we know we don’t know what to do. And we know that those in power don’t know what to do." No. Wrong. Those in power are not interested in fixing anything because they are doing just swimmingly. There's nothing to fix, in their eyes. How can you be so dense, Adam Curtis? Are you trying to be an optimist? Suggesting that there's an easier way that we've not thought of? There are people who know what to do, but, as I noted above, the system we have will actively resist being eliminated. Arundhati Roy knows what we need to do. It's Utopic and perhaps Quixotic, but it's a plan. "While outside the theater they [the politicians] were locked in too, money and assets were moved in vast quantities into the hands of a tiny elite, and they did nothing to stop it." I repeat: politicians ARE the elites. They are deeply corrupted. "Everyone performs. The politicians perform as politicians, but they’re shit and everyone knows they’re not going to do anything. Some of us perform as indignant, outraged liberals, but we know in our heart of hearts that it’s not going to have any effect. The Right does its pantomime culture war thing, but it’s all just performance inside the theater. What we seem to lack is the ability to leave the theater and understand what’s going on outside its walls." This seems to be his thesis statement: we don't understand. It feels disingenuous. I think he's trying to excuse himself for not trying harder to fix it. I don't think the problem is that we don't know what to do to make things better for more people and to stop building systems that enrich only a tiny elite. I'm pretty sure I have some serviceable ideas about what we could do better. I don't know how to put it in motion or to get people on board because they seem to fragment as soon as they think that they might become -- or already be -- part of that tiny elite. The problem is that people don't really have scruples. They just don't want to be on the bottom. I know what we should do, but I don't know how to get us to do it. Hell, I don't think we can ever get people to stop pushing buttons in trains or elevators that are clearly already lit up and engaged. I don't take elevators very often at all, but I can imagine that people push those lit-up buttons for all they're worth -- just to make it go faster. That's what people do in trains to get the doors to open -- push buttons that clearly indicate that the doors are going to open as soon as possible anyway. Click, click, click, click. This may seem like a weird digression, but these are the same people we have to convince not to want things that would be taken away from other people. If they think they can be part of the elite pirate group, then they'll absolutely do that. If they think that they're not in the elites, then they'll be against them -- until they think they're either in the elites or they could be. If the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist, then the greatest trick the elites ever pulled was convincing their slaves that they don't need to revolt because they're actually in the elite. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4847 2023-11-10T17:32:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "I cannot adequately express the immensity of my respect for the many, many, many Jewish voices I’ve seen taking a firm and forceful stand against the Gaza massacre. I’m just over here getting yelled at by strangers online and I find" ... ]]>

writes, "I cannot adequately express the immensity of my respect for the many, many, many Jewish voices I’ve seen taking a firm and forceful stand against the Gaza massacre. I’m just over here getting yelled at by strangers online and I find it pretty intense; you’re having much harder arguments with family, with friends, with people you’ve known your whole lives, about something that probably feels a lot more personal for you. You’re out there protesting, taking action and moving the needle, typically with far more skill and incisiveness than anyone else in the world. "Big, big, big-hearted love to all of you. You amaze me." To be clear, I think that the Israeli State has lost the argument, but it had lost it long ago. When Johnstone writes that "[t]here’s no coming back from this," I think that's to be interpreted as: there's no going back to a world in which it's possible to portray Israel as a peaceful democracy surrounded by enemies against which it valiantly defends itself. The U.S. still gets away with most people not knowing how it treats its Native Americans; Canada also still enjoys a reputation as a "good guy", despite its horrific treatment of its First People. Australia also somehow stays clean, despite its near-eradication of its Aboriginals. [image]But the world's baleful, but mercurial eye, is currently focused on Israel's misdoings. It has the misfortune of perpetrating its crimes in the wrong century. The atrocities in Palestine over the last 40 years -- just they way they're made to live, as stateless people within the confines of another country that doesn't recognize them as people -- can no longer be reasonably papered over. To be clear, Empire [1] doesn't ever have to pay any moral price for its crimes. Russia attacked Ukraine, which tarnishes its reputation as a relatively level-headed [2], designated enemy. They have to own that. The U.S. and its NATO allies have stomped a mudhole in several countries this century -- and pretty much nothing happened. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia -- the list goes on -- all of these have been nearly destroyed or severely hobbled -- but it's Israel's massacre and Russia's invasion that get all of the attention. Israel, right now, is doing a terrible job of managing its image to cover up its human-rights abuses. The people of Israel have to own this and move past it. The people of the U.S. should do the same for their country's many transgressions. Israel has to grant full citizenship and rights to Palestinians. They cannot just take and take and take, rewarding the absolute worst members of their society with other people's land and houses. That's madness. It's insupportable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] It's what I'm calling the U.S. these days, both because it's more accurate and because I've been watching the Foundation series. [1] Relative to the madness of the U.S. and NATO, I mean. Russia's internal politics and oppression of its own population is another matter, but doesn't really pertain to a discussion of transgressions of international law. That's where Russia has been relatively restrained and surgical. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4848 2023-11-10T17:00:35+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

includes an embedded video that is... ]]>

includes an embedded video that is age-restricted. [1] I hadn't seen the video, but I found it highly unlikely that there was really age-restricted content there. It seemed much more likely that YouTube's algorithms saw Amira's name alongside "Gaza" and noped right out of there, applying restrictions to make sure as few people watched the video as possible. * When I clicked the "video" to see it on YouTube. I was informed that "YouTube is blocked". * I removed the query arguments, one by one, but I still couldn't open the video. * When I opened the "base url" (without the query arguments) in a new tab, it worked. You know what? YouTube seems to be blocking referrals from Scheer Post. It blocks not only on the query argument, but also on the HTTP_REFERRER in the request. That is very much enforcing an agenda, but it's also utterly unsurprising. We do not live in a free information environment. The U.S. corporations and government -- entwined as they are -- control the narrative ruthlessly. When I finally got to the video, it was a Democracy Now! interview, from New York City, with journalist Amira Hass. There was absolutely no content in there that would be considered worth blocking or age-restricting in anything but an authoritarian Empire where YouTube is an arm of the State. Her words were, of course, deeply unnerving, but that is reality. There were a few fleeting images of children being dug out of rubble -- they were still alive, though. Finally, the video is embedded from my site below. It's still age-restricted but not blocked, if you click through. [media] Below is the second, longer part of the interview. This second part was, mysteriously, not age-restricted at the time I originally added the link to a draft, but it's age-restricted now. As with part one, I can't see a reason why this video should be age-restricted, unless it's for the disturbing subject matter. If that's what triggers age-restriction, then more than half of the news videos on YouTube would have to be age-restricted. [media] These two videos include an incredibly good interview. Amira Hass discusses honestly how Hamas made a "distinctive blow" militarily that they don't have any follow-up for. I'll cite at considerable length from the "transcript" . She puts it much better, with more emotion, and with more gravitas than my words could. NERMEEN SHAIKH: In the piece, you write about your father, who would tell you as far [...] back as 1992, he himself a Holocaust survivor, when you return from Gaza, he would say, quote, "True, this isn’t a genocide like what we went through, but for us, it ended after five or six years. For the Palestinians, the suffering has gone on and on for decades." [...] AMIRA HASS: Look, I mean, in 92 [...], it was — we could say that it is not genocide. I want to say, I mean, I don’t — as I explain over and over again, I prefer not to talk now, not to dwell into definitions, but to describe the situation. Of course, in '92, in comparison to today, it was like a benign occupation in comparison to today, to what's going on now. "Look, Hamas proved to be very resourceful when it comes to the military operation. They knew how to neutralize Israeli surveillance facilities, how to neutralize the shooting, automatic shooting. They knew where the military bases were, etc. So they were very resourceful, in a way that I could have said impressive, if not for the atrocities that were committed later. And the atrocities were committed. And I know that it’s not the time to tell Palestinians to pay attention to this, because Israel’s revenge is a hundred times more bloodier, but still there were atrocities. "So I feel there is a tremendous contradiction between the planning of the immediate military operation and what comes aftermath — what is the aftermath, because, for example, the civilian now — the civilian face in the West — in Gaza. If they knew they have such an operation, and they knew that Israel will retaliate ferociously, then why, for example, they did not even — I didn’t know — take care that people have water? I don’t know. I mean, if they can arrange to have so many weapons, they must have also prepared for assisting the civilian population, their civilian population. But I see that this, from what I can tell, from far, I don’t think — I don’t see that this has happened. "I don’t think that Hamas can be erased. It can flourish outside of Gaza. But I don’t understand its political plan right now. Do they want to liberate all of Palestine, so it doesn’t matter if it will take 50 years, 80 years, and at the cost of lives of Palestinians and Israelis, that I don’t know who will return to the country? Who will live in this destroyed country, if this is the plan? If the plan is political, immediate political, is it worse to ask, demand the release of present Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, and the cost is so much? I think I know some prisoners in jail now. I don’t think they’ll be happy to be released, thanks to the death of thousands or tens of thousands of Palestinians. "So, right now I see very — militarily, a very apt organization, that indeed gave Israel a very distinctive blow. But I don’t see that there is a political viable position that comes with it. That’s me now. I don’t know. I mean, we are waiting, because just war, just war, just bloodshed, where will it lead us to? Where will it lead the Palestinians to? Now it’s very difficult for people to criticize Hamas. There is a lot of support. But is it a political — does it have a political, logical, human perspective? I don’t see it." "Every Palestinian who is killed today in Gaza is registered in the Israeli-controlled population registry. Palestinians are not registered in a separate one. It’s Israel which controls. If a person is not registered, he is there — if a newborn is not registered in the Israeli registry of population, then the newborn does not exist. Israel controls still today. Palestinian Authority is obliged to give every name of a newborn and every change of address to Israel for validation of this change. So what is not responsible? It’s part of Israel. I mean, Israel controls the whole country, controls the people, decides how much water they have, what is the economy they are allowed to have. If they don’t go to universities in the West Bank, Israel decides. Israel decides about every detail of these people. So, what’s happening now is not Israel’s responsibility?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I'm not the only one who's noticed YouTube's decidely pro-Israel predilection. The article "YouTube’s Connections to Pro-Israel Lobby Behind Removal of Lowkey’s Infamous Song: ‘Terrorist’" by Kit Klarenberg , which writes, "This dark handshake between YouTube and Zionism surely accounts for a baffling “age restriction” imposed on a May 2019 CNN interview with Lowkey regarding that year’s Eurovision Song Contest hosted in Tel Aviv. This restriction, imposed long after the video’s upload, makes the clip unsearchable. Such treatment has also been extended to a February 2022 video from Amnesty International, in which the human rights organization painstakingly elucidates its determination that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians unequivocally meets the criteria for apartheid." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4849 2023-11-10T16:37:04+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

) 2. Even Israel says that 6000 rockets fired by Hamas since October 7th (Israel's number) have killed "dozens" of Israelis (also Israel's number) and that it was a fragment of a Hamas rocket that leveled the hospital, killing over 500, which is on its face flatly unbelievable 3. Why doesn't the U.S. just publish its satellite data? It very clearly has detailed satellite imagery. It could clear this up immediately 4. Why not let inspectors in? They could easily clear up what sort of weapon it was that caused the damage. Even from the footage, people can determine that it was a powered, warhead-equipped weapon, not a rocket dependent on gravity for its damage. He thanks Aaron and Katie for having him on the show because almost no other "left" podcasts have invited him, despite him being by far the leading authority on Gaza. Other unaffiliated/independent shows have invited him, like Jimmy Dore, Chris Hedges, TrueAnon, etc. As noted above, the podcast "TrueAnon, Episode 327: It's Not Too Late" is an absolutely brilliant 136 minutes. I have no transcription other than, "If things were cut-and-dried, then our legal standard wouldn't be 'beyond a reasonable doubt', it'd be 'certainty.'" Just listen to the interview. It is positively edifying. I've listened to every Norman Finkelstein interview I could get my hands on recently. A couple of weeks ago, I watched him discuss Ibram X. Kendi on the Bad Faith podcast. Since then, the Middle East has exploded and he's been interviewed a few times: on Chris Hedges, Jimmy Dore, Useful Idiots, and TrueAnon. This is the best of all of these interviews. TrueAnon is hands-down the best podcast I listen to. I appreciate Liz and Brace and young Chomsky very much. I wrote the following comment on their Patreon: "Amazing episode. Just incredible. It should be spread far and wide, preserved for posterity. This is by far my favorite podcast, but this one just clicked on all levels. Excellent production, wonderful tone. That you went to his apartment, amongst his stuff, that he started with far-reaching social context, talking about Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash, Paul Robeson, all of it lifted this show above all of the other interviews I've heard with him (Hedges, Dore, Halper/Maté). Thanks so much." I'm flattered that the crew read and liked my comment. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4852 2023-11-10T15:57:40+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

"They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue" ... ]]>

"They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue wrong can be permanently dismissed without any real loss." This is mostly true -- except that you have to realize and accept that there are good, rescuable people out there who do not accept the reality of what has been going on in Israel for 50 years, a situations that has increased drastically in severity in the last 18, since Gaza was closed down. Many people simply do not accept that there is a concentration camp there because they've not been told, or they've told that there definitely isn't. [image]Many do not understand the term. If they think about it at all, they think that "concentration camp" means "extermination camp" (or "death camp"), whereas it's actually a synonym for "internment camp", which is what the U.S. generously called its own concentration camps when it stored dozens of thousands of its own citizens of Japanese origin there during WWII. Wikipedia redirects the search for "concentration camp" to "internment" . It defines "internment" as, "[...] the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges[1] or intent to file charges.[2] The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects".[3] Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinement after having been convicted of some crime." We are likewise trained to think of "gulags" as concentration camps -- or even extermination camps -- when they are, by definition, much more like prisons. While many were sentenced on sham charges before kangaroo courts, the Soviets at least bothered to sentence them before interning them. In contrast, people in a concentration camp have never even been tried or accused of anything other than being. You could argue that going through the motions of pretending to prosecute someone for a few minutes or hours before you come to a foregone conclusion shouldn't cover one's ass in a just world. It seems to make a difference in this world, but ours is not a just world. By this logic, though, the Soviet gulags were concentration camps -- but then so are most American prisons, which are full of people who've been railroaded into prison, and who are then leased out as slave labor, working for a dollar a day for U.S. corporations. People think that just because Gazans are shown walking around in rubble with clothes on, rather than as shirtless, emaciated, and half-frozen wraiths as in pictures from Dachau or Ausschwitz, that they couldn't possibly be in concentration camps. Citing from the article again, "A huge amount of western depravity hides behind the unexamined assumption that killing people with bombs is somehow less evil than killing them with bullets or blades. By waging nonstop foreign bombing campaigns, the west desensitized the public to the reality of what bombs do." It has also desensitized the public to the horrors of modern concentration camps -- or even refugee camps. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4816 2023-11-08T22:10:55+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

shows a video of a Joe Biden campaign event from 1987. Joe Biden is and has always been an arrogant, lying asshole without an ounce of empathy. His personality is such that he will lie four times just to make himself look better than... ]]>

shows a video of a Joe Biden campaign event from 1987. Joe Biden is and has always been an arrogant, lying asshole without an ounce of empathy. His personality is such that he will lie four times just to make himself look better than whomever he happens to be arguing with, not at all concerned that he will be caught out later. This is not only sociopathic, but deeply stupid. It's the kind of recklessness you absolutely don't want in a leader. [image] I wasn't sure about the context, so I looked it up. You can see the original video in "Biden Campaign Appearance" The article "Joe Biden’s worst-ever campaign moment, revisited" by Glenn Kessler corroborates C-SPAN, providing a transcript, "I think I have a much higher IQ than you, I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship — the only one in my class to have full academic scholarship. The first year in law school, I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class. And then decided I wanted to stay and went back to law school and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class. I won the international moot court competition. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits; you only needed 123 credits. I would be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours, Frank." The fact-checker from the Washington Post goes on to point out the four main lies that Biden told. * Biden did not go to Syracuse Law School on a “full academic scholarship.” It was a half scholarship based on financial need. * He didn't finish in the “top half” of his class. He was 76th out of 85. * He did not win the award given to the outstanding political science student at his undergraduate college, the University of Delaware. * He didn’t graduate from Delaware with “three degrees,” but with a single B.A. in political science and history. Not only was he spectacularly boorish, but his superiority was based on nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was in the bottom 15% of his class. That's terrible. He was one of the worst students that year. Joe Biden is a pathological, sociopathic narcissistic liar -- and he always has been. [image] ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4846 2023-11-06T17:15:50+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, describing several previously useful commentators who'd gone completely off the script after October 7th. As of November 3rd, the article "Is “Humanitarian Pause” A Real Thing?" by Scott H. Greenfield reveals the current state of mind for at least one of the authors.... ]]>

, describing several previously useful commentators who'd gone completely off the script after October 7th. As of November 3rd, the article "Is “Humanitarian Pause” A Real Thing?" by Scott H. Greenfield reveals the current state of mind for at least one of the authors. It ends with this incoherent and clearly unedited babble. "The newly-beloved phrase, “humanitarian pause,” seems so ripe for the moment to “do something” (remember the syllogism?) to help the Gazans suffering under the Israeli seige and whose lives are squandered by Hamas as worthless, but after the public relations value of the phrase wears off, should Israel pause while Hamas holds the hostages (whose release shouldn’t be conditions on anything), seized whatever aid the naive hope will go to the Gazans and continue to fire rockets into Israel. "Maybe they will raid a few more kibbutz during the “pause,” or rearm their fighters, repair their tunnels, and prepare for the next round of their holy war to destroy Israel one baby in an oven at a time. After which, the phrase “humanitarian pause” will be forgotten as it will no longer serve its pretense that the Gazans’ nightmare can be wished away any more than the Israelis’." He's still very firmly in the camp that Israel is on the back foot, struggling mightily against the incomprehensibly evil and raw power that is Hamas. Now he's positing that Hamas yearns to put Jewish babies in ovens (his words), that their goal is to destroy the Jewish state. This is the stated purpose of some members of Hamas, yes. I'm not well-informed enough to say that it's their official platform, but it's definitely how a good number of Hamas members feel, according to their own statements. The sharp mind of Greenfield can't see that this is also how a good part of the Israeli population feels about Palestinians. Many high-level, very powerful, and very influential members of the Israeli government and military share this opinion. Netanyahu just had a speech citing the Old Testament, "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember." [1] The leader of your team quoting a genocidal God from the Bible should really be a wake-up call, but some people -- even those who'd not previously identified as especially religious -- see stuff like that as "proof" of the rightness of their cause. Or, maybe, they just didn't hear about it. It's almost criminal negligence to not follow what one's one side of a conflict is doing, and to continue to support that side with Greenfield's level of unquestioning enthusiasm. Wouldn't you want to keep your side from becoming the baddies? Or do people really not care? They just want their team to win? [2] Israel is in a much better position for achieving their goal than Hamas is. Whereas Hamas achieving their goal of wiping out Israel is essentially a pipe dream, Israel has moved forward with a final solution [3] for their decades-long Palestinian problem. It's very possible that, within a few months, all Palestinians will be in Egypt or Jordan -- and there's precious little that anyone is going to be able to do about it. Israel is closer to their long-sought ethnic cleansing than they've ever been -- and they have a lot of wind in their sails from all the most important players, like Europe and the U.S. Israel has the overwhelming power here, and doesn't legitimately have to fear a follow-up attack with anything approaching the magnitude of the initial one. In that way, it's very similar to where the U.S. stood after 9--11. The reaction of the recently wounded, but still overwhelmingly powerful state could have been to handle the attack as a police matter, at the international level. Israel could still pull back, beg forgiveness for its rash retaliation, and take Hamas to court for its attack. But neither the U.S. nor Israel acknowledges the ICC. Nor do any commentators consider what I've outlined above -- which should seem eminently reasonable in a world governed by laws -- to be in any way realistic. Instead, they double down again and again. Greenfield, for his part, makes up fairy tales about Hamas smuggling in more weapons or being able to make more raids against a still-mighty Israeli military that is in an incredibly heightened state of alertness. There's barely any food going in -- how are weapons going to get in? Or does Greenfield not have any idea of what it looks like on the ground there? The IDF and Israeli newspapers would be happy to inform him, if he's interested. [4] The U.S., Israel, and the IDF all freely admit to the basic parameters that Greenfield doesn't even seem to notice. Is it deliberate ignorance so that he doesn't have to reexamine his assumptions? That's not usually his style. Is he really just not hearing about what even his own "side" is reporting about what's happening in the war he supports? Did he really stop absorbing information on October 7th? It's a shame, but he's still sidelined. You can almost see the spittle dotting his lips as he's rage-writing those paragraphs, patting himself on the back the whole time for his eloquence in expressing how incredibly obvious his point-of-view is. HOW COULD YOU SUPPORT THOSE BABY-EATERS IN HAMAS? Look at what Hamas has done to Gaza: [image] [image] On a final note, when what can only be called a lot of people protested in Washington DC in support of Palestinians, he wrote in "Holding Biden Hostage" by Scott H. Greenfield that, "For the grown-ups in the room, their cries range from childish to idiotic, recognizing that there can be no ceasefire given the circumstances. Despite the collateral deaths of Gazans upon which Hamas thrives, the alternative is the death of Israelis on perpetual terror raids and rockets that will never be stopped if Israel can’t stop Hamas. Biden gets it. Nancy Pelosi gets it. Even Blinken gets it [...]" Anyone calling for a ceasefire is a child, according to him. A puling welp who doesn't "get it". He's worried that Biden "the outraged woke have figured out a way to leverage their embrace of terrorism to coerce Biden to capitulate to their whims". "Leverage their embrace of terrorism"! Oh, my goodness are you deep down that rabbit hole. Keeping digging, brother! You'll get there! Where? Wherever you think you're headed with that line of argument. He's terrified that people are actually going to vote their interests, and that their interests don't lie with what the Biden administration is doing, so, "Biden either abandon’s Israel and backs the terrorists, “from the river to the sea,” or the progressive wing of the Democratic party will abandon Biden." This is craziness. He's now hating on democratic pressure from below, per se, because it doesn't press in the direction that he wants. He's afraid that Biden will either not capitulate and keep supporting Israel in its ... current behavior, which means that Biden loses to Trump in 2024, the other giant bugaboo of Greenfield's of late. He finishes up by comparing progressives to Hamas. I kid you not. See for youself, "[...] the schism has turned Biden into a hostage of the radical left. Hostage taking, it seems, is all the rage these days. If it works for Hamas, why not for progressives?" He's in a tight spot, indeed. That's going to be a tough needle to thread. Luckily, he has ideological support! Biden, Pelosi, and Blinken are the people to whom he looks for support in his viewpoint. They "get it". Kissinger and Cheney provide backing with their versions of the 100% doctrine. Strange bedfellows, indeed. It's going to be a long road back for this guy. Am I done reading him? Of course not. I've read him for a over a decade. This, too, shall pass. [5] Or maybe it won't. In the meantime, it's quite entertaining and offers insight into how a good part of the influential class thinks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] From "The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric" by Noah Lanard , one of the first search results citing Netanyahu's recent speech, "God commands King Saul in the first Book of Samuel to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel. “This is what the Lord Almighty says,” the prophet Samuel tells Saul. “‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”" [1] That is what is called "feigned naiveté". Of course, I'm aware that the answers to those questions are "no, people don't care about people they don't know meeting an untimely death, even less so when they or their team might benefit, however obliquely, from those deaths, and especially if there is literally no downside for themselves or their team." and "yes, they just want their own team to win," respectively. [1] Yes, I'm aware. [1] I fear he may not be, in his heightened state of agitation. [1] As of November 6th, he's back. The article "When Banks Become Cops" by Scott H. Greenfield doesn't mention Hamas at all. It's about how banks have an inordinate and de-facto control over people's lives, especially the poor. Right back in his wheelhouse. 🙌🏼 ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4839 2023-11-01T22:43:14+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is just one in a large set of really tone-deaf and unfortunately unsurprisingly one-sided headlines from this supposedly satirical online newspaper. A good satirist would... ]]>

is just one in a large set of really tone-deaf and unfortunately unsurprisingly one-sided headlines from this supposedly satirical online newspaper. A good satirist would somehow note that that headline may reflect how Hamas currently feels, but also how Israel was acting a few weeks ago. There are many more irony-free and completely non-self-aware headlines from the Babylon bee like this one these days. In the same vein, a usually reasonable and judicious Eugene Volokh goes all-in on Jews == Israelis and writes in a libertarian magazine that "Some Cancellations are Justified" by Eugene Volokh . Hey, cool, that's what liberals/progressives think too! Nice to see you all have so much in common. At the same magazine, you've now got the already usually fatuous Ilya Somin arguing that the problem is that Israel has been taking it too easy on the Palestinians in the article "Hamas Attack Should Teach Us the Folly of Hostage Deals with Terrorists" by Ilya Somin . Some people's bloodlust is never slaked. I can't even read Scott H. Greenfield lately because he's literally babbling in every article, as if he'd sustained a grievous head injury. For example, "Short Take: The Death of “But For Video”" by Scott H. Greenfield is only about how things that people allege Hamas has done are all true, even without any proof. When he needs horrific things to be true in order to justify the horrific things his "side" is perpetrating and will perpetrate, then his usual adherence to evidence is right out the window. And he doesn't even seem to notice it. I can't imagine writing a comment gently trying to remind him of his former adherence to a higher standard, you know...when the victims weren't Jewish. One person tried by writing "Is there any place for genuine discussion about Israel’s misdeeds in the current situation?" to which Greenfield riposted -- in what he clearly assumes is a manner that he wears well -- "There is a place for that discussion: a sophomore critical studies classroom. Just not among reasonable or knowledgeable people." I.e., anyone who mentions prior, ongoing, or upcoming Israeli war crimes or tries to contextualize at all is sophomoric, a child, neither reasonable nor knowledgable, unlike Greenfield, whose opinions are so unimpeachable as to be fact. It's his blog, but man, I miss the reasonable guy who used to run it rather than the Zionist maniac who's running it now. Like the Babylon Bee, he seems completely unable to see the irony of his statements, as they would apply to Israel just as well as to Hamas, e.g., from a comment of his, "It’s unclear whether or how many babies were beheaded although there is no question that they beheaded adults. After all, murdering babies by shooting, burning, dismembering or otherwise is totally less barbaric." All of these authors are ordinarily capable of talking about justice in relatively detached terms, when it doesn't involve them or "their people". Now that Israel has been attacked, they literally throw all of their principles out the window and start to bend over backwards to justify genocide or to simply not care about proof, or whatever. The point is that they are incredibly hypocritical and that I'm kind of disappointed. I'll survive, of course, but it's a shame. I wonder if they experience any regret about what they've written? [1] I tried again with "NYT Still Trying To Salvage Its Lost Dignity Over Hamas" by Scott H. Greenfield , but he's still quite resistant to knowing anything that he didn't already know yesterday. "On the one side, there’s the claim of Hamas, a terrorist group that had just raped, kidnapped, murdered and beheaded women, children and the elderly, and had a bit of a public relations problem on their hands, claiming Israel bombed a hospital when it turned out that the hospital was never bombed, but only a courtyard parking lot, and there is no evidence whatsoever to support any claim Hamas made." I'm honestly still surprised at how Greenfield still hasn't gotten a hold of himself and started to apply his usual rigor to this topic. As he writes further down, "[...] the New York Times reported that Israel bombed a hospital and killed 200 500 800 471 Palestinians." He writes the other numbers supposedly to show how disingenuous this whole affair is -- because they can't even get the number right immediately. He ends up at 471, which is a high number for a "parking lot", no? But he doesn't think to research and find out that the hospital grounds had been converted to a refugee camp, which is what was hit in the parking lot. He does no research to try to find out whether Israel bombing a hospital and then lying about it is something that has happened with depressing regularity. He doesn't even change his opinion when Israel just quickly admitted to having bombed a church just the other day. He probably won't even reconsider once Israel admits that it was one of their bombs (because only they really have that kind of firepower; if Hamas had it, Israelis would be in a good deal more danger than they currently are). Greenfield considers none of this because he's been in a blind rage for weeks now. It's unclear whether he'll ever come back. He's doubling down again and again. Just to show that I'm not just cherry-picking his articles, here is the very next one he published, called "Short take: When Terrorism Goes Mainstream" by Scott H. Greenfield . He's clutching his pearls that people are now all of a sudden supportive of terrorism, not because of the entire western leadership's enthusiastic support of Israel's obliteration of Gaza, but because the hoi polloi are shockingly willing to be critical of it, especially those dastardly -- nay, amoral -- young people. Although the poll asked whether people were "willing to be critical of Israel", he generously extends that to mean "supportive of terrorism" -- presumably because of their callous ability to consider all acts of terror reprehensible rather than just those of Hamas. [2] [image] He ends his article with, "Up until now, no matter what the cause or how righteous the goal, the use of terrorism was wrong and unacceptable. Terrorism was never the answer. "Terrorism is, at least to a cohort of the young, now the answer." Jesus. Sanctimonious and hypocritical much? Greenfield is an American citizen, and is pleading Israel's case. He is representing so much terrorism and he ignores all of it, pretending that only Hamas terror counts as terror, that state terror doesn't exist. He didn't used to be like, even quite recently. It's like reading a breakdown in real-time. Greenfield's only defense to the accusation of being a n"OK for me, but not for thee" person is that he is woefully, shockingly, and suspiciously ignorant of his beloved Israel's tactics -- to say nothing of his own actual home country's tactics. He exhibits a complete and utter lack of irony, zero knowledge of what's happened in the last three weeks -- to say nothing of the last forty years -- just whispering "I'm in my happy place" over and over to himself. I don't think he's happy, though. I hope he gets there soon. [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I honestly rarely have to, but mostly because I almost never publish in anything that is at all what you would consider contemporaneous. I don't really do "hot takes" because I think that they are a detriment to the conversation. They're almost always wrong. Take this article, for example, which I wrote over a week ago and which I'm publishing now, long after no-one will care. [1] The actual numbers for which, just as with 9/11, have been walked back over the last several days. After 9/11, the numbers of dead were, at first, much, much higher, and slowly came down over the ensuing weeks and months to land on 2996, just under 3000 casualties. After many Israeli military debriefings of their own soldiers, as well as an examination of the evidence on the ground, even Israel's numbers are starting to include a much higher percentage of on-duty soldiers, police officers, and armed settles in the tally for October 7th than initially thought. Not only that, but a lot of people killed that day seem to have been killed by weapons that only Israel has. The baby-beheadings stories were useful at the time, but were insupportable without evidence and have gone the way of the "Elite Republican Guard of Iraq throws babies out of incubators" story -- believed by true believers, but debunked in the official history. Even the many claims of rape are being walked back as the evidence for those is also flimsy to nonexistent. This may change again, of course. Greenfield knows none of this, and doesn't care to learn. He needs to keep the fires of his rage stoked and pure. [1] As of November 3rd, the article "Is “Humanitarian Pause” A Real Thing?" reveals his current state of mind, which ends with this incoherent and clearly unedited babble. "The newly-beloved phrase, “humanitarian pause,” seems so ripe for the moment to “do something” (remember the syllogism?) to help the Gazans suffering under the Israeli seige and whose lives are squandered by Hamas as worthless, but after the public relations value of the phrase wears off, should Israel pause while Hamas holds the hostages (whose release shouldn’t be conditions on anything), seized whatever aid the naive hope will go to the Gazans and continue to fire rockets into Israel. "Maybe they will raid a few more kibbutz during the “pause,” or rearm their fighters, repair their tunnels, and prepare for the next round of their holy war to destroy Israel one baby in an oven at a time. After which, the phrase “humanitarian pause” will be forgotten as it will no longer serve its pretense that the Gazans’ nightmare can be wished away any more than the Israelis’." He's still very firmly in the camp that Israel is on the back foot, struggling mightily against the incomprehensible evil and raw power. Now he's positing that Hamas yearns to put Jewish babies in ovens (his words), that their goal is to destroy the Jewish state. This is the stated purpose of some members of Hamas. I'm not well-informed enough to say that it's their official platform, but it's definitely how a good number of Hamas members feel. The sharp mind of Greenfield can't see that this is also how a good part of the Israeli population feels about Palestinians. Instead, he makes up fairy tales about Hamas smuggling in more weapons or being able to make more raids against an Israeli military in an incredibly heightened state of alertness. There's barely any food going in -- how are weapons going to get in? Or does Greenfield not have any idea of what it looks like on the ground there? The U.S., Israel, and the IDF all freely admit to the basic parameters that Greenfield doesn't even seem to notice. Is it deliberate ignorance so that he doesn't have to reexamine his assumptions? That's not usually his style. Is he really just not hearing about even his own "side" is reporting about what's happening in the war he supports? Did he really stop absorbing information on October 7th? It's a shame, but he's still sidelined. You can almost see the spittle dotting his lips as he's rage-writing those paragraphs, patting himself on the back the whole time for his eloquence in expressing how incredibly obvious his point-of-view is. HOW COULD YOU SUPPORT BABY-EATERS? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4785 2023-09-09T22:46:32+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "Overall, the average lifetime price increase for the top 25 drugs was 226 percent. The highest increases were seen in drugs that have been on the market the longest. For example, drugs that were on the market for under" ... ]]>

writes, "Overall, the average lifetime price increase for the top 25 drugs was 226 percent. The highest increases were seen in drugs that have been on the market the longest. For example, drugs that were on the market for under 12 years had an average lifetime price increase of 58 percent, while those on the market for 20 or more years had an average lifetime increase of 592 percent." These are medications to help people. Their primary purpose now is to help the shareholders of the companies who own the patents on them. If someone gets a medical benefit from them, then, sure, I guess that's OK, too. But society and the economy absolutely don't care if that happens, else we wouldn't have allowed the prices to rise that high. That it's paid for by a government program that's funded by all of our taxes is even worse. The companies are simply milking the government, while enjoying a reputation for business savvy among the exact same people who think that the government should stay out of business, instead letting those companies just handle things directly -- and, supposedly, more efficiently. But those companies don't function at all without these government subsidies. It's the only reason they're successful at all: their government-granted monopolies called patents, together with a government insurance program that is legally required to pay whatever price they ask. "In 2021, Medicare Part D prescription drug plans spent $80.9 billion on these top 25 drugs, which were used by more than 10 million enrollees. AARP noted in its report that Medicare Part D enrollees take an average of four to five medicines each month, and 20 percent of older adults report using cost-coping strategies like skipping doses or not filling prescriptions to save money." Mission accomplished: provide the semblance of trying to care for the aged, while implicitly encouraging them to kill themselves sooner by skipping medications -- incurring discomfort, if not suffering, along the way -- but the primary goal remains achieved: lots of profits for shareholders of pharmaceutical companies. It's a gold mine. You should totally invest in these companies. They guarantee a good rate of return. Just don't ask how they do it, because it's a highly immoral business model -- or perhaps amoral, since these entities don't actually comprehend a model of the world that includes wishy-washy concepts like morality. Why not? Because there's no money in morality. There's literally no upside for being good in this society. "The report lands amid drug cost-cutting measures in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The act requires drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare when they increase the price of drugs faster than the rate of inflation. And, under IRA provisions, Medicare will soon begin negotiating prices of drugs directly with manufacturers. On September 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will announce the first 10 drugs selected for price negotiations. Some of the drugs expected to be announced are among the top 25 costliest drugs analyzed in the AARP report." The party may be over, though, but I wouldn't count these companies out. I'll believe the hopeful formulation above when I see it. "The Biden administration has said it will defend the IRA's price negotiation program vigorously." Sure, sure, buddy. I'll believe it when I see it. Go for it, though! Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4784 2023-09-06T22:39:42+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "[...] there are schools like Yale or Princeton, frankly, that have the latitude such that they could pretty much send people to school for free. But in spite of that, they continue to overwhelmingly enroll" ... ]]>

writes, "[...] there are schools like Yale or Princeton, frankly, that have the latitude such that they could pretty much send people to school for free. But in spite of that, they continue to overwhelmingly enroll wealthy students." And it's not merit-based; they're laundering privilege into credentials. That's their business. "They’re going to end up graduating students with more debt who also have comparatively less-elite credentials when they’re done." Well, isn't that just perfect. What a completely predictably pathological result. "[image][...] they’re spending a fraction of their endowment on the university’s operations, period. So what good is an endowment if it’s not being spent on the university? Maybe this gets to a more philosophical question about capitalism. I’m lying awake at night thinking, why do people like Jeff Bezos want and need more money than they can ever spend by orders and orders of magnitude? What drives this pursuit of a larger and larger endowment as an end unto itself, almost?" Everything about the system in the U.S. drives it. Literally every facet of that culture drives the mindless acquisition of more, regardless of how many others suffer for it. I've got mine, Jack might as well be the national motto. Ethics, morality, principle -- they've all been ground to dust and washed away. They are useless hindrances to the personal accumulation of capital. Other people don't matter. Other people are "other". They deserve to lose. Everything is a game to be won. Bigger. Better. Faster. More. Actually, "better" doesn't really matter. It's a nice-to-have, I guess. "But you hire financiers to invest your money and make money for you. That’s what they’re going to do. They’re not particularly worried about what you do with it afterward. Their job is to make it get bigger. They are simply doing their job." The heck with that. Why do people like these "financiers" even exist? Brcause the system promotes their creation. Why is a society OK with that? They're like ticks or mosquitos or serial killers: they do not serve a purpose that is beneficial to society. In fact, they are actively harmful. We should be trying to limit or eliminate the damage that they do, rather than shrugging our shoulders and treating them like an unstoppable, unalterable force of nature. "Because ultimately, who would you rather be? The person who’s living off spending 7 percent of $1 billion or the person who’s living off spending just 1 percent of $5 billion? It’s an easy choice." What the hell kind of question is that? NEITHER. Neither of those should exist. No wonder other socialists shit on Jacobin's socialist cred. "Once you start to open the door to saying you can’t invest in this because of that reason, then all of a sudden, it’s like, well, where can you ethically and equitably invest? And the answer starts to be nowhere, because there is no real ethical finance capitalism in a world where capital’s need to accumulate is causing endless depredation across the planet and has been for centuries. That’s where the need to have an endowment at all intersects with the purported mission of social good and the very liberal values that these colleges proclaim to hold." Yes. That is exactly correct. There is no way to reconcile those. Stop wasting time trying to find one. You can't have your cake and eat it too. "Here in Providence, Brown has been expanding downtown and across the river, all while being exempted from property taxes, either largely or entirely." "Brown would like to begin to get into the game of owning a medical center because . . . what federal student loans are to colleges and universities, Medicare and Medicaid dollars are to medicine. So if you can combine those income streams, you can become very well-resourced very quickly. That, ultimately, is the goal, and I don’t think it’s entirely speculative to say that." So giant, tax-free endowments seek to grow by corralling even more government money into their maws. And we are powerless to stop them. We are not even ideologically equipped to consider this a problem. To the contrary, we consider this behavior to be the epitome of how the system should work: take what you can; fuck everyone else. Alpha-predator, top-of-the-food-chain stuff. Who can argue with success? "[...] creates an environment in which the kinds of workers and students you hope to attract will feel comfortable. These things are all enabled by the kind of resources that only extremely wealthy schools have." No. It's enabled by the kind of money that states have, but we choose to launder it through the wealthy, trusting in their beneficence when they redistribute a tiny fraction of it in what we hope we will consider fruitful and just directions. He's just described trickle-down economics in what reads like very approving terms. "These two things are intimately related: the ability of labor across the university to exercise some form of leverage to begin to contest top-down administrative decision-making, and the increasing centralization of administrative decision-making power among a small handful of extremely empowered technocrats. Which is not a term of derision; it is a term of art. These are highly trained, highly competent people. I’m not merely lobbing invective." This constant kowtowing to the people ruining everything is grating. They are good at a job that shouldn't exist. Fantastic. The work they do consolidates wealth and power tremendously, and harms everyone else. It's like admiring an assassin -- you're fine with it until they take out one of your own. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the same topic, the article "Management at California State University Is Living Large While Faculty Struggle" by Matthew Ford writes, "Budgetary shortfalls are the most common justification for denying faculty salary increases, yet administrator salary increases miraculously continue to roll out regardless of budgetary constraints." This is the way of the world. Management tends toward an amoral criminality where its sole purpose becomes to defend its own lifestyle, salary, and pension, treating the actually essential employees of an organization as a necessary evil whose labor needs to be obtained as cheaply as possible. This is the exact opposite of how it should be: administration should be obtained as cheaply as possible, but it controls the pursestrings, so it just gives itself all of the money and hires all of its friends. There is nothing special about this. It's just the same level of corruption that has always existed. "If anybody is unsure where CSU management’s priorities lie, a brief glance at the new compensation package for new chancellor Mildred García should make things clear: García will receive an annual salary of $795,000, another $80,000 in deferred compensation, $8,000 per month for a housing allowance, and another $1,000 per month for a car allowance." There you go. She doesn't teach, she provides no value to the actual mission of a university. She is probably really, really good at ensuring that money keeps getting shoveled in the direction of people who already have more than they know what to do with. Good for her. America loves people like her. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4774 2023-09-05T21:55:49+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes "Ocasio-Cortez is not treated like a legislator, but like an icon, a sacred cow who can’t be criticized where any back-bench fifth-year representative would be for similar behavior. I don’t know what that is, but it’s" ... ]]>

writes "Ocasio-Cortez is not treated like a legislator, but like an icon, a sacred cow who can’t be criticized where any back-bench fifth-year representative would be for similar behavior. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not progressive." [image]This is a not unusual idolization of a person who is seen as a bulwark against things ostensibly even more evil. But, as listed in concise detail in the linked article, there are innumerable examples of how she is very hypocritical in her support of the issues she's claimed to care for, and how her behavior is indistinguishable from a legislator whose only goal is to increase the power of the Democratic party, no matter which issues are actually promoted. There was a lot of hope that she would be the person who would stand up for all of the issues, but, seemingly for a lot of people, it suffices to be the person who once could have been that person, even though she never materialized as that person, in any way whatsoever. Somehow, she has achieved a sort of reputational orbit. Nothing she has done since she earned her reputation as someone who could be a rabble-rouser -- when she had no power to change anything -- will shake people's faith that she actually is that rabble-rouser, despite the utter lack of evidence, despite, in fact, the large amount of evidence to the contrary. The article "AOC and the Squad’s List of Left-Wing Accomplishments Is Quite Long" by Branko Marcetic is one of those articles, chiding us all for our lack of faith. "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad are elected officials. There’s any number of criticisms of their time in Congress that are fair, reasonable, and necessary, including over key votes they’ve been on the wrong side on, times they’ve failed to stand with unions, and their failure to, as promised, fully take advantage of the leverage they had under the Democrats’ formerly slim House majority." Bla, bla, bla. This is a really long article that emphasizes a handful of mostly incidental legislative improvements while ignoring the fact that AOC has voted on the wrong side of all of the large, important issues. Tlaib has been better, but she, too, seems to sometimes be more interested in remaining elected than in actually taking a stand that will risk her electability. As Marcetic points out, this is not surprising ... but it doesn't make it admirable. It's not the low bar to which we should aspire. The only end to that sort of legislating is to end up constantly conceding on principle simply in order to remain elected so that we have someone in office with those principles that we admire -- but who never acts on them. It's a catch-22, all right. You can only get re-elected when you don't act on the principles for which you were elected. I haven't seen any American politician who's ever decided to stand for a principle that would endanger their re-electability. AOC is no different. It makes her effectively useless. It also makes her annoying because she's constantly going on and on about the principles she constantly fails to enforce. I have no use for a legislator who is so dedicated to her party that she won't fight the military budget or the re-election campaign of a geriatric Alzheimer's patient. It's ridiculous to even talk about any other minor details of her legislative record, honestly, unless Marcetic is trying to get with her. Who knows? He goes on, "The left pessimism embodied by New York magazine’s profile — which argues explicitly that socialists have nothing to show for five years of electoral victories and that the whole experiment should be abandoned — is a recipe for despair, apathy, and in the end, demobilization, which may already be having a trickle-down effect. It’s a self-defeating, possibly self-fulfilling prophecy that threatens to undermine socialist gains." Bullshit. Take your lesser-evil horseshit and stuff it. AOC doesn't stand for socialism in any real way. Bernie Sanders has capitulated so many times that he's also useless. It pains me to say it, but it's true. I like him more, it's true. But, we have no use for socialists who promote war and the military and who capitulate to state demands for strike-breaking. None of these people is willing to put their political necks on the line for our principles. Why should we continue to waste time with them? I just don't understand how you can make that argument. I just opened the article "The Uselessness of Bernie Sanders" by Peter Bolton , which, as I noted above, is a hard thing to read -- but it's true. He says the right things, but he can't. Get. It. Done. He ends up voting for the exact opposite of the thing he was saying -- for ... reasons. Always the wrong reasons. Just vote against it, Bernie. Make a statement. What have you got to lose? You've been a senator for fifty years. You're over 80 years old. You've got literally nothing to lose. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4783 2023-08-29T22:33:37+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

reports on Sanders's latest disappointment. The article basically provides detail for what it says on the tin. Specifically, he said this: "The" ... ]]>

reports on Sanders's latest disappointment. The article basically provides detail for what it says on the tin. Specifically, he said this: "The Democrats, once and for all, must reject the corporate wing of the party and empower those who are prepared to create a grassroots, multi-racial, multi-generational working class party in every state in this country. Democrats, through words and action, must make it clear that they stand with a struggling working class, a disappearing middle class, and millions of low income Americans who are barely surviving." This is good. This is fine. This is what Bernie always says. It's what he has always said. It's the stuff they let him say because it doesn't matter that he says it. Why doesn't it matter? Because the then immediately endorsed Biden for president. The war machine must stop, but he endorsed Biden for president. We need a principled leader to stand up to the weight of the last four decades of U.S. history and economic shithousery and war, but he endorsed Biden for president. About Cornel West he had this to say: "Sanders expressed his personal admiration for West, while claiming that re-electing Biden was essential to preventing Trump from returning to power. On “Meet the Press,” he said, “at the end of the day, I think the progressive community in general and the American people have got to make a decision as to whether we stand for democracy or authoritarianism.”" Ok, Ok, Bernie. You sure you don't want to give any support for your theory that Biden is the lesser evil? That you're really going to just ride that hobby-horse that any third-party candidate is just going to get Trump reelected? That this would somehow be worse than Biden's having embroiled the U.S. in the Ukraine conflict? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ten times, shame on me. The third-party-candidate-cost-Democrats-the-election trope is just that: bullshit. The Democrats are a dumpster fire of corporate greed and immorality. The Republicans are the same. Instead of doing anything that the populace might want, they chastise and admonish and browbeat their potential voters into voting for them. Bernie said: "On “State of the Union,” he said he disagreed with “my good friend Cornel West” because “there is a real question whether democracy is going to remain in the United States of America,” and it was necessary to support Biden to keep Trump out." So Cornel West should shut the fuck up and campaign and vote against Trump, if not for Biden. Biden is the only thing standing between the U.S. and not having a democracy anymore. Can you imagine believing something so foolish? Wouldn't you be terrified that this doddering old man is the only hope for the nation? Maybe Bernie should sit down and shut up while the grown-ups talk. He's been a worn-out useless stooge for the Democrats for too long. He says so many nice things sometimes, but he is politically useless. It's hard not to think that he's a deliberate distraction, bleeding away energy that would be better invested elsewhere. It's astonishing that he not only forgave the Democrats for having torpedoed him not once, but twice -- he's actually now out-and-out stumping for them, without reservation. As usual, he asks for nothing in return. Of course, the article is from the WSWS, so they're going to shit on Cornel West as well, but for different reasons. For example, "West himself offers no genuine alternative to working people." That is a pretty broad brush they just painted West with. The man hasn't even had a chance to describe his platform yet. I guess the WSWS is going to be preemptively disappointed in him. Why shouldn't Sanders support Biden? There are myriad reasons, but the article "115 dead and hundreds still missing in Maui wildfire disaster" by Kevin Reed provides an excellent, recent example, "After spending six hours in Maui feigning sympathy for the families of those who died and those who have lost everything in the wildfire disaster, President Joe Biden and wife Jill took a direct flight on Air Force One back to Nevada to resume their vacation at a billionaire’s luxury mansion in Lake Tahoe last week." That's about all you need to say about Biden. Well, there's also this photo caption: "President Joe Biden speaks with reporters after taking a pilates and spin class at PeloDog, Wednesday, August 23, 2023, in South Lake Tahoe, California. " Truly a man in touch with the people. He might as well be living on that Elysium space station. You can see why Bernie loves him so. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4716 2023-08-12T17:03:18+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "[...] when people try to frame Assange’s persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect." ... ]]>

, "[...] when people try to frame Assange’s persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange’s persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it proves the US is bad. (Emphasis in original.)" The "letter" [1] writes, "The prosecution of Julian Assange for carrying out journalistic activities greatly diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities." To which Johnstone replies, "[America's history of oppression and war] will all still be the case even if Assange is released. The US empire will still have spent years imprisoning a journalist for the crime of good journalism, will still be the world’s worst warmonger, and will still be the world’s most egregious violator of human rights. Its moral standing is dead and buried, and the world should stop following its lead in creating a just and ethical world. It simply does not have the qualifications to do so. In fact, no power structure on earth is less qualified." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] That's a direct link to a CloudFront cached document. I'm not sure that these buffoons in our Congress intended that this would be the canonical place to get this document. See the "original announcement" if that link fails. That URL might be a bit more stable. It's actually not surprising that the people running this official, government site don't have any good idea of canonical URLs: the letter itself -- which is only 21/2 pages long -- has at least one pretty glaring typo in it, one that would have been caught by a grammar-checker, should they have seen fit to use it. The sentence "[...] has highlighted conflicts between the America’s [sic] stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange." seems to have been changed from "the American" without removing the article when converting to the possessive. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4745 2023-06-03T22:19:25+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "What’s known as a “balance of payments” crisis is eroding standards of living in a country still reeling from devastating flooding last year. It could “reverse the poverty gains achieved in the last two" ... ]]>

writes, "What’s known as a “balance of payments” crisis is eroding standards of living in a country still reeling from devastating flooding last year. It could “reverse the poverty gains achieved in the last two decades and further reduce the incomes of already poor households,” the World Bank warned last month. "Pakistan’s ability to maintain payments on its debt has also been called into question. Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the country’s credit rating in late February, noting that foreign currency reserves were “far lower than necessary to cover its imports needs and external debt obligations over the immediate and medium term.”" [image]The World Bank speaks as if there were no money in the world to help Pakistan. No-one considers donations or a redistribution from those who have far more than they need. No-one considers favorable borrowing conditions despite an unstable political situation -- how is a country to exit the such a situation if it is being ruined financially as well? A country can't go bankrupt. A country can't be "repossessed" by the bank. Can it? Why is Ukraine a good investment? Well, the U.S. just recently said that money spent on weapons for Ukraine is the "best money they've ever spent." Why is Greece a good investment? Because the ECB has guaranteed every bond issued by Greece for 100 cents per euro, just like they did for Deutschbank eight years ago. Greece is a great money-laundering scheme -- they launder public money into private profits. The same in Ukraine. Pakistan doesn't have anything to offer the western elites, so it can collapse, for all they care. Our moral standard is incredibly low. The only way that we'll offer funds to Pakistan is if it shows a willingness to neglect its population in order to pay interest on its existing debt. That is, it needs to borrow more money because it doesn't have enough money to help its people. However, it's already borrowed money in the past, so it must show a willingness to pay interest -- otherwise, the same lenders will be unwilling to lend more money (which will, presumably, also not be paid back, and will also not yield interest payments). So, it actually needs more money in order to -- most importantly -- cover the costs of past borrowing. This all makes logical sense from a merciless economical standpoint. It's horrifying from a human standpoint. The people of that country suffered massive flooding in the last year (1/3 of the country was underwater at one point) and is now suffering from a massive parliamentary/constitutional crisis. It looks very much like there will be yet another military putsch -- as there was when Musharraf took power in 1999. Pakistan has only since the partition in 1947 and has had "4 verifed military coups" . ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4701 2023-03-11T22:42:44+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, in which I cited an article of his called Punish the Right-Wing Liars, published on AlterNet. He's been on right side of justice... ]]>

, in which I cited an article of his called Punish the Right-Wing Liars, published on AlterNet. He's been on right side of justice for a long time. He's been chastising the press for lying and forsaking its journalistic duties for just as long. Whereas he used to hammer exclusively on the more right-wing press during the Bush and Obama years, he's been forced to take the (supposedly) left-leaning press to task for doing the same. Most recently, he's been publishing part of the Twitter Files, which exposes a deep violation of civil liberties on the part of nearly all levels of elected government officials as well as members of agencies ostensibly charged with defending these same rights. The problem he points out is without "sides", but it's damning that the Democrats are not only doing it, but denying it, or, when caught red-handed, just don't seem to care. I think it's fine to focus on the party that's historically taken the moral high ground on first-amendment rights when it's strayed so far from the path that it's literally going in the opposite direction. We already know that right-wing politicians and media don't care about our rights or about telling us the truth or about letting us think what we want. It's important to strongly and stridently note that the high-and-mighty self-selected elite are just as bad. That focus doesn't mean we think the other side has stopped doing it. No, it means that we have a much bigger problem: everyone does it -- and no-one seems to care. They don't even think it's a problem. They instead choose to attack the messenger and make noise until the problem goes away. Anyway, here's Taibbi debating a few points with Brianna Joy Gray. It's about 30 minutes long. [media] Brianna is asking what sounds like a valid question, but I think Taibbi answered it best at around 15:30, when he asked why she was berating him for not having written the story that wasn't there. He saw some documents. There may be other documents. The documents he saw tell a story. They are verifiable. That story is true. He's telling that story. There may be another story, one possibly hidden by a selective procurement of documents. That is irrelevant to whether the first story is newsworthy. You can't write a speculative story about whether other documents might exist or whether you're being manipulated into writing a certain kind of story. Journalism doesn't prevent you from writing a true story. It may be that it shifts the balance -- because the other story hasn't been written. But the argument that Gray is making is tantamount to ignoring a murder of a right-wing individual because there might have been murders of left-wing individuals that we don't know about. That is, reporting the story we have means that people might draw the conclusion -- wholly on their own, based on the absence of reporting on left-wing murders -- that only right-wingers are being murdered. That's not how journalism works. You can't just sit on a story until you have the whole picture. You have to report on it as it appears. Your only obligation is to determine to the best of your ability whether it's true -- and to drop it if it's not. (Most of the mainstream media skips that last part.) If Matt is focusing on the (true) story that's right in front of his nose, it's not like he's ignoring the other story just because he's not reported it on it in the three months he's been working on the story. Jesus Christ. He's not a machine. And he's not a puppet for people to manipulate into working on the stories they feel are important. He's the reporter. He's been selected by a source. That source might close up at any moment. Taibbi does a pretty bad job of articulating this, but Brianna is certainly showing her lawyerly side by not really giving him any room to breathe and think. It's fine; it's her show, but I think it's taking a long time to get to the point that there's no obligation to not report a story when you can't report all of the other potential stories. As noted: that's not how journalism works. By the way, I've read a bunch of Taibbi's work on this, and the claim that there was no left-wing suppression comes mostly from others. He says that he hasn't seen nearly as much suppression of left-wing sources, but I think he means mainstream liberal sources. [image]In his testimony to Congress (detailed below), he mentions that there is suppression of true left-wing sources like Consortium News and CounterPunch. Those don't really count for the argument, though, because both sides are suppressing these. This is not news. Neither side even denies it or tries to hide it. They trumpet their suppression of these sources from the ramparts, in the name of anti-Communism (or whatever). What is interesting is that outlets like Fox News have seen a lot more suppression that CNN or MSNBC. That's the point that Taibbi fails to make eloquently enough for people to stop berating him about it. It's also kind of obvious that being in the spotlight is extremely uncomfortable for Matt Taibbi. He has to visibly collect himself at a few points. He very rightly says, "I'm not going to be prioritizing Donald Trump's stupid requests just because idiots at the New York Times and Washington Post want it." He's using his limited time in the treasure trove to find out information about the FBI, the Congress, and the justice department trying to suppress speech at Twitter. Donald Trump trying to cancel another celebrity's tweet -- even though he was president at the time -- is utterly irrelevant. Taibbi is shouting to the world that the FBI is suppressing speech -- and providing proof -- and the left is doing what the left always does: eating its own. letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Matt assumes that people understand how journalism works, while Brianna is describing exactly how useless she would be as a journalist. I'm glad that Taibbi is doing it, and not her. It's obvious that she doesn't have any instincts about how to collect information. She's used to being a lawyer, with infinite time, and infinite resources, and a legal obligation for the opposition to provide information. Journalism doesn't work like that. Sources dry up. You have to get the good stuff while you can. At one point she asks why Taibbi's not interested in left-wing suppression when "85% of historical suppression has been of left-wing groups". It's fine to ask that, but Taibbi notes correctly that most of that suppression was not in the area he's focused on, which is in the last five years. Most of that the historical suppression is from the 1970s, 80s, etc. Much of it is ongoing but, as noted above, no-one on either side of the establishment media cares about that suppression. It's an important issue, but it's not the one at hand. And it's kind of clear that the U.S. suppresses left-wingers. That's a soft target journalistically. That's why there's no left-wing to speak of in America. Everyone in the media is basically right-wing, even the so-called liberals. So why investigate that further? We already know that the U.S. government has a right-wing bias and actively suppresses left-wing voices. Just try being a communist FFS. The interesting story here is that the so-called liberals, the Democrats are doing it too and just as much, if not more. And they're quite thorough about their suppression. This is interesting journalistically because they also take the moral high ground over the right, which has long since admitted that it will suppress whatever the hell it wants. Taibbi is also one man with limited time. He has chosen his story and it's an important one. He has verified the information to the best of his ability -- he's done his journalistic due-diligence. It's up to people to disprove his information, but he's rightfully not interested in defending himself against ad-hominem attacks or in arguing about other stories he could have worked on while he was getting some sleep, like the lazy fuck that he is. He says this again and again. It's evident that he's overworked as it is, just with the stuff that he's done. He's focusing on the government running a subversive program to deprive people of their first-amendment rights. And she's berating him for not investigating a different story. She seems a bit butt-hurt that he's not investigating the story that she wants: finding out whether Bernie was torpedoed. I kind of get her point, but she's absolutely ruthless is not acknowledging that one man can't report on everything at once. And also we know the Democrats torpedoed Bernie: Biden's president. Duh. But, yeah, Taibbi is pretty terrible under pressure. Here he is saying something incredibly important -- testifying before Congress -- but delivering it in a way that will allow detractors to shred him to pieces, even claiming that he's deliberately lying -- because his body language is so bad. [media] The transcript is here: "My Statement to Congress" by Matt Taibbi . It's only a six-minute speech, so watch or read the whole thing, but here are some good excerpts. "A focus of this fast-growing network is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.” The latter term is just a euphemism for “true but inconvenient.”" "Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for “deamplification” or de-platforming, but to firms like PayPal, digital advertisers like Xandr, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, algorithmic judge." "[...] instead of investigating these groups, journalists partnered with them. If Twitter declined to remove an account right away, government agencies and NGOs would call reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, who in turn would call Twitter demanding to know why action had not been taken. "Effectively, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought-policing system." "Jefferson’s ideas still ring true today. In a free society we don’t mandate truth, we arrive at it through discussion and debate. Any group that claims the “confidence” to decide fact and fiction, especially in the name of protecting democracy, is always, itself, the real threat to democracy. This is why “anti-disinformation” just doesn’t work. Any experienced journalist knows experts are often initially wrong, and sometimes they even lie. In fact, when elite opinion is too much in sync, this itself can be a red flag." "It’s not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is however becoming technologically possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we’re looking at." He followed up this appearance with a post-mortem article called "The Democrats Have Lost the Plot" by Matt Taibbi , in which he had a bit more time to reflect on the experience and discuss what was going through his head. He was largely just flabbergasted and disappointed at the duplicity and stupidity of the Democrats. They were unwilling -- or intellectually unable -- to grapple with the issue. They seem not to have understood anything at all, even when he laid it out in very simple terms in his introductory speech. In particular, you can see a video where a Representative Goldman is absolutely badgering and belittling him, about which Taibbi writes: "A longtime editor once cracked that the Democrats have been stuck since the mid-sixties trying to run Kennedy clones in elections, cranking out one toothy, tallish facsimile after another, from Gary Hart to John Kerry to Beto O’Rourke. Goldman is one of the latest, a literal handsome Dan who’s an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, worth over $250 million, and who opposed Medicare for All and the Green New Deal while marketing himself as “tough on crime.” All of these qualities make him the kind of quintessential born-on-third-base triangulator the party loves." "The irony is that what Goldman was doing, confusing accusations with proof — as Thomas Jefferson said, the phenomenon of people whose “suspicions may be evidence” — was the entire reason for the hearing. Michael and I were trying to describe a system that wants to bypass proof and proceed to punishment, a radical idea that this new breed of Democrat embraces. I think they justify this using the Sam Harris argument, that in pursuit of suppressing Trump, anything is justified. But by removing or disrespecting the rights to which Americans are accustomed, you make opposition movements like Trump’s, you don’t stop them. "Yesterday was memorable for other reasons, but a depressing eye-opener as well, forcing me to see up close the intellectual desert that’s spread all the way to the edges within the party I once supported. There are no more pockets of Wellstones and Kuciniches who were once tolerated and whose job it is to uphold a constitutionalist position within the larger whole. That crucial little pocket of principle is gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4700 2023-03-11T20:55:24+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

takes a non sequitur potshot at some of the only independent journalists left, "The public advocacy by the FBI of the Wuhan lab lie has exposed individuals like journalist Glenn Greenwald, comedian Jimmy Dore, and journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate of the Grayzone, who are orienting ever more openly to the fascistic right." What the fuck does that even mean? Why shoehorn this patently untrue disparagement in here? It's not a competition, numbnuts. I don't know that the FBI pretending to agree with these journalists (and one comedian) suddenly makes them fascists. I'm growing a bit tired of the WSWS screeching about fascists everywhere -- sometimes suspiciously when their targets disagree with them on certain facts, while agreeing mostly on a lot of policy positions. It smacks more of online pissing contents -- of Twitter bullshit bleeding over into the pages of the newspaper. I think Andre Damon and David North need to take a deep fucking breath and quit Twitter. It's turning them into morons. This is not to say that I haven't cringed at Max Blumenthal and Jimmy Dore at times (see "Homo Ignoramicus" ), but I've also seen them doing good work (see "Max Blumenthal and Mnar Adley on Ukraine" ). Dore has also done good interviews (see "Boogaloo = Boogie Man" ), although the cited interview made the WSWS fill its pants right up. If you read the linked article, then you'll see that it did: Eric London of the WSWS went out of his mind at Jimmy Dore daring to purport that he's a leftist while interviewing someone who the WSWS had deemed right-wing. If you listen to the interview, though, the guy doesn't sound very right-wing at all. He sounds ... kind leftist. [How it should be done] Some writers at the WSWS see fascists literally everywhere. It's a good newspaper with overall very high-quality reporting, but their opinion stuff is absolutely cringe-inducing, at times. The problem with the WSWS is that their approach is a complete dead end. You don't have to go all the way to meet people, but you have to be at least willing to meet them halfway -- to talk to them and try to convince them of your ideas. How the fuck does the WSWS propose to build a movement when they're screeching at 90% of the populace about what useless bags of fascist shit they are? That's not how you win support. That's not how you build a movement. You don't have to convert to their ideas, you morons; you pretend to listen while converting them to yours. Trust me: I have a family whose politics are nothing like mine, but they love me, and I shame them into pretending to have my politics while I'm around. I bludgeon them with logic, counteracting their FOX News. I hope that I'm annoying enough that people end up carrying a mini-version of me in their heads -- one that pipes up when they're lazily accepting some bullshit argument without evidence. It's really the only way. It's not easy and it takes practice, but I despair at the hard-line intolerance I see in like-minded people at places like the WSWS. David North is taking a run at Chris Hedges for being a fascist. What fucking planet is North even on? [Wrong on one issue == ... fascist] "Particularly over the past year, Blumenthal and Mate have fully embraced the pandemic policy of the far right, promoting Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, leading authors of the Great Barrington Declaration," That makes them wrong on that issue, but not fascists, you indentitarian, nuance-free Spassbremse. [Professional Jealousy?] Although sometimes I feel that there are just a bunch of otherwise good writers and journalists who are simultaneously petty enough to carry grudges for decades, constantly dredging up somewhat minor details about their chosen enemies in order to try to convince their enemies that that person could never ever possibly be capable of having a good idea or of promoting an useful opinion or idea. The article "Lots of Twitter Files and Nowhere to Go" by Yasha Levine provides such an example, where he takes a run at his former colleague Matt Taibbi (they'd worked together at least 25 years ago) by making a completely ludicrous argument about an action being useless because it not action led to immediate change. In this case, he declares the Twitter Files DOA, but then also throws Assange and Snowden under the bus for good measure. "And even if there was some kind of coherent politics in the fight surrounding the Twitter Files, there’s still a bigger problem: More information doesn’t cause political change by itself — not if there isn’t a strong political organization that can turn this information into action and political empowerment. Wikileaks — Julian Assange’s project to change the world by letting state secrets flow — was a great example of this failure. And so were Edward Snowden and his leaks." What a dumb thing to say. Assange and Snowden did change things: just so significantly that the author can't remember what it was like before we all knew that the U.S. government couldn't be trusted. The erosion of trust in the U.S. didn't happen by itself. It was pushed by people like Assange and Snowden. I think Levine is butthurt because he wrote an entire book about Surveillance Valley and no-one is citing him. In the same vein, Yasha still seems to be wicked butt-hurt over Matt's Substack doing much, much better than his own. Yasha generally comes off as butt-hurt these days. So, instead of acknowledging that some people seem to have managed to get at least some people to listen, he has to disparage everyone else's work in order to pretend that no-one could possibly garner attention for the issues that he'd reported on. This probably makes him feel better about himself -- and, hey, whatever helps you sleep at night -- but it's bullshit. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4683 2023-02-08T21:16:15+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. Since I read it, it's now been annotated to death. When I read it, it was just a transcript. It's quite a piece of work. I had to check a few times to see whether I was reading the state of the union of the U.S.A. ... ]]>

. Since I read it, it's now been annotated to death. When I read it, it was just a transcript. It's quite a piece of work. I had to check a few times to see whether I was reading the state of the union of the U.S.A. Joe Biden describes a country with policies that I don't recognize. He describes a functioning democracy that is surging with greatness and getting amazing things done for everyone. And, at the same time, he's apologetic about how bad things still are -- but everything will be better soon. [image]You literally couldn't publicly disagree with most of what Biden said in at least the first half of the speech. He talked about amazing social programs that are either already underway -- or are coming very soon. As expected, his foreign policy -- which took up only a small portion of the speech -- was purely warlike, but equally fantastical as the rest of it. Like any other SOTU, though, absolutely none of this fairy tale will come true. To save you the trouble of reading through it, here's my summary. 1. America is back on top * America was never not on top 2. 3. Dems and Reps working hand in hand * bi-partisan, obviously 4. 5. The middle class is suffering * The working class is suffering, too 6. 7. But chips are coming back! * All manufacturing is coming back! * It's already here! 8. Infrastructure is being rebuilt as we speak 9. Also, buy American! 10. 11. Urban. Suburban. Rural. Tribal. * Um, what? 12. Being poor sucks 13. 14. Medicine is too expensive * Especially insulin 15. 16. Big Pharma sucks * Gonna stop 'em 17. Electric cars rule 18. 19. Big companies don't pay taxes * They should, though 20. 21. Big deficits suck * Trump made big deficits * Let's all not even remember why, though 22. Social Security and Medicare are safe 23. We really need to raise taxes on the rich 24. 25. Shipping costs were too high. * Not anymore! * Cut by 90% 26. 27. Junk fees suck * Credit cards put on a leash * Airlines put on a leash * Ticketing, everything, put on a leash with Junk Fee Prevention Act 28. 29. Non-competes suck * Get rid of 'em! 30. 31. Unions are good * So let people start 'em * Pass the PRO act 32. Restore the Child Tax Credit 33. More home-care services for seniors and people with disabilities 34. 35. More school! * Pre-K will make the difference 36. Give public-school teachers a raise 37. COVID is under control 38. Fight fraud and tax-evasion 39. Police should stop killing black people 40. 41. We ask too much of police. * They're under stress. 42. Moar gun safety. 43. 44. Stop unlawful immigration * It's down 97% * But it's still not fixed? 45. 46. Also, drugs are bad * Drug war, baby! * This time it'll work. 47. 48. C'mon with the banning abortions * Not on Joe's watch 49. 50. 3/4 of the way through, and we're finally ready for Ukraine * We are unbelievably fucking awesome there * No points off * We did absolutely every thing right that could possibly be done right * It's absolutely uncanny how amazing we are * You wouldn't think it would be possible, but here we are * You can't argue with facts * We're done with Ukraine pretty quickly 51. 52. China's on the shit list, too * We've got our eye on you, China * The world appreciates it * Just competition, not conflict, though * We mos def have to win against China though * Not just for the U.S.A., but for the world's own good 53. 54. Drugs are pretty bad * So is cancer-causing pollution 55. 56. And, Christ, that Big Tech preying on our kids * That's gotta stop 57. Veterans killing themselves is also no bueno 58. Cancer, though, what a sonofabitch, ammirite? 59. 60. Extremism and hate is bad, too * Poor Paul Pelosi 61. 62. Now is the time for the U.S.A. * God loves us best 63. "May God bless you all. May God protect our troops." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4672 2023-01-29T22:54:27+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

quotes Yury Sak, an advisor to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who is "[...] confident Ukraine will get everything it wants. “They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give" ... ]]>

quotes Yury Sak, an advisor to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who is "[...] confident Ukraine will get everything it wants. “They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us HIMARS systems, then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks. Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get,” he said." [image]But why stop at nuclear weapons? That doesn't make any sense, does it? It certainly doesn't gel with the argument that we must do anything we can to help Ukraine win their war against Russia. How does that not include nuclear weapons? Are we not serious about helping? If we're really on Ukraine's side, shouldn't we let them benefit from the deterrent effect of having nuclear weapons? In the worst case, they would be able to retaliate against a potential Russian attack, no? Are we chicken? [1] Or ... do we not support them that way? Do we only support them in a hopeless war of attrition with conventional weapons? If we really believe in Ukraine as much as and for the reasons that we say that we do, then we should avail them of the same weapons that prevent us from invading Russia outright. We did it for Israel, why not Ukraine? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] For the irony-impaired who are in an outright panic, the title of this short essay is taken from Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" , an essay that suggested, "[...] that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies." It was satirical hyperbole -- also known as reductio ad absurdum -- a category in which this essay attempts to be included, with success that can only be judged by the reader. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4651 2023-01-12T21:13:57+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4652 2023-01-12T21:12:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4611 2022-12-04T22:35:47+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4627 2022-12-04T22:00:40+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg underlined this in comments to News Nation yesterday. “We’ve got to get to a solution that does not subject the American economy to the threat of a shutdown,” he said. “We don’t have enough trucks, or barges, or ships in this country to make up for the rail network.”" Then concede to their very reasonable demands! They are essential. What is the actual fucking problem? Are the profits of the railroad companies not obscene enough? Can it really be that they've bought off every last legislator and functionary? Or is really that the hatred of the poor and the underclass in the U.S. rivals that of even the Indians for lower castes like the untouchables? The fervor with which the U.S. political class -- the elites -- refuse to even consider conceding even a morsel to the unwashed masses is nigh-religious. Is it that the elites can't be shown to have given in to the demands of the working class? Is that it? Is it that the elite politicians are in the back pocket of the private transportation corporations and nearly literally can't conceive of a solution that involves them actually serving the citizens who elected them rather than the corporations who fund them? They are more afraid of losing funding for the next campaign -- and, almost certainly, huge personal kickbacks from their funders -- than they are of the people who ostensibly elected them. These are functionaries who have no responsibility to the people. They care more about the profits of U.S. corporations than about the well-being of workers who the politicians, in the same breath, describe as absolutely essential. It's just that, when you're at the bottom of the heap and essential, no-one ever thinks that the solution is to pay you more or give in to your demands. Instead, they lead these poor people on and on, over months and months, then threaten them with being responsible for taking down the nation. As if that's not the politicians' responsibility. As if it's not their inability to conceive of doing the right thing that's the problem. Instead, they do things like this, "In fact, through the veneer of “collective bargaining” with a union apparatus totally integrated with management and the state, the strategy of Biden has been to prevent a strike and impose a sellout. Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats—together with the Republicans—have been preparing for months behind the scenes for congressional action to block a strike and unilaterally impose a deal if necessary." Because they only understand force when it comes to the working class. They absolutely fucking hate the working class. They hate the poor. The elites absolutely resent the fact their hallowed lives are bound up with these unwashed masses, that the unwashed masses can even conceive of having opinions of their own, instead of just suffering in silence and obscurity, while they provide the underpinnings of a society enjoyed by the 1% and suffered by everyone else. This is the concession that they've made so far: "The only change was the addition of three unpaid sick days per year for doctors’ appointments—up from zero—which had to be scheduled between Tuesday and Thursday, at least one month in advance." Read that again. It's madness that this is even considered a concession. * You "get" only three days per year * You don't get paid for them. "Get" in this instance means that they can't officially fire you for going to the doctor. They have to think of some other excuse. * You can only schedule them on certain days (because why not right? The point is to show these animals who's boss) * You have to schedule at least a month in advance. Liver hurt? Fuck you. Drive the train for 30 more days before you can get it looked at. Oh, and good luck being back in the city where you made your appointment on the day when you have your appointment. Their union agreed to this. As I've told a colleague of mine who works as a teacher in the U.S.: if you're getting fucked over like this and you think you have a union, then think again. You're paying union dues, but you don't have a union. You're paying a union to work for your employer. "A strike in the leadup to the Christmas holiday would have a particularly powerful effect, stopping the 40 percent of freight which is shipped on the railroads and costing roughly $2 billion a day." No kidding, really? Then do your job and give them what they want. They are not asking for the moon. They are asking for justice. Instead, they get the rod, as detailed in "Biden calls on Congress to impose rail contract, in a major assault on workers’ democratic rights" by Tom Hall , where Biden and the Democrats and all of Congress will join in just denying labor rights to what they deem to be essential workers. They are essential, but we will not pay them more nor give them sick days. Instead, there is no difference between the U.S. and a corporate dictatorship. The corporations make policy and treat the populace as a captive work-force. Those railway workers should be happy that they're getting paid at all! They should feel lucky to have a job, whether or not it pays anything! "Biden justified the move on the basis of the major economic impact that a strike would have, which he claimed “would hurt millions of other working people and families.” This could be resolved tomorrow if the railroad industry, the most profitable in America, agreed to workers’ reasonable demands, including paid sick leave and schedules that leave them time to spend with their families. "{...} "Dripping with contempt for the railroaders, Biden concluded: “I share workers’ concern about the inability to take leave to recover from illness or care for a sick family member. … But at this critical moment for our economy, in the holiday season, we cannot let our strongly held conviction for better outcomes for workers deny workers the benefits of the bargain they reached, and hurl this nation into a devastating rail freight shutdown.” In other words, the democratic will of workers should not be a barrier to their “enjoyment” of the terms of a sellout contract that they rejected." "Monday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement cynically feigning concern for railroad workers while running roughshod over their right to reject a pro-company contract. “As we consider Congressional action, we must recognize that railroads have been selling out to Wall Street to boost their bottom lines, making obscene profits while demanding more and more from railroad workers. We are reluctant to bypass the standard ratification process for the Tentative Agreement,” she claimed, before declaring, “we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike.”" So, order the companies to concede to the workers' demands. It really is that simple. It's not like those companies will go out of business if their profits dip just a touch. They are making money hand-over-fist. They have never had better years. They are profiting massively. They will not be made to share this wealth with the workers who have made their companies so productive. Congress doesn't care. No-one does. No-one who matters. The article "Democrats Were Dithering on Railworkers’ Rights. The Left Just Forced Their Hand." by Branko Marcetic writes, "The political malpractice on display here became clear when several Republicans used it as an opening to posture as pro-worker. Ted Cruz called railworker demands for sick leave “quite reasonable,” while, more significant, Marco Rubio put out a subtly union-bashing statement calling for both sides to “go back and negotiate a deal that the workers, not just the union bosses, will accept” and affirming he would “not vote to impose a deal that doesn’t have the support of the rail workers.” "Likewise, Josh Hawley, who has moved to brand himself as a pro-worker populist in advance of a planned 2024 run, stated that workers “said no and then Congress is gonna force it down their throats at the behest of this administration.” Even Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper, hardly a progressive firebrand, saw which way the wind was blowing and affirmed that “any bill should include the SEVEN days of sick leave rail workers have asked for.” "In other words, several Republicans and a guy who drank fracking fluid were to the left of the “most pro-union president” in history." And "The Railway Labor Fight Is an Object Lesson in Democratic Party Hypocrisy" by Luke Savage writes, "Earlier this week, the Biden White House issued a statement of thanks to Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives who had just voted to impose a contract without sick days on railworkers and override their right to strike." "[...] legislation to impose a contract on railworkers meanwhile passed by a whopping margin of eighty to fifteen. Never let anyone tell you that bipartisanship is dead." They are all criminals. Utterly amoral criminals. Are they not afraid? They are not. They have literally no fear that their ordering "essential workers" to shut their fucking crybaby mouths and go back to work doing their essential things without a pay raise and without sick days and without any improvement in their abysmal working conditions. They are not afraid. They are the kind of people who annoy the waiter and are not afraid that anyone would every dare to piss in their soup. Oh, how we need Tyler Durden and his crew right now. There seems to be no other way. The arrogance of the elites is unbounded. Their support of corporate rights over basic human decency (and this, right before Christmas), is absolutely infinite. The only unions allowed to function in the U.S. are for firemen and police officers. What do the police do when they don't get what they want? They slow down. They stop doing their jobs. Are any of them ever fired? Of course not. They get what they want. Honestly, this is how it should work. But it only works like that for the hyper-militarized enforcement arm of elite America. Everyone else has to shut the fuck up and get in fucking line. I really, really hope these rail unions follow up on their statement to not follow the edicts of the Congress. By what right can Congress order them back to work? They conceded to none of their demands and told them to go back to work. This was Congress's answer:🖕 It should be the workers' answer to Congress as well. Slow down, don't show up, fucking ruin Christmas for everyone. Lose that $2B a day. Congress thinks they've avoided it because they sincerely believe that the world has to do what they say. Prove. Them. Wrong. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4615 2022-11-21T23:03:26+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which features various writers, all critical of the regime, all providing some insight, and some quite gifted writers. [1] A strong argument can be made that, while they no longer physically occupy other countries as "classic" colonies, the economic stranglehold that they maintain with control over exports and massive debts amounts very much to the same thing. It is part and parcel of our acceptance that the balance of power moved from the political realm -- where we are allowed the fig leaf of democracy -- to the economic one, where it globally acknowledged that democracy has no part. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4591 2022-10-30T21:11:11+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, of all places. YouTube is chock-full of reaction... ]]>

, of all places. YouTube is chock-full of reaction video to the original video. Trevor Noah plays a call-in show from England that features a racist caller saying that Sunak can't represent England because he's not white. That's just basic maths, right? [1] I wrote the following about my initial reaction to the video. "I mean it's cute, and he's right, on the level that he approaches it, but Trevor Noah is the king of taking inoffensive positions and grabbing low-hanging fruit. "I wish he had the courage to examine what's really wrong with Sunak rather than lazily defending him from the most racist morons in the country, who are allowed to voice their opinions on the air precisely because it makes everyone else angry and makes those angry people feel superior and, most importantly, keeps them watching through the adverts. "Give it six weeks and let's see whether a born-rich Goldman Sachs alum who made all of his money in 2008 when he benefitted mightily from a financial collapse that ruined millions of lives and who viscerally hates the poor is going to do anything useful. "Maybe his cash giveaways to the rich will be more subtle than Truss's were, and won't immediately destabilize the bond market so drastically that the BOE has to restart quantitative easing AT THE SAME TIME that they're raising interest rates, which is like slamming your foot on both the gas and the brake and expecting to get anywhere. "It's absolute amateur hour over there in Great Britain and I expect Sunak to fit right in. But, sure, let's reemphasize that his skin color is the last thing people should be focused on, either as a negative OR a positive." When I searched for the original video for this article, I learned that Great Britain had quite a problem with American liberals (and I guess Noah is one now?) projecting literally everything through an American lens. E.g. they assume that Great Britain is just as racist as America, when it's actually a good deal more integrated and chill. It's not perfect -- it's not like there are no racists -- but it's not America. God help me, but I'm going to cite an article from The Sun, "'SIMPLY WRONG' Downing Street blasts leftie comedian Trevor Noah’s weird claims that Rishi Sunak experienced racist backlash as new PM" by Natasha Clark "The ex-Chancellor hit back: "Simply wrong. A narrative catered to his audience, at a cost of being completely detached from reality. "“Britain is the most successful multiracial democracy on earth and proud of this historic achievement.” "Internet users accused him of "projecting" his American views about race onto Britain. "Historian, author and podcaster Tom Holland also responded to Noah's claims, writing: "As ever, the inability of American liberals to understand the world beyond the US in anything but American terms is a thing of wonder. ""The likelihood of the right-wing party in the US choosing a Hindu as its leader is, I would agree, effectively zero."" Well, shit, when you're right, you're right. The American so-called liberal-left is so far up its own ass that it doesn't even bother to check in with reality before it starts spouting opinions. It honestly feels like how people discourse on Twitter now dictates how they do everything. This is an awful, awful trend. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4584 2022-10-23T22:23:36+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. Is this true? It seems to be. No-one else gets shit for invasions. [image] It's rich when the U.S. leads the charge to talk about how bad it is when one of its official enemies invades a country. Was there provocation in Russia's... ]]>

. Is this true? It seems to be. No-one else gets shit for invasions. [image] It's rich when the U.S. leads the charge to talk about how bad it is when one of its official enemies invades a country. Was there provocation in Russia's case? Yes, there was. Is that justification for the invasion? No, it is not. There is no justification for any invasion. Was there provocation in Panama, Grenada, or Cuba? In the case of Cuba, yes, there was provocation. In Grenada and Panama, it was just meanness, on the part of the U.S. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4576 2022-10-02T11:32:31+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4566 2022-09-19T22:24:23+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4564 2022-09-19T22:10:39+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4534 2022-07-03T17:08:58+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4528 2022-06-24T18:19:42+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4526 2022-06-22T22:13:36+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. I've read a lot of Žižek. I've heard a lot of interviews with him. This article doesn't "sound" like him at all. There are no contrarian positions, there are no mentions of Hegel or Lacan, no mentions... ]]>

. I've read a lot of Žižek. I've heard a lot of interviews with him. This article doesn't "sound" like him at all. There are no contrarian positions, there are no mentions of Hegel or Lacan, no mentions of psychiatry. He made absolutely no pop-culture references. He told no jokes. He usually talks of being a realist communist -- nothing of the sort here. No mention of Ukraine's absolute war on communism. There's no subtlety at all in this article -- just vaguely hawkish and unsubtle good-guys-vs-bad-guys rhetoric. A "search of earthli.com for Žižek" yields a wealth of interviews and articles I've covered over the last couple of years. Read any excerpt or transcription from a video and see whether the style in the Guardian article matches his prior style at all. The summary can't possibly have been written by him, unless he's recently struck his head quite badly, "The least we owe Ukraine is full support, and to do this we need a stronger Nato". This is woefully less nuanced than he used to be. I suspect a ghost-writer or that he's been taken hostage. Maybe this topic finally drove him around the bend, though; I must remain open to this possibility. I haven't seen any writing of his for months. He interviewed frequently at the beginning of the incursion and was much more nuanced and balanced in his views -- but he hasn't interviewed in quite some time. Now, an article appears "out of the blue", as it were, wherein he espouses an opinion that wouldn't be at all out of place on major U.S. cable-news channels. The whole article is full of realpolitik references that Žižek has historically glossed-over in favor of more interesting philosophical ruminations. This article could have been written by any of dozens of other people -- and I fear that it was. Perhaps something of what Žižek submitted survives a bit -- if he submitted anything at all. I wouldn't put it past the Guardian to publish something in his name. The final, somewhat contrarian paragraph, seems possibly to have been written by Žižek, though, "From the rightist standpoint, Ukraine fights for European values against the non-European authoritarians; from the leftist standpoint, Ukraine fights for global freedom, inclusive of the freedom of Russians themselves. That’s why the heart of every true Russian patriot beats for Ukraine." However, directly after this ending paragraph is a section that explains who Žižek is, followed by a much-longer section that starts with "I write from Ukraine, where I've spent much of the past six months [...]" and is signed "Luke Harding". Did he write the article? Or did he just write the blurb requesting donations? The article "Slavoj Zizek Does His Christopher Hitchens Impression" by Ron Jacobs has a more to-the-point, if less-charitable, title. His analysis is quite astute, but he also seems to be negatively predisposed toward Žižek, whereas I am very positively predisposed to Žižek. Hence, where Jacobs is willing to believe that this article represents Žižek's denouement, I am much more willing to believe that he didn't write the damned thing at all -- or that he wrote it while tied to a chair with a gun to his head. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4518 2022-06-06T08:59:32+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

On Friday, Joe Biden signed an 8.5% increase in Medicare premiums, mostly to pay for an Alzheimer's medication from a private-sector company that didn't even end up being covered. This is maddening, no? Even if you don't believe in conspiracy theories that make you even madder, this is maddening enough. Enough for what? There are so many foolish people who can't believe that people stormed the Capital Building on Jan.6th, 2021. I can't believe it isn't happening every day. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Nah, it was to pay back their generous benefactors in the "defense" industry ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4510 2022-05-29T22:11:47+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "After mass shootings, liberal opponents of gun rights love to say that violence is never the answer. But their messaging on war, violence, militarism, even assassinations, sends a completely different message about their hypocrisy." [image] This one got me thinking... ]]>

writes, "After mass shootings, liberal opponents of gun rights love to say that violence is never the answer. But their messaging on war, violence, militarism, even assassinations, sends a completely different message about their hypocrisy." [image] This one got me thinking that America’s refusal to pass gun-control/background-check measures to stem the violence is one place where we’re not hypocritical! We are the world’s largest arms merchant, flooding one disadvantaged nation after another with high-powered weapons. It only stands to reason that what we do to them, we should do to ourselves. At least with violence at home, we can pretend that we think gun violence is ok — which is why we export it. Does that give us an ethical leg to stand on? Of course not. But, it allows us to pretend that we do. I've seen cries for new gun-control laws. Honestly, though, I think it should be “improve your care for the mentally ill, and also take measures to address the toxic nature of your culture that leads so many people to become mentally ill in the first place.” I know we’re not supposed to blame the shooter, we’re supposed to blame the gun. I don’t blame the shooter. I blame the culture that was the petri dish in which he grew. Did you read any of his manifesto? He was 18! He was so far gone already. It would have been a long road to reintegrating him into anything resembling a normal society. You have to understand that, from the viewpoint of a society in which these things don’t happen all the time, pretty much most of the population seems mentally ill or ill-adjusted or morbidly unhappy and, therefore, strongly susceptible to the kind of toxic stew of hare-brained ideas that this guy had. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4459 2022-04-18T23:21:16+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "Yes, Russia is doing terrible things and I'm glad that that's the one country doing terrible things to whom we're not sending weapons." I'm not arguing that the ruling class in Russia is right to spout their horseshit about "national security" or "de-Nazification". It's moderately more plausible than when the U.S. was talking about Iraq because it's right on their doorstep, but it's still horseshit. What's the difference between Poland and Ukraine? Poland probably has U.S. nukes right now...and has probably had them for a while. Russia went in foolishly believing its own invincibility myth. NATO is slowly starting to return the favor. Believing that Ukraine can be armed out of its inferiority is a fool's errand. As Katie Halper said on "Extended episode: How the Ukraine War Helps US Empire" by Katie Halper & Aaron Maté , "Ukraine cannot arm its way out of this." That won't stop them from trying, though. The starvation of Afghanistan is at least as bad as the invasion of the Ukraine, but no-one cares. Nearly literally no-one. We can round down to zero and lose no real accuracy. The U.S. was not banned from the Olympics for needlessly and senselessly and brutally stepping on the neck of a country it only recently stopped occupying after 20 years. No-one said a fucking word. No exclusion from SWIFT, not sanctions. Literally, nothing happened. America is allowed to occupy countries while Russia is not. Even if Russia's reasons are more credible than those of the U.S. -- it doesn't matter. The U.S. literally stopped occupying Afghanistan less than a year ago and now stands there, telling the world that occupying other countries is super-bad and all of those fucking idiots just nod their heads in approval and adulation and masturbatory glee, hoping that the U.S. will shower them with some exports. WTAF. The U.S. and NATO seem hell-bent on teaching everyone the lesson that no-one fucks with them. They are the absolute rulers of the world and the world chimes in with its full-throated approval, lapping up its propaganda and regurgitating it as it were its own thoughts. They even think that they can teach China a lesson as well as Russia. NATO acts like its indomitable and hopes that the world buys its bullshit. NATO sanctions wherever it likes, it sells weapons wherever it likes, and it thinks that there will never be any blowback. Maybe it won't be another 9-11, but for a country deep in an inflation at the same time that it's in an asset bubble of epic proportions, it seems like it might think about possible repercussions of its financial activity abroad. [Gorbachev => Yeltsin => Putin] The Soviet Union agreed to dissolve itself in 1991. This came after a decade of Glasnost and Perestroika and Gorbachev. The president of Russia after Gorbachev was Boris Yeltsin. He was chosen and heartily approved by the West. The West promised Gorbachev that it would help Russia and the other former SSRs democratize and integrate into the privatized, capitalist world. They also promised that the Cold War was over and that NATO would not encroach militarily closer to the SSRs. None of this happened. Instead, Yeltsin was encouraged to sell the resources of Russia for a song, either to local oligarchs or directly to western companies (Credit Suisse did amazing business in those years, unlike now). The country was divided up and was sold for a song to its former enemies. Democracy was a sham. The West didn't care about that. It cared about getting the vast resources of Russia under its control. It cared about making a tremendous amount of money at the expense of a country making the transition from a form of communism (the Soviet Union had drifted considerably far from actual communism by the 80s) to the all-out, rapacious, casino capitalism that was the only thing that the West could offer. The life expectancy of Russia citizens plunged in a wholly unprecedented way in those years (men's life expectancy went from 67 to 60 in just a few years). The economy was in such a shambles that the first ten years is compared to the Great Depression x 4. The ruble was flat, as it is now. Watching what is happening to Russia right now seems like a replay of that, but possibly even worse. In the early 90s, people pretended to care about Russia's fate while plundering it. The atmosphere now is very much hating Russia and Russians openly while plundering it. That means they can go full-bore on plundering and dismembering and, possibly, taking it over -- and no-one will chastise NATO for it. Instead, they'll be praised for having defeated Sauron. [NATO doesn't care about Ukraine] I know, I know, we're all supposed to be focused laser-like on Ukraine's suffering, but those guys have gotten a lot of help from a lot of very powerful friends. Those friends will abandon Ukraine in a second as soon as it has served its purpose of acting as bait for Russia, but still, right now, they are the beneficiaries of more humanitarian aid and weapons and global goodwill than at any time in their history. Russia, on the other hand, is being disintegrated from all sides, without remorse or restraint. That is how one treats enemies that are absolutely evil. One eradicates them like the cockroaches that they are. Do not delude yourselves into thinking that the American government or NATO cares at all about Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. They are delivering weapons because that serves two purposes: Western arms manufacturers make a lot of money, and Ukrainians will use them to shoot Russians. This is what they call a win-win for the West. The entire purpose of this exercise over the last decade or so has been to prime people to support a "suicide by cop" story about Russia. When the history is written, the victors will triumphantly write how the evil empire Russia brought the holy wrath of the righteous West down upon it with its own hubris. That Russia alone is to blame for what happened to it. Their story will follow the lines of Iraq, which deserved everything it got because of Saddam's intrusion into Kuwait, or Libya, which deserved everything it got because it never got rid of Qaddafi. [Through a Russian Lens] In many other situations -- Hollywood films, for example -- Russia would be portrayed as the spunky underdog, down but not out, valiantly fighting against the overwhelming power of a rabid adversary. Perhaps the film 300 expresses it best: a bunch of bastards fighting off even bigger bastards to the death. The bigger bastards will be left over, as always. The smaller bastards didn't deserve to win either. No-one does. That's why it's a clusterfuck. If you were to look at the events of the last 30 years through a Russian lens, you see: the country was plundered via a puppet government headed by Yeltsin, the world increasingly denying that Russia even had any role in ending the second world war. Obama said that all Russia makes is vodka and Kalshnikovs. The U.S. advanced militarily on its borders through NATO. The dickishness is breathtaking. How do you think history will judge the behavior of the West? Are we sure we have the moral high ground? Or do we just assume that we'll be able to write that history and cover up our moral crimes? Do we care about how cynical that is? Do we care how the future judges us? We obviously do not: we continue factory farming, we do nothing about climate change. Those are even bigger moral issues. The propaganda in America is so strong and people so vastly under-informed that they don’t even see that their renewed and vigorous support for a war that they, even as recently as a month ago, overwhelmingly did not support, is 100% opposed to their own interests. Only the usual suspects will get richer. We really don’t have time for this shit, but sure, let’s run out the clock on climate change. Why not? Again, Russia shouldn’t invaded, but it’s only really a cornered, wounded bear that eventually just starts to think “hey I’ll just take as many of you with me as I can, if it’s going to go down this way.” [What is Ukraine?] Ukraine means "borderlands". Maidan means "square". We think their words are place-names. Ukraine has a Jewish president. There are at least some Nazis in their military. There was a coup. The U.S. helped or caused the coup. There is a civil war. Until recently, Ukraine hated its president for not carrying out his campaign promises. They are now 100% behind their president. The U.S. is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but Ukraine is not like that, we are told. They do not have complexity, like we do. There is no way for people in Ukraine to support conceding to Russia's demands without being traitors. The U.S. is training anti-insurgency troops. This worked terribly in Afghanistan and nearly everywhere else. This is supposedly going amazingly in Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO are not involved militarily. Instead, they are flooding the country with weaponry and "advisors". You see the difference, of course? I'm sure Russia does. The story of the Russians is that they are a bloodthirsty, conquering army. They are inept. They have old equipment. They are threatening nuclear war. We ignore it as if we know they wouldn't dare. We pretend to be terrified, to get support, but act as if we don't believe them. We consider nearly no information about these people and this country when we talk about them in such super-simplistic terms. It's almost like they're incredibly excited to be able to do so. War is exciting! There's money to be made! So fortuitous that they had all of this materiel ready and waiting! Let's rely on Putin to be the sane one: we won't give an inch and will call his nuclear bluff. If he doesn't back down, we all die, but it will be his fault. If he does, then we get all of his stuff and win the game. Once again, we are in the uncomfortable position of hoping that Putin is not a madman and will back down and lose face -- because we know our side is not willing to do that at all. NATO allies are buying and selling weapons at a prodigious rate, they are screaming for war from the hilltops, they are excited about the prospect on nuclear annihilation -- or they are so naive as to believe it will not happen (they know Putin wouldn't do it) or too stupid to understand what it would entail. [Stop Taking Sides] In order to bring about an end to the conflict, it's incumbent on those not directly affected by it to not take sides. As soon as you've taken a side in an armed conflict, you've committed to seeing that armed conflict come to an end with a single victor. If you've taken a side, then you are for the espoused goals of that side and against those of the other. If you don't take a side, you remain in a position to balance the needs and desires of both sides. Unpalatable as it may seem, this is something you have to do when there is a massive disparity of power. In the case of Ukraine/Russia, this is heresy. In a similar situation in Palestine/Israel, those who consider themselves to be good and moral are on the exact opposite "side" in that conflict. Even those who would side with the Palestinian plight acknowledge that one must treat with Israel's desires because of the massive power disparity. That reality is acknowledged. How could it be otherwise? It would be madness to think that you could arm the Palestinians into winning a conflict against Israel. So why do people think arming Ukraine against Russia will work? The best possible outcome in Ukraine is an end to the violence. The Russian Army is highly unlikely to just pick up and leave. Russia is unlikely to just give up, having lost much and gained nothing. That's not to approve of Russia's behavior, but it's reality. So the fighting will continue until one side "loses" or until they can agree to stop fighting or until we all lose (nuclear conflagration). Russia will not lose a military conflict with Ukraine, no matter how much CNN and its cheerleaders wish it to be so. Or at least they won't lose not anytime soon. There will be much more destruction before that happens, let us at least agree on that. With NATO funneling a tremendous amount of weaponry to Ukraine, they will be able to hold out much longer than originally thought. This is not good for Ukraine because it will encourage Russia to intensify its efforts -- which have been relatively tepid so far, as modern asymmetric military conflicts go. They will ramp up, though. At the very least, Russia has pulled back to its original ambitions of taking eastern Ukraine, though that region has already suffered greatly. But where is the compromise? Who will help them agree to stop fighting if everyone has "taken a side"? You need neutral diplomats for that. The world has decided that the moral high ground is to denigrate anyone who would try to bring an end to the violence early, before the Ukrainians have "won". They do this without acknowledging how illusional that victory is. [Living with a Bully] The article "I'll Be Against the Next "Good War" Too" by Freddie deBoer writes, "[...] as a democratic citizen, my primary responsibility is my own country. And (conveniently or inconveniently, I’m not sure) my own country also happens to be the greatest threat to the self-determination of other countries in the world." I agree with this 100%. This was always Chomsky's answer to people questioning his focus on American crimes. "[...] why is the United States allowed to ceaselessly extend its military dominance to more and more parts of the globe, where Russia is not? Why can NATO expand indefinitely, where the United States would never allow other countries to form strategic partnerships with Russia or China? If Canada wanted to develop a strategic partnership with Russia - which is not really fantastical, given their geographic and economic entanglements - the United States would never, ever permit it. So why must Russia permit Ukraine to join NATO?" Because we cheat all of the time. No-one expects the U.S. or NATO to behave honorably or well, so everyone else has to. If no-one annoys the big seething bully in the room, nothing bad happens. Sure, we're all under his thumb, but it's better than war. However, if someone irritates the beast, then the beast does not back down. It flips the table and starts throwing plates. It's everyone else's job to appease and deescalate. Stop whistling, stop filliping, stop wearing squeaky shoes, whatever it takes. Just get out of the way and calm down the beast. Give it what it wants. And we certainly can't have two seething bullies. That's why we support the destruction of anyone who tries to stand up to the bully. We can't envision a world without bullies, so we help the bully we have maintain his peaceful, if repressive reign. At least there's no open war. It's literally the best we can imagine happening, at this point. So that's why everyone wants Russia to back down: because they already know that NATO won't. Russia can be reasoned with, no matter how many imprecations we throw her way. We know that our "side" cannot. It's like living next to a volcano: you can't make it go away. You can't move the village. It demands sacrifice? You throw in a virgin. The volcano demanded Russia. Also, it's not a surprise that people are against Russia. They've been primed for it. Everyone hates Russia and considers them subhuman in the same way that they consider Middle Easterners to be subhuman and incapable of real civilization. The Chinese as well are considered to be an alien race, incapable of western-style empathy. What a joke. The no-fly zone is the same kind of thing: it doesn’t mean no-one gets to fly there. It means NATO threatens open air-war and expects Russia to back down. Then only NATO gets to fly there. It doesn't mean that "no-one" gets to fly there, despite the name. NATO and the U.S. will be flying all over that zone. We are cheering for the devil we know to win, out of fear or to curry favor. My fervent hope is that Russia will be allowed to deescalate when they choose to. I fear people will want to exact 100% damage, press their advantage, reap their pursued reward, and they won’t even notice when their side becomes the overt aggressor. They won't care because destroying evil is justifiable, no matter what happens. I don’t see many people concerned about a solution. They’re prioritizing punishment and revenge. If they can only have one, they’ll take revenge. All without bothering to even think of their own interests. We are a primitive, stupid species, still acting like we were on the Serengeti, picking up a stick and look for something to swat with it at the slightest provocation. This is a useful tool for those whose agenda led to this situation in the first place. Germany just promised to grow its military by leaps and bounds. They’ve been trying to get support for this for years, but when were refused by clear-headed citizens. After five days of doom-scrolling Twitter, Germans are now indoctrinated and softened up enough to approve it with wild enthusiasm and self-righteous jubilance. The right thing to do is for Russia to leave. The right thing to do is for NATO to disband. The right thing to do is for everyone to stop selling weapons to everyone else. For that, we would need diplomacy. And we no longer have diplomats, nor patience for them. War is literally the only answer we know. Sanctions are war on civilians, so, no, that’s not not war. [Burning Bridges] I just saw an article called "Russia’s Money Is Gone" by Matt Levine and I wonder how that impacts the world economy, right? The world has now seen that the financial system is not as safe it purported to be. They are also seeing that the U.S. is not only willing to upset the whole financial system for its purposes, but is actively toying with blocking media sources as well. "My way or the highway" has never been clearer than now. [Living in a Movie] It's so sad to see what's happening with Ukraine/Russia. The bear is goaded and stabbed and then, when it lashes out, we all cheer, as it is killed. We cheer despite its lashing out having taken victims. Toreadors do the same with bulls. But Russians are real people. Ukrainians are real people. That gets lost in the mix. Russia attacked Ukraine, yes. But you have to see that attack in the context of a bigger picture where a multitude of attacks on the Russian state -- none of which would ever be acknowledged as an attack -- led up to it. Now Russia has given the West the excuse it needs to weave its own special history of how this all went down, dumber than a Michael Bay movie. It literally doesn't matter what the context is, because they're going to get Russia. They're destroying the banks and starving the people and their businesses and their livelihoods and everyone cheers! So good! They all deserve it because Ukraine! We are truly monsters without principle. The U.S. doesn't take any responsibility for having created the situation we have now. It doesn't acknowledge that it's been in Russia's role many times before. It just sanctimoniously says tells everyone the way it's going to be and no one says a word. They all parrot their support for its chosen plan. [Four-dimensional Chess after all?] Watching the West's reaction to Putin's invasion makes me wonder something. We hear very much that Putin grossly underestimated the response and that he's made a huge miscalculation and that he's stupidly and blindly failed to foresee this situation. Maybe, maybe. But, maybe he did see this more-or-less coming and anticipated the west undermining all of its own principles to fall all over itself attacking Russia in all the ways that they can. Who's going to trust the western financial system anymore, when it can just be turned off? Who's going to trust western media when they transmit only transparent lies? Things are happening now that will be very difficult to take back. Things have come, as they say, to a head. It's like when the attack on 9-11 pales in comparison to what America did to itself afterwards. Perhaps this will be a bit like that: the ostensible retaliations will turn out to be a series of self-owns that, while inflicting significant short-term damage to Russia, end up harming the western countries themselves much more, in the long term. I've heard many complain about how disappointed they are in the Swiss leadership because it has not shrugged off its neutrality to take a side, as so many Swiss citizens have unquestioningly done. I hope they continue to consider their options carefully and to only act when they have adequate and accurate information. People are welcome to express their opinions and evince their support without any or with unsubstantiated evidence. No-one cares about their Twitter feeds or their stupid LinkedIn posts. But I hold the government to higher standards. Their decisions have long-lasting effects. Update 2022-03-07: Switzerland has broken neutrality. Fucking morons. This was such a dumb thing to give up neutrality for. The rest of the world's jumping off of a bridge! It must be a great idea. Let's do it, too. No downside! YOLO. Why don't you just go ahead and fucking ask to join NATO while you're at it? You're already buying jet fighters from the empire. Why not? It's not like you have any principles left. Maybe we can also kick all Russians out of Switzerland? Would that help? No other indignity visited upon the world was worth doing it, but now, finally, something terrible enough has happened that Switzerland broke neutrality and issued sanctions. The Palestinians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Afghans, Congolese, and so on would like a word. There are no adults in the room anymore. [Angela's Smiling] As for Germany: I think Angela Merkel got an encrypted e-mail from Putin over the weekend that just read “Gern geschehen”. No-one is more relieved than Angela Merkel right now. Watching the Greens approve a tripling of their defense budget, though. I wonder if Angela would have done it. [Arguing with Buchanan] The following was written at the beginning of March. Just before Easter, we heard that Finland and Sweden are seriously considering applying to NATO. "Is Putin Considering Using Nukes on NATO?" by Patrick Buchanan "The world is rallying to Ukraine." “The world”. Except for China and Africa, sure, yeah. But they don’t count in our eyes anyway. Never have. Might that be part of the problem? So, the western media says unequivocally that Ukraine (and, by implication, NATO) is the good guy and Russia is the bad guy. Full stop. No more questions. "Eventual defeat is becoming visible, and Putin probably cannot politically survive such a defeat." So now the story is: Putin planned horribly. Ukraine fought valiantly. Putin won't "win" (we defined for him what it means to win) in the short-term and "faces defeat". He will respond by dropping a nuke in order to avoid defeat (as if dropping a nuke isn't admitting defeat in a very real way). Sure, sure, I guess ... that's how Roland Emmerich would write it. "Finland, and Sweden, it is now being said, should be invited into NATO." You don't "invite" anyone to NATO. They apply. Finland and Sweden have had that option for decades and haven't taken it. Are they likely to be swept up in the propaganda of the moment and change their decades-long military policies because of an invasion in Ukraine? Sure, why not? Maybe I can buy an NFT of it. Nothing makes any sense anymore. It's like people want a nuclear war because it would be cool to post about. [Germany and England are lovin' war] The article "NATO goes to war against Russia" by WSWS Editorial Board writes, "The non-membership of Ukraine in NATO is, and has been for several years, largely a fiction. Already substantially armed and with weapons pouring in, Ukraine is the front line in a war aimed at regime change in Moscow and the complete subordination of Russia to NATO." "German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Sunday that $110 billion in additional funding would be provided for the German military, nearly twice the amount of its annual budget, and that Germany will also be supplying direct military aid to Ukraine." This is literally the reason they did this. This was the end-game for goading Russia into acting. 🍾 in Germany and to whomever supplies them with weapons! No-one is talking about diplomacy (other than rumors that Zelenskyy and Putin are meeting somewhere): the first and only reaction is to fight. First we fight, then we talk. Sure, sure, Putin invaded. But whatever happened to not sinking down to the enemy's level? Oh, right, we need to sell a fuck-ton of weaponry first. "UK Foreign secretary Liz Truss said Sunday that she “absolutely” supported British citizens traveling to Ukraine to serve as combatants." OMG, like ISIS? Or, wait, what? No? Is that not the same thing? You know, citizens traveling to fight in other countries' armies? The virtue-signaling is strong in this one. I think that the world's reaction to Russia is good? Like, it's all virtue-signaling and feels a bit overblown, but it's also good to show what happens when one country invades another. There are consequences. Unfortunately, most of the damage inflicted is, as always, on the people themselves, who had very little do with the invasions plans. Still, consequences. But only for Russia. Literally no other country has paid anywhere close to this much for an invasion or occupation. Not France (Libya, Mali, etc.), Britain (Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan), the U.S. (OMG Everywhere), Israel (West Bank, Gaza, a little bit of Syria), Saudi Arabia (Yemen). No, this feels like a battle in a war. It doesn't feel like the people exacting punishment on Russia are doing it because they really care about countries not invading other countries. They seem to be all roped in to NATO's war on Russia. They would like us to believe it's for moral reasons, but the same people couldn't care less when it's not Russia doing the invading, so that clearly can't be it. It also feels a bit like they all couldn't care less if they burn Russia to the ground. Elites everywhere are rejoicing as the online-idiot clown-parade does its work for them. Will there be a war when a cornered rat/bear doesn't see a better way out? Who knows? Who cares? Consequences are for others! Diplomacy is for pussies! Let's all get down on Putin's level, in the mud. [Banning to the Rescue!] The article "YouTube blocks RT and Sputnik as Russia tells media not to say “invasion”" by Jon Brodkin writes, "Google said today that YouTube is blocking RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik throughout Europe. "Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we're blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately," Google Europe announced on Twitter. "It'll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action."" Yes, yes, yes, dogpile! Brigade! All in! We don't want to listen to a word that Sauron and his minions have to say! Eliminate them all! BLOODLUST! I f#*@ing love this so hard. Google is censoring entire channels as punishment for those channels censoring words. If only we could figure out how to generate electricity from irony and hypocrisy, humanity would be saved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now I just saw the headline that "Apple halts all device sales in Russia in response to invasion of Ukraine" by Andrew Cunningham , which will be taken to mean that Apple is taking a principled stance. It is doing no such thing. It is taking sides in a war. If it were taking a principled stance, then it would halt device sales in all countries that have encroached on other territory, like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Unites States, for starters. But they're not doing that. They're brigading and virtue-signaling. They made a calculation that it would be better for business to do this at this moment, in this climate than not to do it. They don't really want to stop selling phones to Russians. It's just that they know that the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) in the West is very likely to generate more sales than Russia in response to this move. Microsoft and Google have responded in the same way. "Microsoft has removed RT and Sputnik’s apps from the Windows Store and limited their presence on its Bing search engine, while YouTube has blocked RT and Sputnik content in Europe and demonetized their content elsewhere." Canceling an entire country. Amazing times we live in. I'm sure it beats negotiating, talking to them, or any other form of diplomacy. Russians can't be reasoned with. They're like the bugs in Starship Troopers: they can only be eradicated. Perhaps we won't wipe them from the face of the Earth, but we can wipe them from people's minds. Next up: Wikipedia removes their entry on Russia. From "Sanctions produce chaos in Russian financial system" by Nick Beams "Yesterday, the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was even more explicit. He said the West was using sanctions to wage “total economic and financial war against Russia, Putin and his government. We will provoke the collapse of the Russian economy.”" Culture blocked. Finances blocked. Exports blocked. Burn that fucking country to the ground. Do NOT talk to them. Do NOT ask questions. They -- and only they -- deserve it! Direct your anger eastward, toward Emmanuel Goldstein. Why doesn't the West just promise Russia what it wants and then renege, like it always does? It's not like Russia doesn't know they're going to do exactly that anyway. It's not like there's a downside for reneging on a deal with a known ultimate evil like Russia, is there? Let's be serious here: Russia is to NATO as the new Native Americans were to the U.S.: an unqualified evil entity that lived on resources that were rightfully the U.S.'s (or NATOs, in the recent case) and that you could endlessly fuck over and scapegoat and gaslight until they just fucking died already. All of them. Genocide is too good for that kind of evil, no? How is this not war yet? How has NATO maintained plausible deniability that they're not at war with Russia? Their actions will lead to more suffering and isolation for the Russian people than an outright attack would engender. [Russian Asset Values] Russian assets are obviously not worth nothing all of sudden. This price move has as little to do with fundamentals as the soaring value of massively overvalued startups and IPOs. What's interesting is that traders that want to virtue-signal and get out of Russian securities right now will be forced to do so at pennies on the dollar because they can't trade on the Moscow exchange, where the companies would presumably be trading higher. What does it mean for these companies to be at pennies now instead of hundreds of dollars? Who knows? Who even knows why prices are where they are anymore? Is it because people genuinely believe that these companies will be worth nothing in the future, that Russia is doomed, and that all of its companies will be destroyed and none allowed to continue extracting the natural resources on which their value is based? Maybe? Do people believe that they will all be abolished and that new western companies will be gifted those resources instead? As in old Iran? Maybe? Or is this a reverse meme-stock craze where certain stocks are flattened instead of raised up, but for totally stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the value of the companies? That's a bingo. This might very well end up cutting off the nose to spite the face. Good. Break everything. At this point, I hope these fools tear their financial house down on top of themselves. [What Principles?] France is only just pulling out of Mali. What the hell where they doing there? No-one knows and no one cares. Probably humanitarian stuff. It’s easy to be 100% for Ukraine and against Russia when you’re utterly ignorant of world affairs. It’s not a principle if you apply it only to one country, but not any of the others. That's just punishing an enemy and has nothing to do with principle. Oil at 110$ per barrel and russia out of the LNG market. Looks like we saved fracking, everybody! This is discrimination. Replace the word Russians with any other demonym or epithet (e.g. Jews) and you’d be shocked at the NYT home page. A country should be punished for invading another country. Immediate and merciless punishment is the easy way out, for sure, especially against the official enemy of the civilized world. You get to feel good about your intrinsic moral goodness without any hard thinking or reading. No-one can fault you for siding against the country dropping the bombs. But the world stage is more complicated than a Michael Bay movie, despite most people's complete lack of desire to grapple with that complexity, to say nothing of their lack of mental acuity for and practice in doing so. This current punishment of Russia is wildly out of proportion with anything that's ever been done before. It's like curb-stomping someone for jay-walking. How was Russia to know that the blowback would be so vicious when literally no other country has been punished for doing the same thing since ... (checks notes) ... Iraq for invading Kuwait. That the world is gleefully dogpiling Russia now shows two things: 1. Everyone hates Russians. They're just sneaky, dirty, drunken people who deserve whatever punishment they get. Everyone seems to be on the same page here. They do not see the irony that most of them spent the last couple of years fighting for BLM in the streets and are now cheering as one country is singled out as the lone criminal element on the planet. 2. We could have done this all along, to any country, had we wanted to. It was always within the world's power to yank on the leash of any country that got wildly out of line. But we only chose to do it against Russia. Why? Because Russia is fucking weak, man. Because Russia has to be taught a lesson for standing up for itself and its stupid "security". Fuck them. I am being wildly sarcastic above. I am saddened to watch the world be capable of such blatant and wild hypocrisy while praising themselves in the mirror for being so awesome and upstanding. They're breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for being the heroes in the simplistic story that they believe is the actual story. They're mostly too dumb and uninterested and ignorant to even try to learn what the actual context is. [Setting an example] The over-the-top gusto with which Russia is being economically sanctioned sets a very interesting precedent, of course. If they can do it once, they can do it again. Maybe this time, you agree with the reason. Maybe next time you won't . The point is, they've shown that they can freeze anyone's money on a whim and are willing to do it. Maybe the final effect of Russia's invasion will have been to give the world a chance to show what self-interested, vicious hypocrites the powers-that-be are, in stark relief. Maybe Russia’s intent was to get the West to kill itself, as it nearly did after 9-11. This is an opportunity to behave badly while virtue-signaling. The West has taken it with gusto. It’s unclear who’s going to end up costing the world the most. Climate change also wonders why no-one’s resisting it anymore. Capitalism is eating itself. Good. As for any nations that think "this couldn't happen to us, we're good guys. We're in NATO," ... Ohmigod hahahaha. Sure, right. What are the odds of the U.S. punishing anyone mercurially? Where have you been? The U.S. is a giant dick. A knob. A bell-end without peer. It has never not fucked over a "partner" because it doesn't consider anyone else to be an equal. Putin puts it this way, "The U.S. allows only vassal nations." As far as Russians being excluded from the financial system, not because of any explicit bans, but because the cost of doing business with them is not worth the trouble: This is the same thing that’s happening with American/Swiss dual citizens living in Switzerland. Banks in Switzerland don’t want anything to do with people like that and disallow investments. [Zelenskyy is Dangerous] Zelenskyy is a manipulative idiot who doesn't give a shit what happens to the rest of the world, as long as Ukraine is defended. He was elected to bring peace and brought NATO weapons in instead. Maybe Russia predicted that this would happen and they would bring a conflagration down onto themselves. Who knows? Zelenskyy and the US seem to be goading each other into making this war much, much bigger. JFC. These allies seem made for each other. He's right about the blood being partly on NATO's hands. He probably sees how badly his country has been fucked by NATO, but he should be negotiating with Russia, not pleading for the U.S. to escalate even further. An escalation will lose even more lives. I wrote the above several weeks ago; it's only gotten worse since then [Loyalty Oaths] And now we have supposedly pacifist, progressive voices lending their full-throated support to censorship, loyalty oaths, and no-fly zones. Bin ich im falschen Film? Some people's employment is now contingent on a loyalty oath. Very modern, Germany, very modern. I hear loyalty oaths are huge in authoritarian governments: let's do those. Russia invades Ukraine. Europe responds by dismantling its civil society. Switzerland responds by joining the EU in all sanctions, present and future. There are no adults in the room. And this has happened all so quickly. We are two weeks into a rapidly developing situation with a tremendous amount of propaganda, lies, scams, and so on, but everyone should have formed the same simplistic opinion and joined ranks to fight the bugs in Starship Troopers. There is no room for thought, for even the slightest difference in opinion. Online, at least. In private, I've had no small amount of success with providing context to friends and colleagues. Six weeks later, and the information situation has only gotten worse. Loyalty is demanded; information is censored. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Credit where credit is due. Hitler references don't get more oblique than that. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4487 2022-04-18T13:34:48+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4486 2022-04-18T13:19:37+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. The next interview is also by Lee Camp, this time with Adam McKay, the director of "Don't Look Up". There is literally no non-ideological reason (e.g. RT BAD) why this video is banned. [media] You can watch the video above at "Adam McKay!" by Lee Camp / Redacted Tonight . Also, once you no longer have a direct link to the video, you will never find it again. I was going to link to one of Chris Hedges's last On Contact shows on YouTube, which has likewise disappeared, but I'd already removed the link from my "Watch Later" list. Now, even if I enter the title directly into YouTube's search, it doesn't appear. It's also not in my "Watch History". That's moving a bit beyond "soft" censorship, but perhaps I'm being too sensitive. I'm sure there are those who could defend this behavior as being materially different from what China does, but I'm skeptical I'd be willing to entertain such an argument. At any rate, you can watch Hedges's interview with John Pilger at "On Contact: Assange can appeal UK Supreme Court" by Chris Hedges . Yes, you saw that correctly: now you can only watch Chris Hedges interview on RT -- and most people reading this article won't be able to watch videos there, either, because their countries are blocking the Russia Today domain name entirely. That's all in the name of freedom, of course. Wave that flag. We have to protect people's brains from getting the wrong ideas. This is not to say that RT isn't spreading propaganda -- it most certainly is -- but that people should be able to decide for themselves. Banning RT doesn't stop propaganda; it simply amplifies the remaining propaganda that hasn't been blocked. For example, you can still watch the full compendium of content provided by CNN. You can inhale every breathless and uncritical recitation of every word that comes out of Zelenskyy's mouth as if it were the unalloyed truth, as if to ask for evidence were an affront to all that is good and holy on Earth. But at least RT is gone. [Portable and Rumble] "Portable.TV" is good at streaming videos but, like another recent video platform, "Rumble" , isn't quite as useful a research tool as YouTube. In particular, neither Portable nor Rumble allows playlists (e.g. "watch later"). You also don't have auto-captions or scrubbing with the arrow keys. The user experience on YouTube has become quite good for research. More's the pity that they're so aggressively censoring content. [2] Portable has particularly terrible navigation and direct-linking to videos (everything is done with just JavaScript). It's quite frustrating. The only way I've found to get a direct link is to "share" the video via email and then copy the link from the generated mail. Portable does not support embedding and Rumble supports it only through an iframe or direct JavaScript (instead of allowing the video element, like YouTube does). No-one has the right to host videos on YouTube, but we should be concerned nonetheless when the primary means of hosting videos online -- nearly the only, near-monopolistic place -- wields such strong editorial control. Especially when it's done to such starkly political purpose. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I only see "The video is not available in your country" from Switzerland or when I use the VPN to spoof Germany, Russia, or the United States. Perhaps you're in a country where it's still available, but I suspect that it's been eradicated everywhere. [1] I've recently discovered that my company's internal network works with YouTube to block certain videos, presumably those that might contain -- GASP! 😱 -- curse words. For example, this video does not appear in the "Restricted Mode" enforced on that network, [media]. Or maybe it's because the poster shows a woman smoking a joint? It's an hour and twenty minutes of trip-hop audio. The poster doesn't change. This is not offensive by nearly any sane measure. In restricted mode, the video-blocking is even more aggressive: [image] The screenshot above was taken from my private desktop at home, with "restricted mode" enabled manually. This is somewhat different behavior than I observed when YouTube was working hand-in-hand with the corporate network. I went back to the corporate notebook but now have access to those music streams, even with "ZScaler" enabled. Whereas before I was unable to toggle the "restricted mode" and have it "stick", now I'm able to do so. I'm also not in the office, so maybe there's something different between the office network and the "extended office network" enabled by ZScaler. I'm not quite sure what's going on, but now I'm loath to manually enable restricted mode on my work laptop, lest I lose access to my now-available music playlist. 🤷‍♀️ ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4476 2022-03-23T23:07:35+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4474 2022-03-18T23:49:32+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, some backbone and real talk from Mick Wallace of Ireland, in the European Parliament. The video is 62s; transcript is below. [image] "The current crisis in Ukraine has been used by the Irish media class and a handful of politicians to make the case that Ireland" ... ]]>

, some backbone and real talk from Mick Wallace of Ireland, in the European Parliament. The video is 62s; transcript is below. [image] "The current crisis in Ukraine has been used by the Irish media class and a handful of politicians to make the case that Ireland should relinquish the neutrality enshrined in our Constitution and even commit to joining NATO. "Naturally, these jingoistic sentiments are from those too old to enlist, their children and grand-children too well-off to endure the bad pay and conditions our defense forces have to put up with. "Ireland's tradition of neutrality is born out of an unwillingness to kill and be killed in imperialist wars, that have nothing to do with our people and everything to do with the interests of the elites, profiting from arms, fossil fuels and finance industries, that just happen to own much of the media calling for military escalation today. "Ireland is one of the few EU countries that has not been directly involved in NATO's war crimes and atrocities, and we'd do well to continue that. And we should use the credibility and goodwill that comes with neutrality, to facilitate diplomacy, de-escalation, and peace." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4473 2022-03-13T22:13:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4469 2022-03-11T23:34:47+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4461 2022-03-07T23:34:23+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

and took some notes. As these things go, it wasn't the stupidest State of the Union I've heard, but it was pretty stupid. "Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their" ... ]]>

and took some notes. As these things go, it wasn't the stupidest State of the Union I've heard, but it was pretty stupid. "Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson: When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos." This is 100% true. It was also delivered without irony or shame. "Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine was premeditated and totally unprovoked. "He rejected repeated, repeated efforts at diplomacy." This is a lie. "We countered Russia’s lies with the truth." This is a lie. "We are coming for your ill-begotten gains." The phrase is "ill-gotten". Your gen-y speechwriters are showing. "But let me be clear: Our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine." I hope that this is not a lie. "[...] we’ve mobilized American ground forces, air squadrons, ship deployments to protect NATO countries, including Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia." Well, you have to do that, don't you? And if those countries provoke Russia into attack with their arms shipments? Then U.S. forces will be engaged with Russian forces, ... but not in Ukraine. You could have also said, "we are waging a proxy war against Russia and hope to do so indefinitely, selling weapons to our allies, who will die using them to kill Russians, who we wish an unhappy quagmire in Ukraine that we honestly hope stays in the current limbo with no resolution for a very long time, long enough for us to sell all of our LNG and weapons to Europe while Russia starves." "America will lead that effort, releasing 30 million barrels from our own Strategic Petroleum Reserve." A strange coincidence, that. The U.S. manages to kill off a major competitor by provoking a war and then cleans up in its former markets. Ruthless. "When the history of this era is written, Putin’s war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger. "While it shouldn’t have taken something so terrible for people around the world to see what’s at stake, now everyone sees it clearly." This is not a lie. This is 100% what will happen. People will "see it clearly" because it will have been made clear through indoctrination. 1/4 of the speech was Ukraine and Russia. What would he have talked about without the Russian invasion? "And as my dad used to say, it gave the people just a little breathing room." What? Your Dad was in the American Civil War, Joe. And "giving people breathing room" is not an expression that you have to credit to anyone. "But that trickle-down theory led to a weaker economic growth, lower wages, bigger deficits and a widening gap between those at the top and everyone else in nearly a century." An interesting nugget to throw in there. Are you just mentioning the policy? What's the point of mentioning it? Did he mean to detract from a policy that his administration clearly continues to support in almost all policy? "The federal government spends about $600 billion a year to keep this country safe and secure." This was literally a non sequitur in a discussion of infrastructure. The number is far too low. This is basically a lie. Next, he talks about buying American a lot. Then he talks about insulin prices being too high. Then he talks about taxing billionaires. "The point is even they understand they should pay just the fair share. Last year, 55 of the Fortune 500 companies earned $40 billion in profit and paid zero in federal taxes. Look, it’s not fair. That’s why I proposed a 15 percent minimum tax rate for corporations." Sure, sure. But I think you're just making noises with your mouth. You will almost certainly not follow this up with any policy. "By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half of what it was before I took office. "The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion in a single year." JFC. C'mon, man. That's like the home run of taking credit for shit that you didn't do. The deficit was gargantuan in 2020 because of COVID policies that helped the nation get through it. Taking credit for a deficit reduction in the following year is super-dishonest. "Capitalism without competition is exploitation — it drives up profits." Yeah, no shit. See you next year, when you might mention it again. "Tonight, I’m announcing a crackdown on those companies overcharging American businesses and consumers. "And as Wall Street firms take over more nursing homes, quality in those homes has gone down and costs have gone up. "That ends on my watch." Excellent ideas. See you next year, when you might mention it again. "Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend the Child Tax Credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty." Excellent ideas. See you next year, when you might mention it again. On to COVID. "And we’re launching the “test to treat” initiative so people can get tested at a pharmacy, and if they prove positive, receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost." That actually sounds pretty good. "Let’s use this moment to reset. So stop looking at Covid as a partisan dividing line. See it for what it is: a God-awful disease. "Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies, and start seeing each other for who we are: fellow Americans." Excellent advice. I hope that this is the message people take away from this speech. OMG obviously, they won't, because even if they wanted to, the media will belay that command. Also, Jen Psaki (the real president) will belay that command. "We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect their communities." So long, progressives! Good ol' police-loving Joe is back. Now he's talking about the Supreme Court. Now he's talking about refugees and immigrants. Women, abortion rights. LBGTQ+. Opioid epidemic. Mental health in children. Veterans. "I don’t know for sure if the burn pit that he lived near, that his hooch was near, in Iraq and earlier than that in Kosovo is the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops. "But I’m committed to find out everything we can." That is a helluva sentence to hear in a State of the Union. "hooch"? That sentence is a grammatical train-wreck. End cancer. "My fellow Americans, tonight, we have gathered in this sacred space — the citadel of democracy." JFC. Lay it on a little thicker. "We built the strongest, freest and most prosperous nation the world has ever known. "Now is the hour. "Our moment of responsibility. "Our test of resolve and conscience, of history itself. "It is in this moment that our character of this generation is formed. Our purpose is found. Our future is forged." Oh, OK. I guess you did lay it on thicker. Again, with that classic Biden attention to grammar. These are just words you're making with your mouth. "God bless you all, and may God protect our troops. Thank you. Go get ’em." Whoops. Saying the quiet part out loud. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4457 2022-02-26T12:11:43+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. After publication, I read "Socialists Fight for a Future Without War" by Ronan Burtenshaw , which seems to hit many of the same points I made above, while being simultaneously more eloquent and... ]]>

. After publication, I read "Socialists Fight for a Future Without War" by Ronan Burtenshaw , which seems to hit many of the same points I made above, while being simultaneously more eloquent and informative. "We hear very little today about Britain’s role in the NATO-led war in Libya in 2011, which demolished that state, left its people in the hands of warlords, and pushed thousands to flee and drown in the Mediterranean. Nor do we hear about Britain’s complicity in the ongoing war in Yemen, conducted by our ally Saudi Arabia with our weapons, £17.6 billion of which have been provided by BAE systems to the Saudis since 2015. The United Nations estimates that 377,000 Yemenis have died in that conflict. "These lives are not any less or any more important than the lives of Ukrainians. We should fight to end all of these wars, and all of the wars yet to come." The U.S. and other NATO nations similarly choose to whom they wish to sell weapons and whom they choose to condemn for using them. People very cynically choose whom to care about and whom to ignore. I've seen Swiss people castigating themselves publicly for not having supported Ukrainians sooner, but I've never seen anyone do so for Yemenis or Libyans (or any of myriad other beleaguered peoples). People generally support the official good guys against the official bad guys. When the discomfort from peer pressure exceeds the discomfort of having to actual care about other people, they relieve that pressure by pretending to believe in a cause for a little while. People get there a lot faster if someone can explain to them how it might affect them directly [1]. Attacking Ukraine is an attack on Europe, which is infinitely worse than killing brown people in the sand somewhere that no-one would ever want to visit on vacation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Or indirectly, but not by too many hops or any too-complex ones. People generally throw their allegiance behind whatever will prop up the supply chain that keeps their lives going in relative luxury. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4456 2022-02-26T10:33:18+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

(which I read after publication of this article, so this is an update). "And so, what was all this for? Why were the Ukrainians walked up a garden path only to be abandoned to their fate? Did anyone really believe that Russia would permit American missiles to be placed on its border? They didn’t, for the same reason we all know that the United States would never permit China to place its missiles in Guadalajara. In fact, we don’t need the hypothetical: when the Soviet Union tried it in Cuba, we got the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war." [1] Because we are, for the most part, morons. We are very simple machines that want to think that we are unwaveringly on the moral high ground. So, we pick a good guy and we stick with that entity, no matter what else we learn. If it gets too uncomfortable, we just stop learning rather than put any effort into changing our minds. We would rather be ignorant and happy than informed and conflicted. The amount of other people's suffering engendered by our support of their oppressors doesn't matter at all. The goal is to reduce our own suffering, even if it's only the inconvenience of having to live with uncertainty. That others might suffer much more can be temporarily of interest, but we'd rather not lose sleep over it. [1] "What's actually going on" need not have anything to do with what aligned parties and their propaganda teams want you to believe, even though they have no evidence whatsoever. [1] After publication, I read "Socialists Fight for a Future Without War" by Ronan Burtenshaw , which seems to hit many of the same points I made above, while being simultaneously more eloquent and informative. "We hear very little today about Britain’s role in the NATO-led war in Libya in 2011, which demolished that state, left its people in the hands of warlords, and pushed thousands to flee and drown in the Mediterranean. Nor do we hear about Britain’s complicity in the ongoing war in Yemen, conducted by our ally Saudi Arabia with our weapons, £17.6 billion of which have been provided by BAE systems to the Saudis since 2015. The United Nations estimates that 377,000 Yemenis have died in that conflict. "These lives are not any less or any more important than the lives of Ukrainians. We should fight to end all of these wars, and all of the wars yet to come." The U.S. and other NATO nations similarly choose to whom they wish to sell weapons and whom they choose to condemn for using them. People very cynically choose whom to care about and whom to ignore. I've seen Swiss people castigating themselves publicly for not having supported Ukrainians sooner, but I've never seen anyone do so for Yemenis or Libyans (or any of myriad other beleaguered peoples). People generally support the official good guys against the official bad guys. When the discomfort from peer pressure exceeds the discomfort of having to actual care about other people, they relieve that pressure by pretending to believe in a cause for a little while. People get there a lot faster if someone can explain to them how it might affect them directly [11]. Attacking Ukraine is an attack on Europe, which is infinitely worse than killing brown people in the sand somewhere that no-one would ever want to visit on vacation. [1] Or indirectly, but not by too many hops or any too-complex ones. People generally throw their allegiance behind whatever will prop up the supply chain that keeps their lives going in relative luxury. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4454 2022-02-25T08:49:03+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes "News about the Ukraine crisis has in large part degenerated into propaganda. It is a confrontation between good and evil, between the simple hobbit-folk of the Shire against the dark lord of Mordor plotting to end their freedom and rule the world. Any suggestion the other side might have real grievances is ignored. "These grievances may be exaggerated and the Russian response to them mistaken or wrong, but they need to be taken seriously if the crisis is ever to end." Almost no-one acknowledges (A) that it was ongoing and that (B) sanctions are an act of war more damaging to the civilian population than even rockets. The new sanctions are even worse, but just another attack by the West on Russia. Many don't seem to consider starving a country's economy to death as even an attack -- much less an act of war -- but those people are sanctimonious hypocrites with very pliable morals. Russia moving into the east of Ukraine can hardly be called unprovoked with a straight face, but they do it anyway, because of the overwhelming cloud of contextual ignorance that befuddles the large majority of most western populations. This ignorance has largely been sowed by the same media organizations. We eat up our own propaganda like popcorn and barely even notice it exists. Austerity works. Crypto is good. The markets are fair and free. Everything is Russia's fault, unless it's China's. Our wars are "humanitarian interventions" and based on RTP (Right To Protect) whereas Russia's are contraventions of the Geneva Convention and the greatest incursion on European soil since WWII. Sure, sure, OK. What I'm saying is: think for yourselves. Wait and see. Patience is a virtue. The firehose of information coming at you right now is by definition unsubstantiated. You shouldn't be basing any opinions or making any decisions based on it. It has all too often become a gossamer of lies and half-truths in the past. It is all too likely that you are being invited to cheer for a team that doesn't end up being the good guy. The U.S. and NATO do not have a good reputation, in that regard. Try to learn about the history of the region and the likely motives and incentives of the parties involved. Ukraine wants the U.S. and NATO to commit to its defense. Russia wants to keep NATO rockets off of its doorstep. Russia sees the opportunity to push its agenda through the Donbass region. Most of the people there are ethnically Russian (and many are Russian citizens), but that may just be a good excuse. The U.S. and NATO kicked this whole thing off eight years ago by investing $5B in the putsch in Ukraine, to install a more amenable government. These people play the long game. They don't really care what happens in between. Now, they've been banging the war drums for over half a year (at least) and have managed to push Putin into action. None of this would have happened without the west and the western media saying it would happen for a long time. They are nearly jubilant that they made it come true. They do not care about anyone in Ukraine. They do not care about the effects on the rest of Europe. Champagne corks are popping in Bethesda. As the article "Vicious cycles" by Yasha Levine writes, "The point isn’t for Ukraine to win the war. The point is to make Russia bleed — economically and militarily. And it doesn’t matter how many people die or suffer or how much of Ukraine and its economy is laid to waste in the process." They're also popping at the White House as Russia has provided a nearly perfectly timed distraction to the 2,000 COVID deaths per day and the ever-increasing inflation in the U.S. After an uncomfortable year with the focus turned on domestic issues, the Democrats have the war they think they need to get through the mid-terms. None of them care about Ukraine or Russia. They are happy to bleed them all in exchange for political advantage. As the article "It’s the Inflation, Stupid" by Ted Rall writes, "It is understandable for the president to focus on a major foreign-policy crisis. But obsessing over the fate of a country that is not a traditional ally, has little history of shared values with the United States and falls under the sphere of influence of another superpower is politically dangerous, particularly when it comes at the expense of economic issues close to home." The markets in the U.S. are up, of course. The markets love a good war. The markets in Russia have dropped significantly (see "Putin Thought of Everything – Except a Crash of 45 Percent on the Moscow Stock Exchange and Big Russian Companies Losing Half their Market Value" by Pam Martens ). The media are highly unreliable for short- and even medium-term news. They have lied to you in the past for their own short-term gain and will likely do so again. If you have the luxury of not being directly affected by whatever is going on, then you should consider reserving your decision until you know more -- or until what you think you know has been true for longer than 24 hours. After I wrote the text above, I received a subscriber email pointing to the article "" by Glenn Greenwald that starts with the following text. "The outbreak of war between two or more nations is obviously one of the worst events that can happen for humanity, if not clearly the single worst. For that reason, when it happens, emotions are extremely high; nationalism and tribalism surge; the range of permissible debate radically shrinks; the political and media class unite in lockstep messaging across the political spectrum; and anyone even slightly off-key or questioning of that script is hunted down and held up as a heretic and traitor [...]" That's quite elegantly put. The rest of the article is suprisingly short, includes a link to an excellent Chomsky video and also a discussion on Rumble (which I haven't listened to). I don't expect any significant number of people or organizations to follow this guidance. [Notes] After I wrote the above, I actually did my own research. It was a couple of hours' worth of reading, so far. I've included salient and relevant citations below, with almost no additional notes. The article "Stop Pretending the Left Is on Putin’s Side" by David Broder "To observe that those who destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Yugoslavia have no standing to condemn him is not an exercise in “both-sidesism.” The likes of Blair, Clinton, Trump, and Putin have often been on one same side, through material collaboration in the War on Terror and in their common undermining of the international law which they all claim to uphold. Time and again, Washington has allied with despots, come to see them as unreliable, then launched military offensives against them that succeeded only in spreading chaos. The Left has every duty to remember these disasters — and prevent them from being repeated in the present." "[...] we can at least rely on certain core principles: an unrelenting rejection of the use of military force; a refusal to justify one set of generals by citing the crimes of another; and, above all, a defense of our own right to speak without fear or accusation of disloyalty." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Understanding Putin’s narrative about Ukraine is the master key to this crisis" by Jonathan Steele "It is crucially important for those who might seek to end or ameliorate this crisis to first understand his mindset. What happened this week is that Putin lost his patience, and his temper. He is furious with the Ukraine government. He feels it repeatedly rejected the Minsk agreement, which would give the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk substantial autonomy. He is angry with France and Germany, the co-signatories, and the United States, for not pressing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to implement them. He is equally angry with the Americans for not taking on board Russia’s security concerns about Nato’s expansion and the deployment of offensive missiles close to Russia’s borders." "Nato’s stance over membership for Ukraine was what sparked Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014. Putin feared the port of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, would soon belong to the Americans. The western narrative sees Crimea as the first use of force to change territorial borders in Europe since the second world war. Putin sees this as selective amnesia, forgetting that Nato bombed Serbia in 1999 to detach Kosovo and make it an independent state." "Convinced that Nato will never reject Ukraine’s membership, Putin has now taken his own steps to block it. By invading Donetsk and Luhansk, he has created a “frozen conflict”, knowing the alliance cannot admit countries that don’t control all their borders." I'm not convinced by this argument. Ukraine doesn't fulfill many of the conditions for NATO membership. It's unclear why Russia would feel the need to add another one. On the other hand, Steele continues, "Frozen conflicts already cripple Georgia and Moldova, which are also split by pro-Russian statelets. Now Ukraine joins the list. There is speculation about what will happen next but from his standpoint, it is not actually necessary to send troops further into the country. He has already taken what he needs." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What Accounts for Putin’s Assertiveness on Ukraine?" by Ray McGovern "That nothing will happen on either Ukraine or Taiwan without coordination between Beijing and Moscow seems to be key to understanding why Putin is feeling his oats. Yesterday, Chas further reminded me that "China agrees with Russia that the US global sphere of influence needs rollback. It does not agree that Ukraine should be invaded, occupied, or annexed. Ironically, China is this century’s citadel of Westphalianism." "Is this not another reason why Putin would not invade Ukraine? In my view, if Putin did decide to do such a stupid thing, it is a given that he would check with Xi first, and that Xi would respond with a loud NYET in Chinese." "What about Putin’s recognition yesterday of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and sending in Russian troops? I’ll bet Putin gave Xi advance notice of Moscow’s decision, but I do not think the Russian president sought Xi’s approval, much less permission. How the Chinese will react is anyone’s guess." Citing from the same article, here are some additional remarks from Amb. Jack Matlock (US ambassador to the USSR from 1987-1991): "I could not and cannot imagine that Putin would be so stupid as to invade Ukraine, bomb its cities, etc., though obviously Russia has the capability, even without any exercises on the border. The US also has the capability of attacking every country in the world without warning, so one must distinguish between capability and intent. "[...] "Zelensky’s steadfast refusal to implement Minsk II gives Putin a dandy excuse to say that this left him no alternative to recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk entities. He is a judo master, whatever else one might say." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Russia sends troops into East Ukraine, Biden announces sanctions" by Clara Weiss writes, "Since Thursday, civilian infrastructure across Donetsk, including kindergartens and schools, has been subject to shelling. According to the separatists in Donetsk, one civilian was killed in Monday’s shelling by the Ukrainian military. "On Friday, separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk initiated the mass evacuation of the civilian population to Russia, excluding men aged 18 to 55. So far, at least 49,000 people have reportedly arrived in Russia, most of them in the Rostov region. Kilometer-long lines of cars waiting to cross the border have been reported since Friday. "Up to 700,000 women, children and elderly people may be evacuated from Donetsk alone. With most of these people already completely impoverished before they were forced to flee, they are now faced with the loss of virtually all of their belongings and a catastrophic social and public health situation in Russia, where over 150,000 new COVID-cases are being reported every single day." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Maps: Russia and Ukraine Edge Closer to War" has a pretty good (i.e. factual) overview of the situation in East Ukraine. "The separatist enclaves claim all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as their territory, but they control only about one-third of the area. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Putin would recognize the enclaves in their de facto borders or would seek to expand them by force." [image] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Beware the Sanctions Trap Over Russia" by Daniel Larison writes, "It remains to be seen whether the Russian government will take any action beyond moving troops into the separatist-controlled areas, and any decision on further punitive measures should hinge on the extent of Russian military action. Russia’s recognition of the separatist republics is illegal, and so is its military presence on Ukrainian territory, but the US and its allies should be wary of launching a costly economic war in response." "It is hard to see how impoverishing the Russian people and potentially throwing our own economies into recession make anyone more secure. Just because broad sanctions are the default US response to many international problems does not make them the right response here." "The other danger that comes from broad sanctions is that they tend to become permanent. Whether through inertia or by design, US sanctions are almost never lifted once they are imposed, and they often become an insuperable barrier to repairing damaged relations with a targeted country." Obviously, this advice will have fallen on deaf ears. Obviously, the U.S. will stumble into the most ham-handed possible response that closes the most diplomatic doors. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "EU countries impose sanctions on Russia over Ukraine crisis" by Johannes Stern, Alex Lantier "The power that intervened in Ukraine in 2014 was not primarily Russia, however, but Washington and Berlin. When Le Monde denounces the “2014 intervention,” it attacks Russian aid to forces in Donetsk and Luhansk, but falsely treats the Kiev regime as an entirely legal entity by simply passing over in silence the fact that it was installed through an illegitimate, far-right coup." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Who in the Lord’s name gave the US the right? A question for Mr. Biden" by Joseph Kishore writes that NATO was the organization that established the precedent that Putin claims to be following in Ukraine. "The catastrophe stoked by the US and NATO powers was used, in 1999, to justify direct military intervention. Waving the banner of “humanitarianism,” eagerly supported by layers of the upper middle class and academia, the Clinton administration launched its war against Serbia to enforce the secession of the province of Kosovo. It was accompanied by all sorts of claims of human rights violations that were ultimately demonstrated to be grossly exaggerated. "The war was carried out by NATO, which did not obtain a resolution from the United Nations and was therefore acting in direct violation of international law. It culminated in the installation of a government in Kosovo run by the Kosovo Liberation Army [...]" NATO created the template, and is the first to point the figure when anyone emulates it. Smooth. "The strategists of American imperialism interpreted the dissolution of the Soviet Union three decades ago as an opportunity to use military force to restructure global relations. In the process, the US has proclaimed, and exercised, the “right” to invade, bomb and instigate regime change operations in countries throughout the world. The NATO military alliance has been systematically extended throughout Eastern Europe, to the very borders of Russia. Now, the US is instigating a conflict with Russia over the sacred “principle” that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO as well." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Putin’s Advance Into Ukraine Compares with Saddam Hussein’s Invasion of Kuwait…a Disaster for Russia" by Patrick Cockburn writes, "[...] the Russian advance has a political impact that goes far beyond the Donbas region and affects the future of Ukraine and Europe. By recognising the independence of the two separatist republics Putin has ripped up any prospect of a diplomatic solution with Ukraine. At the heart of the Minsk-2 agreement of 2015 was an unimplemented accord for autonomy for the pro-Russian republics within Ukraine that looked like the only feasible diplomatic road forward – and this is now gone forever." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Update 25.02.2022, 17:45] The article "Russophobia Leads Us to Assume the Worst of Russians – and Assuming They’re Demonic Could be Dangerous" by Patrick Cockburn writes, "[...] for all the expectations of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine predicted as imminent by President Biden and Boris Johnson, this has not occurred. Supposedly, Russians commanders leading 190,000 Russian troops had received definitive orders to attack at the weekend, and by now their tank columns should be racing towards Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, but in fact they have not moved." "It is perfectly legitimate for Western governments to describe this as the invasion of sovereign Ukrainian territory. But it is so far in an area that was totally under Moscow’s control since the separatist leaders are Russian proxies and, whatever term one uses, it is not the all-out military assault that Biden and Johnson were talking about, which may be still to come, but has not come yet." "Because Russian grievances are assumed to be without merit, their actions appear irrational or demonic. They may be true, but assuming that this is the case from the beginning only deepens the crisis and makes it more insoluble." Level-headed assessment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Russia, Ukraine and the Chronicle of a War Foretold" by Chris Hedges "Poland, for example, just agreed to spend $ 6 billion on M1 Abrams tanks and other U.S. military equipment. [...] The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business, a very lucrative one. It is why we spent two decades in Afghanistan although there was near universal consensus after a few years of fruitless fighting that we had waded into a quagmire we could never win." "The Obama administration, not wanting to further inflame tensions with Russia, blocked arms sales to Kiev. But this act of prudence was abandoned by the Trump and Biden administrations. Weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain are pouring into Ukraine, part of the $1.5 billion in promised military aid. The equipment includes hundreds of sophisticated Javelins and NLAW anti-tank weapons despite repeated protests by Moscow." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Party of Chaos Blows Its Cover" by James Howard Kunstler "And now here is what I think is happening and will happen in Ukraine. The Russian aim is to neutralize Ukraine’s military capability — the means for harassing the eastern provinces known as the Donbas. That has been accomplished. Ukraine no longer has an air force, a navy, or a whole lot of weapons and munitions. It is surely in Russia’s interest to complete this operation in as few days as possible to minimize harm to civilian lives and property." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4453 2022-02-24T23:51:27+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

will be "DuckDuckGo is a right-wing web site". [image] C'mon New York Times. Do better. ]]>

will be "DuckDuckGo is a right-wing web site". [image] C'mon New York Times. Do better. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4438 2022-01-26T12:25:38+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which offers more background on this kind of nakedly aggressive support of war by a supposedly independent media. Spoiler: it's about selling weapons. With most of its industrial base otherwise exported and a massive brain drain toward a hyper-financialized economy, military hardware is the only remaining actual industry that the U.S. can really get behind. Some citations from the article, "Both Biden’s comments and the “Obama doctrine” were fundamental betrayals, presidents saying out loud that there existed such a thing as “our” interests separate from Washington’s war pig clique. The latter group somehow believes itself impervious to error, and takes extraordinary offense to challenges to its judgment, amazing given the spectacular failures in every arena from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria." When Biden recently backed down on defining a "red line", he was taken to task for weakness. Obama was similarly excoriated when he, surprisingly, did the same in 2014, after the Ukrainian coup and subsequent peaceful annexation of Crimea. "Their wag-the-dog thinking always argues the right move is the one that allows them to empty their boxes of expensive toys, from weapons systems to Langley-generated schemes for overthrows, which a compliant press happily calls regime change." Somehow, the most sensible thing to do is always to get more military contracts for burgeoning domestic businesses. The media, funded by the same businesses, is happy to lend a hand in the war effort. "Our plan with every foreign country that falls into our orbit is the same. We ride in as saviors, throwing loans in all directions to settle debts (often to us), then let it be known the country’s affairs will henceforth be run through our embassy. Since we’re ignorant of history and have long viewed diplomats too in sync with local customs as liabilities, we tend to fill our embassies with people who have limited sense of the individual character of host countries, their languages, or the attitudes of people outside the capital." The U.S. constantly goes for so-called regime change -- it's a euphemism for conquering and occupation by empire -- and they're always so bad at it. They follow exactly the game plan that anyone with a whit of sense would know to avoid: ignoring the conquered populace. You're not running a zoo. I'm reading "Persepolis Rising" right now and the occupation and insurgency in that book follows the description in the citations above and below nearly exactly. In fact, while I'm reading the book, I can't believe that it's a coincidence that I'm constantly reminded of American occupations of the 21st century. "Instead of devising individual policies, we go through identical processes of receiving groups of local politicians seeking our backing. We throw our weight behind the courtiers we like best. The winning supplicants are usually Western educated, speak great English, know how to flatter drunk diplomats, and are fluent in neoliberal wonk-speak." When we do go meet the locals, we end up working with the ones that are most like us, of course. It's like when you see reporting from somewhere in the Middle East on some mainstream media and the interviewee doesn't need a translator. That means the media ignored everyone who can't speak English -- they're literally everywhere -- in order to find some relatively affluent graduate of an American university to explain what's going on "on the ground". That's selection bias of the highest order, but it goes mostly unremarked. That person you found that speaks with a Brooklyn, NY accent is almost certainly not representative of the local populace. "The ostentatious incompetence of the foreign policy establishment, which America got to examine in technicolor during the War on Terror, was one of the first triggers for the revolt against “experts” that led to the election of Donald Trump. Once, these were drawling Republican golfers who got hot reading Francis Fukuyama, thought they could turn Baghdad into Geneva, and instead squandered trillions and hundreds of thousands of lives pushing Iraq back to the eighth century." What Taibbi characterizes as "incompetence" should, in light of his other comments about the financial upside of such policies, rather be deemed "malfeasance". They are not incompetent per se: they are good at funneling money upward to themselves and their corporate masters. What they are bad at is actually helping the people who live in conquered countries. They might also be bad at hiding their true intentions, but it doesn't seem to affect the bottom line, so who cares? Therefore, since they're not even trying to do any of those other things, you can hardly say that they're "incompetent" at them. "The more recent crew is made up of Extremely Online, Ivy-educated fantasists who rarely leave their embassies abroad and view life as an endless production of Sloane or The Good Fight, soap operas about exclusive clubs of fashionably brainy pragmatists with the guts to color outside the lines and “get things done.” Lines like “Yats is our guy” make them tingly. This is perhaps the only subset of people on earth arrogant and dumb enough to think there’s a workable plan for pulling off a shooting war with Russia." Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The only thing that changes is the cover story. Where one brand is perhaps more willing to be nakedly aggressive, the other talks of "right to protect". But they're all talking about "preemptive defense" or some such nonsense. They're all just lying about everything in order to keep the money train rolling and to advance their own careers. The cover story they use doesn't make a lick of difference, morally. For example, what's the difference to you if someone steals all of your money at gunpoint or cons you out of it with a sob story about a charity that doesn't exist? Your money is still gone. They still have all of it. The only thing that's different is how they took it from you. For some people, that difference may be enough, but not for me. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4390 2022-01-24T18:14:55+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4414 2022-01-06T22:54:50+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

... ]]>

is by a great investigative journalist. He's done great work. He's still rehashing and republishing details that were disavowed nearly a year ago. "Forget the whack-jobs who invaded the Capitol one year ago today. These “insurrectionists” were schmucks with no chance of overturning the election. (I don’t dismiss the gravity of their actions — they crushed the skull of a policeman and threatened other murders in the hall of the people.)" No-one crushed Officer Sicknick's skull. According to "Death of Brian Sicknick" , "He was pepper-sprayed during the riot, and had two thromboembolic strokes the next day, after which he was placed on life support, and soon died. The District of Columbia chief medical examiner found that Sicknick had died from stroke, classifying his death as natural, whereby a death is "not hastened by an injury", and additionally commented that "all that transpired played a role in his condition."" So why is Palast repeating this? Because it's a knee-jerk, unthinking iteration of bad things you heard about a thing that's really bad because it's really bad. Why is he even writing about it? Why is Palast placing a priority on talking about this stupid event? Ordinarily, he focuses laser-like on voting laws, which is his bailiwick, and which are far more important than regurgitating disproven Democrat talking points. You're better than that, Greg. I don't think it was great that the protesters stormed the Capitol. I think it's definitely worth finding out how it happened so easily. I don't think that Congress should be in charge of investigating it, though. That's not their job. Why isn't the justice department doing it? Oh, they are? And they're not really finding too many charges that will stick? And they're holding people in jail for months and months? Neat. The American system works wonderfully. Probably one of the funniest takes today was the article "AOC Lays Wreath At Her Grave On January 6th" , which captures the mood in 2022 perfectly. It's about hyperbole and appearances and making sure the angle is just right. "United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited Woodlawn Cemetery this morning to grieve in quiet dignity at her own grave on the 1-year anniversary of her death on January 6. [...] AOC, [...] was killed in the Capitol’s House Chamber by murderous Trump supporters [...] Once her camera crew confirmed they had several good shots, she wiped her eyes, slowly walked to her brand-new Tesla, and drove off—leaving a crew of professional mourners in her wake. "Visitors to the cemetery are advised to socially distance and mask up while mourning the loss of America’s greatest congresswoman. For those mourning remotely, a contribution can be made to AOC’s 2022 campaign." I just don't understand how anyone looks at America and thinks that this is the number-one priority. There are so many other issues to address for people who bethink themselves of high moral fiber. Nearly everything else is more important: corporate capture of the state, unbridled war-making, Boschian levels of inequality, no health-care to speak of for many, many people, an enormous police and carceral state, a burgeoning use of prison/slave labor, a merciless, stupid, and counterproductive immigration policy, an unchecked and perennially bungled pandemic, no real response to climate change -- the list goes on and on. The moronic protesters from last January are not even on the first page...or in the first chapter. However, if you're looking for a more nuanced take on the matter, you could do worse than the article "The Long American Meltdown Led to the January 6 Insurrection" by David Sirota , which writes that, "At its core, the January 6 insurrection was the weaponized manifestation of virulent anti-government sentiment in a putatively democratic country where a majority has not trusted its own government for two decades [...] That anti-government sentiment on display during last year’s riot wasn’t spontaneous — [...] it was cultivated by both politics and reality over the last four decades." This anti-government sentiment isn't just those you think: there are a lot of people disappointed with the government's inability to do anything but funnel money upwards toward a self-selected and self-perpetuating elite that includes not just many politicians, but most of the media as well. "Democrats shoved aside a beleaguered labor movement in pursuit of corporate campaign cash, figuring they could help Republicans kick voters in the face, and then just try to buy reelection with corporate donors’ money." Not only that, but they've been doing this for a good three decades, starting with Bill Clinton (and continuing in the same vein with Obama after an eight-year GWB interregnum), "Bill Clinton, the first Democratic president after the Reagan era, proudly declared that “the era of big government is over,” and then launched a crusade to slash welfare, help capital crush unions, deregulate Wall Street, privatize government services, and pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — the latter of which prompted culturally conservative working-class voters to abandon the party in droves, according to new research." There is no alternative, as Maggie Thatcher said. She meant "to capitalism", which in America's case is correct: if you don't like how things are going, there is literally no viable political alternative. Everyone who might effect any change is inexorably drawn to power, Republicans and Democrats alike. They don't even pretend to try to resist it anymore. Think of Pelosi's recent, brave defense of congressional insider trading that has made so many of them (herself included) millions and millions of dollars richer in a year where the country is otherwise reeling from a pandemic and economic bitch-slap. Why should anyone trust this government to do anything but make its own situation better? "[...] overall, the government was not addressing eminently solvable economic problems that have been enriching a handful of billionaires while making life miserable for millions of people." A lot of the discussion of this overarching, important topic is in the context of the upcoming election in the U.S. No, not the one in November of 2022; the one in 2024. You see, Americans are so deeply narcissistic and ignorant of the world that they believe that these things matter. It doesn't matter to the world and it doesn't even matter in America. Elections don't matter in America. The same people always win. The politicians have different faces -- or somethings they don't; Joe Biden has a lot of miles on him -- but the policies tend in the same direction. There are no surprises. Will the psychotics from the Republican party win back the houses in 2022? Who cares? How would they make the Democrats more ineffectual? Americans don't seem to respond to any form of wake-up call. They're always willing to waste more and more time while they masturbate away the largest collection of wealth, knowledge, power, and influence the world has ever seen. It's pathetic. Or maybe Trump comes back in 2024? So what? If he does, America will deserve it. Again. Because America hasn't done anything to not deserve it. America only does stuff that earns another round of Trump as president. He has a shocking amount of charisma and seems to be able to navigate America's politics quite well -- which says something about both, no? -- but he's a terrible leader. Would it be better to have someone more effective and willing to face some of the priorities outlined above? Of course. But that's not going to happen. Instead, more of the same will continue to happen, until it very catastrophically stops doing so. That's how these things end, as Hemingway wrote, "gradually, then suddenly". It won't be because anybody was able to stop it. To be fair, some have tried. People like Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders and, to be honest, countless others who have fought the good fight and offered alternatives and shouted from the rooftops -- all for nought. The place is worse than it's ever been -- unless you're well off, riding the wave of profit powered by the misery of the 99%. Maybe it's more ripe for real change -- because it's so close to collapse. But maybe it's also still firmly in the "gradual" part and the "suddenly" part is still painfully far off. Rome took centuries to die after it was obvious that it would. None of the efforts so far had any lasting effectiveness -- other than inspiring some memes like "99%" and "Black Lives Matter" that long outlive their movements. Instead, their efforts were swallowed or rejected by the parasite that's wrapped itself around that country. No, when it ends, it will be because the system just died of its own callous stupidity and greed. But we have to wait for it to happen. All of our attempts to point out that we should kill it fall on deaf ears. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4346 2021-11-06T23:28:49+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

contains the following condemnation of the Steele Dossier. "An analyst who was a key contributor to Democratic-funded opposition research into possible links between Donald J. Trump and Russia was arrested on Thursday and" ... ]]>

contains the following condemnation of the Steele Dossier. "An analyst who was a key contributor to Democratic-funded opposition research into possible links between Donald J. Trump and Russia was arrested on Thursday and charged with lying to the F.B.I. about his sources. "The analyst, Igor Danchenko, was a primary researcher for claims that went into the so-called Steele dossier, a compendium of rumors and unproven assertions suggesting that Mr. Trump and his 2016 campaign were compromised by and conspiring with Russian intelligence officials to help him defeat Hillary Clinton." [image]Given its role as the main document underpinning the entire RussiaGate narrative, this is transitively a condemnation of that narrative itself. Is this how the NYT is finally going to acknowledge that RussiaGate was a deliberate lie? That it was an absolute dumpster fire of quasi-journalistic activity that is, quite possibly, the death knell for actual journalism in America? Nope, they're just going to pretend that we've always been at war with Eastasia [1]. There are innumerable articles from the last 5 years on the NYT claiming exactly the opposite -- and none of those will get a correction on them. The NYT will almost certainly not pay in any way for the leading role they took in misleading public opinion with a deliberate political agenda. Instead, they rode the Steele Dossier and similar anti-Trump propaganda, lies, and slander to heretofore unprecedented online subscriber numbers, simultaneously rescuing their business model. Their agenda was to unseat an elected president by any means necessary, including, of course, just flat-out lying about how bad he was because he was so bad that he managed to cover up his badness so elegantly and completely that the only way to get rid of him -- and we absolutely needed to, because he was definitionally bad, even if the evidence wasn't sufficient -- was to spread lies about bad things he hadn't done, in order to be able to nail him for those things that we know he'd done, but couldn't prove. That's justice, everyone! When you can nail people you know are bad, whether you have evidence for it or not. How can you tell the difference between someone who's legitimately bad, but manages to hide all evidence of their wrongdoing and someone who's done nothing wrong, but you just want to smear with lies? You can't! But, also, don't worry your pretty little head about that kind of stuff. Your moral and intellectual betters are putting their maximum efforts into making sure that this doesn't happen. Trust them. Just keep buying stuff you don't need and consuming content that rots your brain and keep pursuing the unattainable dream on the treadmill they've prepared for you. The NYT lit a dumpster on fire and the conflagration burned the whole city down. Now they're walking away, whistling, as if they'd had nothing to do with it at all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] "Citing" 1984 by George Orwell. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4352 2021-11-06T22:58:50+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes about other writers, lauding one, and slandering a few others, dubbing them the "Trumpenleft". "This leads to our third trend, in some ways our hardest pill to swallow, which Paul Street dubs the Trumpenleft. Street sees so clearly the danger of fake" ... ]]>

writes about other writers, lauding one, and slandering a few others, dubbing them the "Trumpenleft". "This leads to our third trend, in some ways our hardest pill to swallow, which Paul Street dubs the Trumpenleft. Street sees so clearly the danger of fake populist people like Glenn Greenwald, Saagar Engeti,, Matt Taibi, Dave Chapelle and Joe Rogan who peddle hate as a version of “rebellious” politics that are actually philistine. These people will mobilize the masses for the return of Trump. They seek to confuse the American people. What is actually going on in their minds is that Trump represents a form of freedom for being against “cancel culture” (which is code for intersectional justice and has become a not so subtle dog whistle against minorities, women, LGBTQ+ and the poor)." That is a slanderous lie. Paul Street has gone off the deep end with his anti-fascist screeds. I would be extremely careful citing him. I've seen some decent interviews with him, but his writing is long and tediously preachy and repetitive, in a way that that of Chris Hedges is not. That he calls anyone who dares to disagree with any one of the myriad points on his agenda part of the "Trumpenleft" is, and I'm being generous, unfortunate. For example, he is a huge supporter of Russiagate, to my utter disappointment. He never wavered despite all of the evidence for it disappearing in a puff of smoke. I wonder whether the most recent revelations [1] will cause him to waver -- but I'm sure he'll think of an explanation. Once you're deep enough in the rabbit hole, you're pretty good at justification. So if you weren't the on the Russiagate bandwagon, then you were for Trump. This "for us or against us" horseshit should be beneath well-educated leftists like Street and Pemberton, but even the best of us end up drawing a line in the sand somewhere and calling it a day. It's just less work that way and being open-minded and fair -- is exhausting. I mean, who has time to read everything? It's just easier to take other people's word for what people have written. You can save hours that way. And why would anyone want to mischaracterize what someone else said to make them look bad? That hardly ever happens. Ditto for people reading an essay and not understanding it -- or misinterpreting it because they have no sense of irony. [2] Because of what he wrote above, I've lost a bit of respect for Pemberton as a writer now, as well -- although he has a long way to fall, in my opinion; this is one data point on a record I consider to be otherwise quite good. I do think that Paul Street has his heart in the right place, but he tends to lump everyone who doesn't agree with his extreme formulation into a single group of enemies. He is not unique in this tendency. This is a tendency shared by many who claim to be on the left. And look at what Pemberton does, above: he does the same thing! To accuse Engeti (whom I've watched on The Hill, but not much since), Greenwald, Taibbi, Chappelle, or Rogan of being Trump supporters is madness. It's completely ignoring what they're actually saying and writing. Matt Taibbi wrote a book recently called "Insane Clown President". Dave Chappelle absolutely does not support Trump. Neither does Glenn Greenwald, for God's sake. When you find yourself writing stuff like this, you should really ask yourself whether you're sure it's correct. These are strong allegations. Has Street or Pemberton actually read or watched anything these people have done? Or are they just cherry-picking deliberately misleading clips and tweet-quotes? Anyone who writes or speaks in an ironic/sarcastic style these days -- as both Taibbi and Greenwald are wont to do -- is liable to have their statements cherry-picked and stripped of ironic intent. Chappelle, as a comedian, doesn't even get a pass that he might be just saying things for laughs. A comedian is being paid $26M for a single show -- and that show is incredibly popular and a net win for the company that paid him that much money -- and people will still somehow claim that he's "not funny". When you find yourself on that side of the argument, you really should come up for air and check your assumptions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See "NY Times whistles as it strolls away from the accident it helped cause" for more information. [1] For example, I only skimmed "Glenn Greenwald and Iowa’s latest WTF Moments" by Paul Street because I wanted to see what his take on Greenwald's deeply sarcastic essay was, but then I stopped reading when I noticed that he was reading Greenwald's biting sarcasm literally. Here's Street, "But the first part of Greenwald’s statement is idiotic, as are the portions of his essay in which he defends AOC’s gown as a brilliant statement of “revolutionary socialism.”" This is the problem when someone dips their toe into a writer's oeuvre and tries to summarize the sum-total of it based on that. That's why I'm so careful to be generous to Street -- because I think his voice is important overall, but I wish he'd be more careful with his, at times (and in my opinion), lunatic stridency. He applies a purity test to make enemies where he could have allies instead. A week later, he published "Glenn Greenwald is Not Your Misunderstood Left Comrade" by Paul Street , noting that he'd "received numerous emails defending Glenn Greenwald against a recent CounterPunch essay". Instead of reading those mails that most likely told him that he'd misread the essay because he can't take a joke, he dismissed the incident by writing "[d]on’t disparage Glenn Greenwald in left media unless you are ready for an inbox eruption.", as if any critique of his articles from "those people" are a priori invalid because, if you don't hate Greenwald, then you have nothing of value to offer Paul Street. He then wrote a long screed doubling down on his initial point while pretzeling around to make it look like he hadn't completely misinterpreted Greenwald's essay in the first place. The point he was trying to make is: Greenwald bad. Whether the evidence is manufactured or real doesn't really matter when the conclusion is known in advance. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4340 2021-10-30T08:56:45+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

details how the Democrats are axing an expensive part of their plan to pull their social safety net somewhere up within the same time zone as most other OECD countries. "Democrats appear likely to abandon plans to include an expensive new federal entitlement program—paid family leave—as they try to trim the overall cost of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" plan proposal. "Biden's plan called for a federal paid leave program that would replace up to 85 percent of a worker's pay (with that percentage falling for higher-paid workers) for up to 12 weeks per year. Workers could access the paid leave program if they were having a baby, taking care of an elderly or sick relative, or recovering from a serious illness of their own." They won't be able to do it, so American workers continue without protection and without any alternative to just working all the damned time, no matter what life throws at them in an increasingly unstable society. Or, "Paid Leave Struck Down By People Who Do Combined 4 Hours Of Work Annually" . The article "Biden Dumps Free Community College From Spending Bill" by Scott Shackford describes how the Democrats have also given up on helping anyone pay for any school whatsoever, leaving the poor to fend for themselves in minimum-wage jobs, or take out unpayable loans, or join the military. Enjoy! "President Joe Biden's plans for two years of free community college appear to have been scrapped from his "Build Back Better" spending extravaganza. "In an address to Congress back in April, Biden announced a $109 billion plan to make community college free, resurrecting a plan the Obama era that ultimately went nowhere. Biden's plan will apparently share that fate, as it was not included in the giant-yet-nevertheless-scaled-back "framework" that the White House released this morning." Further, the article "Biden’s incredible shrinking social “reform” bill" by Patrick Martin notes that, even the watered-down form, is utterly inscrutable and still has only a small chance of passing. "The legislation incorporating the “framework,” a draft budget reconciliation bill, was submitted to the House Rules Committee Thursday and runs to nearly 2,200 pages. Its provisions are complex, and the procedures for its approval are both convoluted and highly precarious. It is entirely possible that the legislative process will lead to a complete political debacle for both the Biden White House and the Democratic Party as a whole, with no significant legislation passed." Not only that, but the budget bill -- which encompasses everything useful to the actual day-to-day American -- is small, relative to other expenditures. "By comparison, the military budget over the same period would be at least $8 trillion, and projected interest payments on the federal debt could be even higher. Every year, the Federal Reserve is pumping close to $1.5 trillion into the markets—nearly as much as the proposed legislation allocates in ten years." So, not only is the interest on the debt more per year, the military -- even just the base figure to which they're willing to admit -- is 4x as high, the free money for Wall Street and corporate America is nearly 10x higher, but the so-called budget bill -- that the media is screaming their heads off about containing socialist giveaways for the irredeemably indolent -- is actually shedding its social programs while, utterly mysteriously, retaining pro-business aspects. "In the course of these “negotiations,” measures that provide subsidies to businesses or promote the entry of more workers into the labor force have advanced, while measures that cost business money, sustain working people while they are not actively employed, or simply improve their lives, have been killed." See the "article" for a detailed listing of what's in and what's out. Also: no new taxes on the wealthy. No surprise there. While it's understandable that the Democrats are losing support for this reprehensible, spineless, and incompetent behavior, it's just shitty human nature that somehow it's expected that the Republicans will clean up in the 2022 elections because of it. How? Why? They're acting like 50 other Manchins and Sinemas [1], refusing to pass anything whatsoever and letting the Democrats destroy themselves. They're just as in bed with corporations and the military and just as against universal health care and even just making life less miserable for the 99% as the Democrats -- probably more. But somehow in this calculus, they're coming out smelling like roses. Madness. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I honestly don't care how she spells her name. You know which one I mean. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4283 2021-06-06T12:12:30+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, but the part that is probably germane to this case is included below. "Angela: This is a huge class-action lawsuit. They're going to pay millions. Colby: Roughly 75 to 100 million. I mean, that's what their lawyers will settle for -- after they exhaust most of your team's legal funds for the next seven years. And sure, that's...that's a lot of money, but not to them, not really. We started a rainy-day fund when the leak happened, just for this occasion. The fund itself has already made five times that amount." Fact imitates fiction imitating fact. Donziger is being prosecuted not by the government, as is usual, but by corporate lawyers, in a circuit court run by a couple of judges who are quite clearly beholden to Chevron's interests. He is being accused of a trumped-up charge of corruption or trial manipulation or some such thing -- but it would be thrown out of court immediately, were it ever to get that far. That's why they hold the case in limbo instead. That this is even possible is a testament to the degree to which corporations control the U.S. at all levels, including the the judiciary. See 36:00 for Donziger's description, where he also describes "civil RICO", which is the law under which he's being prosecuted. The case has dragged on for over two years, during which Donziger has remained under house arrest, with a few exceptions. He has to wear an ankle bracelet. His case has never actually gone to trial. This is pre-trial detention in his home. The maximum historical penalty for the charges leveled against him are 90 days house arrest. He has had almost 800 days -- and he's never been prosecuted nor even seen a trial. He is just being detained indefinitely. Donziger presents his case well, always focusing on the judgment and the Ecuadorean people first, then emphasizing that he is going to be fine. He is "trapped" in his New York apartment with extremely limited mobility, but he can communicate and he can leave for very special reasons (e.g. occasionally partake in son's activities in school). Donziger is in all ways better off than, say, Julian Assage, who is an actual political prisoner of the government, being held in far worse conditions even though he's also never been convicted of a crime. Assange was, in fact, exonerated in his trial, but is being held in prison while the U.S. prepares its appeal, taking months and months and months to do so. The British government calls him a flight risk and chirpily imprisons a citizen of two foreign governments (Assange is Australian and now Ecuadorean) without a care. This is how our governments rule; this is the respect they have for rule-of-law. They are monomaniacal, power-hungry, imperialist, authoritarian, hypocritical entities that cannot be trusted in any way to do the right thing or to support any principle. Ethics mean nothing to them. They serve only that which extends and supports their personal fortunes and power. While it is entirely possible that China is the same, the U.S. and UK are the last ones that could hope to take the moral high ground in such accusations. If China takes over the U.S. role, then, in the eyes of 99% of the world, nothing will have changed but the flag. For many not in the western world, it will be a marked improvement. I've included some selected quotes below, but almost everything Donziger says is important and illuminating. The entire 35-minute interview is worth your time. I've heard several interviews with him, but this is the most succinct and eminently understandable one I've seen/heard. He is extremely careful and precise in his language in describing this case, which is both admirable and prudent, considering there are hordes of lawyers just waiting for him to slip up in some way that lets them bury him even further. At 43:50 he discusses his "prosecution". "They don't want this case to go before a jury. [...] I got convicted or found guilty of felony criminal offenses by a single trial judge without a jury. And then, after that, I'm going to be potentially put in jail by a judge connected to Chevron -- again, without a jury. [...] This is a parade of horrors, in America, as regards to trampling of someone's due-process rights. And the fact that I'm a lawyer -- and a reputable lawyer -- a human rights lawyer -- I have never had a single client grievance in 28 years of practice -- by the way, I'm disbarred in New York by judge Kaplan [the judge in the current case]. To be clear, I never had a hearing. [...] I never had a hearing where I could challenge his findings that I'd bribed a judge." At 45:45 he waves away the personal impact to focus on the way Chevron is trying to establish a discouraging precedent for future action. "Look, this is bad for me. It's difficult. I'm strong. I'm resilient. I have a great family. Tons of support. 68 Nobel Laureates. Six Congresspersons. I'm going to be OK. We're going to get through this. The real problem is: this goes way beyond me. [...] This is a corporate playbook, invented by Chevron and its law firm Gibson-Dunn. Gibson-Dunn makes hundreds of millions of dollars in fees off me. They enrich themselves by implementing this playbook that is designed to criminalize human-rights lawyering [...]" At 48:30 he describes the parameters of the original case against Texaco/Chevron. "This case is owned by the indigenous peoples and farmer communities in Ecuador -- about 80 communities -- who live and work in an area where Chevron (via Texaco) operated from 1964 to 1992 and deliberately dumped 16 billion gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into the environment, into the waters, into the groundwater, and it's still going on. You can go down there and see the damage and can see it's still happening. Pipes out of these waste pits going into streams that people drink out of. This, again, was a deliberate decision made by Texaco to save money, with the clearly foreseeable result that people would die." At 49:30 he expresses confidence that Chevron will eventually have to pay up, that they're not giving up because they're going to win -- not only the case, but the money. "This is a model of human-rights litigation [...] We're now in year 28 of this. [...] It really is an epic battle, but make no mistake, the affected communities in Ecuador are the winners. They won the case. And the reason this is happening to me now is precisely because we won -- our team won -- and Chevron doesn't want to comply with the rule of law. And they prefer to spend money to attack the lawyers. They don't want the precedent that they have to write a check [...] That judgment can be enforced in any country in the world except for the United States because of this ruling against me. So Chevron faces enormous financial risk. "[...] When I say they won, that's what I mean. They haven't collected, so Chevron hasn't been held fully accountable. But I am confident, as are other lawyers even smarter than me when it comes to international enforcement, that this judgment will be collected upon or will be settled sometime in due course, where they will be able to clean up their ancestral lands and save lives. I think this is a historic victory." At 52:00 he emphasizes that his being locked up means that they're winning, that they've hurt Chevron. "We won. I'm locked up because we won. It's very important that people know that. They want people to look at me and be demoralized. I'm telling you: look at me and don't be demoralized. We are going to get through this and there's people in Ecuador, community leaders, who are sophisticated, powerful people. [..] I'm so damned honored to work with them." At 54:00 he describes the hubris and arrogance of the U.S. court system, as represented by these Chevron-bought trial judges, "Judge Kaplan is just a trial judge -- a low-level, federal trial judge -- who basically issued a ruling, based on false, Chevron, paid [$2 million] witness testimony, that I bribed a judge and he tried to use that to overturn a decision of Ecuador's highest court, as well as Canada's supreme court. [...] So you have a trial judge trying to overrule a sovereign nation's supreme court. Can you imagine if an Ecuadorean trial judge tried to do that to the U.S. Supreme Court? That person would be laughed at. [...] It's unbelievable that people actually give it credibility." At 57:00 he further discusses the lack of oversight for judges with lifelong appointments. "I don't think there should be private prosecutions in the United States. [...] There's no accountability of lifetime-appointed judges. And I think that there needs to be some. Look, most are good judges; they try to work within the framework of the rule of law, in good faith. But if you don't want to do that -- and that's Judge Kaplan and Judge Prescott, who, in my personal opinion, they're not doing that, they're abusing their power to help Chevron and attack me -- there's gotta be some mechanism to hold them accountable. And right now, there's none. [...] If there was a mechanism, I don't think that this would be happening because they would calculate in their heads, 'well, I'm not going to be able to do this and get away with it.'" At 1:01:30, he contrasts the international and alternative media response with the nearly complete lack of attention by the U.S. mainstream media -- especially the New York Times, which is just up the road. "I've got journalists flying thousands of miles in from Europe to interview me and I can't get the New York Times, which is right up the street -- a 30-minute walk from my apartment -- to come sit with me and do a story about this. [...] No matter what you think of me, no matter what you think of the choices I've made, you cannot deny that this is an interesting story. There's an American lawyer locked up for almost two years on a misdemeanor without trial, who won this big judgment about Chevron. What is going on? That's a story. Yes, I am frustrated. And none of the networks have covered it." I've seen and heard him interviewed several times on the podcasts I follow: Chapo TrapHouse, Ralph Nader, Scheer Intelligence, now Useful Idiots. If you follow better news sources, then this has been on your radar all year. To learn more about the original case, watch the documentary Crude (watched and reviewed in 2012 in "Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2012.9" ). [media] Donziger basically learned Spanish in order to help prosecute this case. He says in this interview, "I've been to Ecuador 250 times in 20 years to work on this. [...] This was not the work on me or one person." He's humble. He gives credit where credit is due. The man is a climate hero. He's been under house arrest without trial in America for almost two years. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4277 2021-06-05T22:22:08+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4231 2021-05-05T21:50:13+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4244 2021-05-04T23:20:51+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is one in a long series of interviews of Noam Chomsky by David Barsamian over the years. I found it kind of interesting as a jumping-off point for some thoughts of my own. [January 6th] Chomsky comes down very strong on characterizing... ]]>

is one in a long series of interviews of Noam Chomsky by David Barsamian over the years. I found it kind of interesting as a jumping-off point for some thoughts of my own. [January 6th] Chomsky comes down very strong on characterizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6th as a coup. "First of all, it was explicitly an attempt at a coup. They were trying to overthrow the elected government: that’s a coup. As for those who participated, one striking feature—look at the photographs—is that few young people were involved. That’s quite unusual; political events and demonstrations are mostly young people. Here it was middle-aged and older people, and they were all enthusiastic Trump supporters. He was egging them on." My first thought was "Ok Chomsky". I feel like Chomsky's really rabbit-holed on Trump, ascribing tremendous power to him. It was a terribly executed coup -- or, in Chomsky's words, an "attempt at a coup". He's taking the declaration of it being a coup at face value -- some of the participants claimed it was one and pretty much all of the mainstream media took it on the strength of that claim. I just don't feel he's giving this issue the same attention to detail that he usually does. Like, the old Chomsky would have whipped out the definition of a coup and alternative characterizations and maybe compared it to real coups. He would have wondered where the follow-through was. Instead, he looks at a few hundred addled heptagenarians and just takes their word for it that they were attempting a coup. Sure, they were armed, but did they use their weapons? What was the plan? It had no chance. It was poorly planned; there was really no plan, not for "after" they'd won, was there? They did nothing. They embarrassed the nation that something like that could happen in the heart of it, but they all shuffled right back out a few hours later. No standoff, no shots fired, very little damage done. They were not resisted and got nowhere. It was childish. Were there any people in power involved who could have made a coup happen? If yes, how did they fail so badly? The U.S. government was back up and running in a couple of hours. It was a singultus, not a coup. Their vaguely stated aim had no anchor in reality, as far from a coup as a child's drawing of a car is from the real thing. The drawing is barely recognizable as a car, but the child is convinced it can get in it and go somewhere. That doesn't make it a car. It was about as much of a coup as that band of fools who tried to "take over Venezuela" last year by landing a half-dozen armed idiots in a zodiac on the beach and "storming" Venezuela from there. They were swept up in hours and arrested. Some people trumpeted that that was a coup attempt as well, but are we really at a point that you can put an "elephant" label on a fluffy bunny rabbit and change reality? "There were elements there from the more violent militias, such as the Proud Boys. It was a pretty violent affair. Five people were killed; it could have been much worse." It could have been, but it wasn't. Four died of heart attacks. One shot fired, by police, which killed a protestor. A police officer on the scene died of a stroke the next day. Yes, it could have been much worse, but not a single one of the protestors fired a shot from any of their many firearms. They walked in, they walked back out. They stayed between the velvet ropes, for God's sake. As coups go, pretty unrecognizable. There were many, many demonstrations, protests, and riots last year -- heartily lauded as righteous -- that were much more violent than this one. They physically broke down some doors to breach the Capitol, but the majority of the violence was symbolic. The nation's pride was wounded and it was embarrassed on the world stage. At that point, they had to double down and pretend that it was a lot more dangerous than it was. Just America being a drama queen again. Anything for attention. [The Environment] Chomsky moves on to discuss how the Trump administration drastically increased short-term gain for fossil-fuel companies by trading medium- and long-term climate disaster. "[Trump's] major policy programs were to destroy the environment as quickly as possible, maximize the use of fossil fuels, and eliminate the regulatory apparatus that somewhat controls them, with the goal of increasing short-term profit for sectors of industry, fossil fuels, and others. This is the most malicious program in human history. It’s barely discussed; that’s not what Trump is criticized for. But whatever else he did pales into total insignificance compared with this. Another four years of it, and we might have been pretty near the finish line." I don't really understand where the evidence for this is. I know Trump and his crew were bad guys, but I really don't see how they were orders of magnitude worse than anyone else. Trump continued Obama's expansion, no? Obama and Biden oversaw the fracking boom as well as the biggest expansion of offshore drilling ever. I wasn't aware that Trump had increased it so drastically as to be another order of magnitude. And now? Will we do anything useful with the next four years under Biden? I suppose we'll make some noises in that direction. I'm not convinced that anything will come of it. We haven't changed any of the underpinnings of the American oligarchy, so how could something fundamentally different happen? Why would the oligarchs start losing now, when they have control of everything? Because a near-octogenarian who's always been in their pockets publicly said some vague things? Biden's done this his whole career: said one thing and done another. He is the quintessential politician, in that regard. He's the president America deserves, in a different way than Trump, but just as much. Despite his claims, I don't think that Biden will slow climate collapse in anything approaching a significant manner. The pandemic did, though. It weakened Exxon to the point that it was delisted from the S&P 500. That's a good start. I still see far too many articles about how the coming climate catastrophe is exaggerated, that the doomsaying is based on models and projections and that these might be wrong, that we might find a silver bullet. To be clear, I don't think that Chomsky believes this. But he's also sounding a lot more hopeful than the vague mutterings of Biden warrant given how much he's shown himself to know about how deep of a hole we're in, climatologically speaking. The climate -- just like the virus -- doesn't care. It doesn't care. The temperature will rise and all of those who urged complacency and business as usual will probably not even see that they were wrong. They certainly won't admit it. And they certainly won't lose power or influence. They arrogance and inability to process information only makes them stronger, more likely to influence more people even more ignorant than they are. It won't matter anyway. Even an "I told you so" will ring hollow as we scamper from air-conditioned shelter to air-conditioned shelter, forgetting what life was once like. Nothing will matter anymore, other than getting food and water and finding shelter from the heat. We'll be fighting our water wars and fighting off waves of climate refugees and perhaps even fighting some new pandemics because, sure, why not? Hell, let's run out of antibiotics worth a damn too, while we're at it. Who needs to be outside when you've got the Internet on your phone? [Immigration] Barsamian asks, "What would be a fair and just immigration policy?" "NC: The first goal of policy should be to eliminate the conditions from which people are fleeing. These people don’t want to be in the United States; they want to be at home. But home is unlivable—they’re forced to flee. We have a large share of responsibility for the fact that it’s unlivable." We've plundered their lands and supported right-wing coups whenever the profits of our corporations were threatened. Well, they're not our corporations. Those corporations belong to themselves and they own our politicians, so they bribe the U.S. government to militarily defend their rights to plunder brown people all over the world. And these bozo politicians sell themselves for a pittance. They cause untold present and future destruction and woe for comparatively few dollars of short-term gain. These companies get want they want dirt-cheap. It's not even a question of whether they should do it or not. Would you pay a few million bucks to get billions of extra profits? Or would you let morality get in the way? If you tend toward morality, that explains why the world kicks you in the ass -- because there isn't anything this world likes rewarding more than being an unbearable asshole sociopath. "The problem wasn’t the caravans. It was why it was happening. While the rest of the hemisphere condemned the coup, Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton refused to formally designate it a military coup—because if they did, they would have had to stop military aid to the junta. When you impose a horror chamber, people flee." And why is the U.S. supporting a military junta? Because those fucking morons in Honduras elected a socialist government, that's why. Didn't they get the memo from the last several dozen foolish countries who tried something like that? Obama was no different than any other president: his job as American president is to fight communism and socialism. That's what they say anyway. What they mean is that the U.S. uses its military power and political influence and wealth to rob the rest of the world, day after day after day. Most countries are pirates. But some countries have raised plunder to an art form. Why buy something or build something yourself when you can just steal it? Hell, with enough marketing, you can even secure the moral high ground for yourself at the same time that you're slaughtering millions in the name of a slightly higher profit margin for your friend's companies. It's always the same story: embargo Cuba because they're communist and in cahoots with the Soviet and now just because. Split up Korea to keep the Soviets from having it. Tell yourself and the world a fairy tale about how you're doing it for democracy or defending free markets or some such bullshit when you're really just looking to plunder their resources. People will go along with it. They'll look at a country like South Korea, which still hosts over 30,000 U.S. troops 70 years after their war of "emancipation" was over (never officially ended, I know) and think that this is a flourishing democracy. They are an occupied country. They are not allowed to make their own political decisions -- not really. Or how the U.S. destroyed Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia to teach the world an object lesson about creeping communism. Or their attack on the African Union countries, like Angola or Mozambique? Never heard of those proxy wars against the Soviet and Cuba? Or Iraq, or Libya, or Afghanistan. How many times can people ignore the lesson that's right in front of their faces? Spoiler alert: at least one more time, every time. The U.S. can count on it. It can count on the world believing its claim that it's interested in defending Taiwanese sovereignty when it's really just interested in stealing all of that chip-manufacturing from China. That's all there is to it. And the rest of the world goes along with it because they also need chips for every fucking thing they make and they also have no chip-manufacturing capacity and they also don't feel like paying for anything that they can steal instead. Especially when it's so fucking easy to convince entire countries full of people predisposed to believing any racist thing you say about the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranis. We make it so easy for them to be pirates. Because we need the shit they're stealing too, don't we? What would the alternative be? Build up manufacturing capacity in Europe or the U.S.? Are you mad? It's far too late for that now. No, we'll have to cruise in with several navies -- the U.S. has been there for years and now England's on its way [1] -- and try to steal it instead, probably provoking a hot war in the process. But we also know that those dastardly Chinese and Russians have a no-first-strike policy for using nuclear weapons. Pussies. The U.S. has never made a promise like that. That's why it's spent the last decade building up an arsenal of suitcase nukes to replace the aging ICBMs. The U.S. knows that the world knows that it's the only one crazy enough to actually use nukes, so it blusters around, telling the world that it's doing all of this for the world's own good and for the good of democracy in the flavor-of-the-week (Taiwan), claiming the moral high ground in the fairy tales it tells itself while it brandishes its nukes at a world that wishes it would just go ahead and die already. [Teaching History] "The 1619 Project in the New York Times was another very interesting step forward. Of course, it’s being lambasted by professional historians: you got this detail wrong, you forgot to say that, and so on. It doesn’t matter. It was a very powerful recognition of what 400 years of vicious treatment has meant for African Americans and what legacy it leaves. That’s a real breakthrough. Couple of years before that, nothing like it. All of these are steps forward." I disagree strongly here. As I would have expected an earlier Chomsky to do as well. It was Chomsky who wrote that it's exactly the little details that led to a completely different and largely fictitious "manufactured consent" arising from journalism. In his famous book of the same name, he argued the case for the wars in Southeast Asia and South America. He argued then that what things looked like on the surface differed wildly from what people ended up interpreting from the news, mostly based on framing. I'm shocked that Chomsky is OK with the mendacious propaganda campaign of the 1619 project. He used to care about details and point out how details were essential to twisting a story. Now he kind of waves them away as distracting from the main point that the new way of looking at history is the right way. The 1619 project claims that Benjamin Franklin is and always has been a racist and that's OK, despite a complete lack of actual evidence, because the end justifies the means. If the evidence supports it, then wonderful. Let's do that. But if the evidence denies it, then we'll have to do that as well. Maybe Chomsky's just getting tired or maybe I misunderstood what he meant here, but it sounds dismissive of scholars whose hearts would be in the right place -- they have no illusions about America's roots in slavery -- but who want to come up with a retelling of history that doesn't distort the historical record for ideological aims. I recently "took some notes" on a very lengthy examination of one of the foundational works of the 1619 project ("Gerald Horne’s counter-revolution against 1776" by Fred Schleger ) that spent time on the "details" that Chomsky is waving away (counter to earlier Chomsky) and found them to be sobering and quite convincing. I had to look and verify that it was the same Gerald Horne whom I've heard express himself so eloquently on several podcasts who'd written a book with such sloppy/mendacious scholarship. And the 1619 project is not a flash in the pan. There's a "book and a children's book" based on the project. All on the up and up, with Nikole Hannah-Jones's name emblazoned on the front as a winner of the the Pulitzer Prize from The New York Times Magazine. All is as it should be. These are highly trustworthy sources who've never been involved in rewriting history otherwise. Sure, let's rebase the whole U.S. history curriculum on this. There is surely a part of this project that is useful, but they acted as if there were two "sides" to it. When scholars in the area piped up with corrections of sometimes gross misreadings or deliberate misinterpretation, they didn't retract or change anything. Why? Well, some of the errors were so bad that they would have gravely undermined the premise of the project itself. That premise was the reason they did the work in the first place. This is not science where you make a hypothesis and then ditch it if the evidence doesn't support it. No, this is propaganda, where the tail wags the dog. You can't lie about details if you want to be the honest party. You can't just make shit up to support what you think is the truth. How does that work? How am I to understand the difference between an actual lie and "steps toward" a proper goal, but supported by manipulation and untruth? If it takes untruth and fake facts to get there, then how can it be the truth? Do we just a priori assume that we already know the conclusion and then just cherry-pick evidence and fabricate information to support it? Is that considered OK when the cause is right? Again, I'm 100% sure that's not what Chomsky means, but he's expressing himself poorly, at the very least (which is atypical for him). This is exactly the technique that was used against Trump that only ended up strengthening him, in the end. Because people saw that it was bullshit. There were a million legitimate ways to attack what he was doing, but they attacked him for bullshit reasons, undermining the entire enterprise. Anyone and everyone thinks it's OK to just sling mud at Trump as long as it sounds "truthy". This undermines the effort to report on things that he's actually done. Hell, Chomsky even complained about it earlier: that Trump's policies against the environment were, "[...] the most malicious program in human history. It’s barely discussed; that’s not what Trump is criticized for. " Yeah, it's barely discussed because people are "discussing" untruths and non-issues that are wrong "in the details" but feel right. The jihad against Trump looked, on the surface, like it was a step in the right direction, but it was, in reality, ignoring the actual evil of his policies -- because those were approved by all sides. The 1619 project is the same: it is based on dishonesty, but because it flies the right banner, it's supported even by the likes of Chomsky. In reality, it neatly skirts changing anything in the present day that would help anyone it purports to represent. It's just another fairy tale that wastes a lot of energy in the wrong direction, leaving the oligarchy in place, the people powerless, and the workers in chains. It will entrench the race war amongst the poor and oppressed that has always been the weapon of the rich. That's why a place like the New York Times loves it. They are supporting their masters, whether they're aware of what they're doing or not. Hell, most of the people there are so young and dumb and indoctrinated that they not only don't realize how well they're being manipulated into supporting the status quo, they don't even have the capacity for realizing something like that. They're blinded by their own self-righteousness and narcissism and instinct for self-preservation. There is no value to a truth that is manufactured. Maybe Chomsky is just getting tired -- hell, I would be -- or maybe he's getting "woke" from living and working in -- and never leaving -- Cambridge, Massachusetts. Or maybe he just got one wrong. Or maybe I'm missing something. [On Socialism] A final, good word from Chomsky that doesn't require a rant from me in response. "Having a job is not something you look forward to. It’s something you may be forced into, but it’s an attack on your dignity as a human being, your rights as a free human being. Having a job means being forced to live under the orders of a master for most of your waking life. Nothing wonderful about that. Skilled workers in the late nineteenth century had a very lively working-class press. They expressed their hope that over time people wouldn’t succumb to this attack on their rights—that they wouldn’t accept as normal the idea that they have to be subject to a master." That's the message we should be focused on. That's the aim we should have. The oligarchy knows it and does everything it can to distract us from the goal of changing this stupid way of running things. They know the people would have the power and they have to keep the people at each other's throats to keep the sheep from looking up and seeing their true enemies....and turning on them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See "UK to send largest Carrier Strike Group since Falklands/Malvinas war to South China Sea" by Robert Stevens for more information. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4245 2021-04-29T22:50:04+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

includes two interviews. The first half is an interview with Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht about Sanders's legacy (which was OK), but the interview with "Jane McAlevey" about "why the union lost to Amazon in Bessemer" was absolutely top-notch. McAlevey discusses in... ]]>

includes two interviews. The first half is an interview with Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht about Sanders's legacy (which was OK), but the interview with "Jane McAlevey" about "why the union lost to Amazon in Bessemer" was absolutely top-notch. McAlevey discusses in no uncertain terms how obvious it was that the union was going to lose the vote against Amazon in Bessemer: * They didn't have the votes; they either knew it or they were even more incompetent than they already appeared * They had only 34% before the campaign started. "Membership doesn't go up after that; it always goes down" * They didn't know how to run a campaign * They didn't prepare their potential members for the game plan that Amazon inevitably ran (employers almost always use the same tactics when they're fighting a unionization drive) * The organizers pulled in endorsements from Hollywood, rather than local clergy, which had the opposite effect * Instead of telling potential members, "Why do you think Amazon is suddenly so interested in how you spend your money?", they played up that Alabama is a "right to work" state and that members wouldn't even necessarily have to pay dues. That last one was ridiculous. The union deliberately torpedoed their own dues using the arguments of their enemy. McAlevey summed up by saying that she "knew it was going to fail since the initial vote count was too long in December". Nothing that ensued -- their missteps on focusing on digital rather than physical engagement, their focus on union staff and celebrities rather than workers and community -- convinced her that the organizers were going miraculously turn it around. From the interview, I dug up the article she'd mentioned, in which she summed up the election, "Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign" by Jane McAlevey , making many of the same points she made in the podcast, "Three factors weigh heavily in any unionization election: the outrageously vicious behavior of employers—some of it illegal, most fully legal—including harassing and intimidating workers, and telling bold lies (which, outside of countries with openly repressive governments, is unique to the United States); the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organizers; and the broader social-political context in which the union election is being held." "The organizers can then help the worker understand that paying dues is essential to build the power required to take on monstrous employers like Amazon." "The last thing nervous workers want is to be seen near the place they work, talking with union supporters. Successful campaigns require house calls—unannounced physical visits to workers’ homes so the conversation can be had away from the company’s watchful eye." "A majority public structure test is when a majority of workers who are eligible to vote in an upcoming union election, or who are voting to strike, sign a petition or take photos and produce a public poster, flyer, or website that displays their signature or faces, with a message stating their intent to vote yes. When asked why that wasn’t done in Bessemer, the union’s communications director told me it had to “protect the workforce” from being fired, so it didn’t want to do anything in public. Game over." "When fear is running hard inside a facility—which it certainly was in the Amazon election—the only way to overcome it is by asking each pro-union worker to step out and declare themselves pro-union publicly. What “protects the workers” is when a majority of them take this action together, all at once. You are teaching collective power in the conversations and actions." "When there are more outside supporters and staff being quoted and featured in a campaign than there are workers from the facility, that’s a clear sign that defeat is looming." "The media, especially the genre of media called the labor media, should have never overhyped this campaign—or the Volkswagen campaign, or the Nissan campaign. In all three cases, the impending defeat was evident everywhere. When media folks prioritize clicks and followers over reality, it doesn’t help workers, and probably hurts them." If you're interested in more of Jane McAlevey's writing, she's published an excerpt from her book No Shortcuts called "Smithfield Foods: A Huge Success You’ve Hardly Heard About" . This documents a hard-fought and ultimately wildly successful campaign to unionize a food-processing plant in North Carolina, a state that had 3% union participation in its labor force at the time. They got a tremendous package for their workers -- and did nearly everything differently from the union in Bessemer. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4246 2021-04-29T22:42:03+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

included the following about George Floyd's intoxication level. "The trouble is what’s not in the indelible picture: Mr. Floyd’s prodigious ingestion of the world’s hardest narcotic, fentanyl, at a level likely to cause death, plus methedrine, plus" ... ]]>

included the following about George Floyd's intoxication level. "The trouble is what’s not in the indelible picture: Mr. Floyd’s prodigious ingestion of the world’s hardest narcotic, fentanyl, at a level likely to cause death, plus methedrine, plus THC, on top of a 90-percent blockage of a coronary artery, and other cardiopathies, and Covid-19, all according to the official medical examiner." I'd already read this claim a few times and had heard both that the medical-examiner's report should be dismissed as not relevant as well as considered to be very relevant. So I dug it up here: "HHennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office Autopsy Report for George Floyd" . The case title is "Cardiopulmonary Arrest Complicating Law Enforcement Subdual, Restraint, And Neck Compression". The parts that leap out to me (not a doctor) are, "Arteriosclerotic heart disease, multifocal, severe" but also "No life-threatening injuries identified", which I take to mean that they'd identifies his injuries as internal, not external. The report does state that Floyd was "positive for 2019-nCoV RNA by PCR" and had "Fentanyl 11 ng/mL" in his system, as well as a metabolite of Fentanyl, "Norfentanyl 5.6 ng/mL" (indicating that part of whatever he'd taken had been processed). I, of course, had to quickly look up Norfentanyl to discover that it was a metabolite ("an intermediate or end product of metabolism", according to "Wikipedia" ). On top of that, there were also "Methamphetamine 19 ng/mL" as well as "11-Hydroxy Delta-9 THC 1.2 ng/mL", which is, according to "11-Hydroxytetrahydrocannabinol" , a metabolite of cannabis. "Cotinine" (metabolite of nicotine) and "Caffeine" were also present. No ethanol, though. As far as I know (not a doctor), though, these are just trace amounts. 11ng/mL doesn't sound like very much, to be honest. Not when you're still allowed to drive in many countries with .5% (or .005) BAC (Blood Alcohol Content). Compared to that, .000011 (or .0011%) seems vanishingly small. On the other hand, Fentanyl is considered to be anywhere from 50-100x stronger than morphine and morphine is much stronger than ethanol. There's a decent chance that .0011% is a pretty high dose. To try to figure out what a big does of Fentanyl was, I looked up "Fentanyl 11 ng/mL" and found the report "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" , which describes other Fentanyl overdose victims as follows, "The Connecticut Medical Examiner’s Office performed postmortem toxicology screens on specimens obtained from two patients who died en route to the hospital (patients E and I). Serum samples from the hospitalized patients analyzed at UCSF demonstrated fentanyl levels of 0.5–9.5 ng/mL (Table 2) (therapeutic range for analgesia = 0.6–3.0 ng/mL) (4); postmortem levels in the first two patients who died were 11 ng/mL (patient E) and 13 ng/mL (patient I). Norfentanyl, a major metabolite of fentanyl, was detected in the serum of nine patients; norfentanyl was not detected in postmortem testing of patients E and I, presumably because death occurred before metabolism of fentanyl to norfentanyl." With this research, it seems that the levels of Fentanyl found in George Floyd's bloodstream led to overdoses in other patients. At the very least, he seems to have taken 3.6x-18.6x (11 / .6 - 11 / 3.0) what is considered an analgesic dose. That's not even considering that he also had half again as much of the metabolite, suggesting (to me, not a doctor) that his body had already processed part of whatever he'd taken. Can you imagine what a does of Fentanyl that big feels like? I must have gotten something wrong in my analysis because...how was George Floyd even still walking? Either he'd built up a resistance (can you do that?) or he was absolutely not a danger to anyone, other than to maybe falling on top of them. I can't believe he'd be a threat as he was probably barely in control of his limbs. Although some are proposing that this heroic dose of Fentanyl was the reason he died, it seems more likely that this undermines Chauvin's claim that Floyd was dangerous and that he had to subdue him for "public safety". As for whether Chauvin should have been charged and convicted of murder, Minnesota law "defines third-degree murder" as: "[...] without intent to effect the death of any person, caus[ing] the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life" ...which sounds pretty much like what Chauvin did. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4088 2021-04-25T23:10:23+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

(in fairness, from an article that can’t tell "access" from "axis") "The Atlantic’s David Frum, the man who coined the term "access of evil" for the Bush administration, professed his outrage over the emergence of an alliance of reactionary thinkers, including Greenwald and Matt Taibbi on the left and Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and the Federalist Magazine on the right." Joe Rogan is in no way right wing. He hunts, you nitwits. That doesn’t make him right-wing. You would, of course, have to listen to the words he actually says, which is too much work for most people, apparently. It's far easier to pick up official talking points and go with those. Nobody ever got fired for agreeing with the Democratic Party at a purportedly left-leaning but pretty corporatist outfit. Pretty much everyone who’s against Greenwald is still happily chirping about a Russian-influence theory that has been long since disproven to have happened in the way characterized. Luckily, they managed to train a whole country full of people to, once again, respond to anything they don’t like as Communist or Russian-influenced in order to invalidate it without consideration. This sounds like a healthy intellectual culture that’s bound to lead to a healthy, thoughtful culture. "As journalist Matt Taibbi noted, "The Intercept uncritically took dictation from John Brennan, Jim Clapper, and Michael Hayden, and killed a piece by their Pulitzer-winning founder because it was critical of the probable next president."" Max Blumenthal gets in a great murder-by-words on Twitter here. "The Intercept’s Betsy Reed, who earns $427,419 a year & produces zero journalism of her own, mocks independent journalists who rely on Substack & Patreon to get by. Not everyone has a reclusive billionaire to pay them huge sums to edit stuff no one reads." [Some interesting interviews] In the following video, Chris Hedges interviewed Matt Taibbi on his show On Contact. In it, they spend half an hour discuss various topics, but there is a focus on the way the "official" press plays court stenographer for the liars and manipulators in organizations like the CIA and the NSA -- or others who have retired from the military or these agencies to offer their opinions to the press. [media] In the following video, The Hill interviews Glenn Greenwald about why he left The Intercept. He also describes an atmosphere in journalism that is far more about political posturing than about establishing a common set of facts and information. [media] "Tucker was one of my biggest defenders when the Bolsonaro government was trying to have me arrested. […] When I wanted to talk about the persecution of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, I got to go on Tucker’s show to do it … and reach an audience that, even though they may not agree with everything I’m saying in the moment, by being able to communicate with them and have an open channel of discussion with them, they are, at least, if they trust me, they’re going to give me a fair hearing. "Which is what you want if you believe the things that you’re saying need to be heard and are important. It’d be so much easier to isolate myself in echo chambers where everybody applauds me. […] The reason I started writing was that I wanted to bring attention to the things that I thought the media was ignoring. Not what the media was already covering. I assume that my readers already know all the reasons why Trump is horrible. I’ve written negatively about Trump before. "I just don’t think it’s a valuable use of my time or platform to just go around repeating what CNN and MSNBC and the NY Times Op-ed page are already saying. What good does that do, other than win me applause? I want to bring attention to some of the kind of unseen trends that I think are really disturbing, that my readers would benefit from rather than just having their view reinforced and I think that’s why I’ve built up a loyal audience over the years." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4242 2021-04-25T22:34:33+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, we learn that the U.S. took a nearly unbelievably provocative step. Can you imagine any other country -- allied with Canada, as the U.S. is with Turkey -- sending warships into Lake Superior as a "show of force" against the U.S.? "Last Friday, Zelensky met with US president Biden, who assured him of full US support against Russia. In response to these provocations, Russia has amassed troops on the borders to Ukraine, announced military exercises and is reinforcing its navy in the Black Sea." "In speaking of “Russian aggression,” the imperialist powers, Kiev and their lackeys in the media are turning reality on its head. It is Ukraine, backed by NATO and the US, not Russia, that has been systematically escalating the situation and pushing the region to the brink of all-out war." "Vladimir Putin’s government has given the West numerous warnings over the years that attempting to make Ukraine a NATO military client crosses a bright red line in terms of Russia’s security.” Carpenter warned that the situation could escalate into a nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Amid war danger in Black Sea, Turkey threatens Montreux Convention" by Barış Demir tells us that Turkey is very complicit in helping NATO get it's warships closer to Russia. "Washington and Berlin responded with an attempted military coup against Erdoğan in 2016, while Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. The coup’s failure further undermined Ankara’s relations with NATO." "Sections of the navy are objecting to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s talk of using plans for an Istanbul Canal to scrap the Convention, which limits warship deployments to the Black Sea. This could allow NATO to deploy warships from the Mediterranean, at will, to threaten Russia’s coast." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "U.S. Imposes Stiff Sanctions on Russia, Blaming It for Major Hacking Operation" tells of how the U.S. is not just moving militarily, but also at the financial level -- tightening existing and already quite brutal sanctions on the Russian economy. [image] This is madness. Look at that headline: these are the words of war criminals. Naturally, the Times has to write that Trump gave Russia only "wrist slaps" because he failed to completely decimate the Russian economy. Thank goodness we've now got a firm hand on the rudder who will be willing to go the extra mile to really make the Russian citizenry suffer, as the U.S. is already doing in Iran. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "US government strikes back at Kremlin for SolarWinds hack campaign" by Dan Goodin chimes in with the standard formulation that, contrary to nearly all historical evidence, everything the U.S. claims about Russia's activities is true, even when presented without a shred of evidence. "US officials on Thursday formally blamed Russia for backing one of the worst espionage hacks in recent US history and imposed sanctions designed to mete out punishments for that and other recent actions." "Russian government officials have steadfastly denied any involvement in the SolarWinds campaign." "Besides attributing the SolarWinds campaign to the Russian government, Thursday’s release from the Treasury Department also said that the SVR was behind the August 2020 poisoning of Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny with a chemical weapon, the targeting of Russian journalists and others who openly criticize the Kremlin, and the theft of “red team tools,” which use exploits and other attack tools to mimic cyber attacks." Sure, why not? As long as you're making baseless accusations against an official enemy, just pile it on. It costs them literally nothing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Days later, though, as the article "Joe Biden’s Demonic Phase" by James Howard Kunstler points out, the unquestionably belligerent moves against Russia started to fall apart. "Three weeks ago, Ol’ White Joe called Vladimir Putin “a killer.”  This week, Ol’ Joe called Vlad on the phone and suggested a friendly in-person meet-up in some “third country.” In the meantime, Ol’ Joe essayed to send a couple of US warships into the Black Sea to assert America’s interest in Ukraine, the failed state whose American-sponsored failure was engineered in 2014 by Barack Obama’s State Department. Turkey, which controls the narrow entrance to the Black Sea, was notified that two US destroyers would be steaming through its territory. Hours after the announcement, the US called off the ships. Then, hours after Ol’ Joe proffered that summit meeting, his State Department imposed new economic sanctions on Russia and tossed out a dozen or so Russian embassy staff. How’s that for a coherent foreign policy?" "[...] the mentally weak Joe Biden is merely projecting the picture of a weakened and confused USA [...]" I think that sounds about right. I can't imagine what the Russians really think about the U.S.'s foreign policy right now. As Goldstein pointed out above, they're understandably concerned and cannot completely ignore U.S. blustering -- no matter how incoherent. Trump embodied the belligerent, unsophisticated, ignorant, lowbrow asshole/bully that America has always been. Biden embodies what comes after: the senility of an empire that was already ineffective but, in not even realizing it, evinces that character even more with every bewildered lurch. "[...] the blundering team of Sec’y of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who went to Alaska recently to tell the Chinese delegation that they were morally unworthy of conducting trade negotiations, thereby torpedoing the trade negotiations that they went to Alaska to conduct. Smooth move fellas." It's hard to ascribe this ham-handed diplomacy to an "8-dimensional chess" strategy. Occam's Razor suggest that these chronic war-hawks are just not good at dealing with countries as equals (diplomacy) because they don't believe they have to and are unaware of how the world has changed since they last formed an opinion or learned a fact, about 30 years ago. Likely also playing a factor is their utter lack of morality or ethics or self-awareness -- especially of their own hypocrisy. They don't know and they don't care. There will be consequences. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Bombast From Washington: Joe Biden’s Russia Sanctions" by Gilbert Doctorow takes us up to the present day. "Were the sanctions intended to sabotage the call for a summit meeting? As a practical matter the sanctions will at a minimum postpone the setting of any date for a summit, and quite possibly end in the cancellation of any meeting. But I doubt this was the intent of the sanctions’ sponsors or of Biden himself. Rather it is a demonstration of the utterly ignorant and self-focused way that U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle propose to deal with the world. "US policy is based on scenarios written by political scientists with the intellectual capacity and life experience of college sophomores." "Let us define this “position of strength” notion in very contemporary and instantly understandable words: it means the US knee on the neck of a supine Russia. “I can’t breathe” is the only response that these militants want to hear from the Russians before they sit down and talk about the way forward in mutual relations. "This is precisely what Russia under Vladimir Putin resists tooth and nail, saying that Russia will negotiate only under conditions of mutual respect and equal treatment of national interests." In the Oliver Stone interviews, Putin repeatedly says that it is clear that the U.S. does not see any other country as any ally or trading partner, but only as "vassals". "The sanctions were bombast, which Google Search defines as “high-sounding language with little meaning, used to impress people.” The ‘free world’ and ‘democratic values’ defenders who pack the Biden administration are big talkers and cowardly actors. "The Russians understand that very well, even if it eludes nearly all American commentators. The Russians point to the decision taken by the US on Tuesday NOT to send its two warships into the Black Sea, as had been previously announced. Instead the vessels turned back before entering the Dardanelles and were sent to Cyprus to do some unspecified repair work. "[...advisors from the Pentagon] knew that the Russians could and would, if necessary, neutralize the two US Navy vessels in a matter of minutes by electronic warfare weaponry." "[...] there is absolutely no sense to convene a U.S.-Russia summit at present or in the foreseeable future. It will resolve nothing." In the postscript to his article, Doctorow included a list of the details of the Russian response to the sanctions: * U.S. diplomats now limited to 25-mile radius of their station (instead of unfettered access to the Russian Federation (RF)) * U.S. missions not allowed to hire "Russians or third-country nationals" * U.S.-sponsored NGOs and foundations must leave the RF * Barred some high-ranking U.S. citizens from entry (e.g. Susan Rice and John Bolton) * "[P]ublicly recommended that the US ambassador to Russia go home for extended consultations" Russia is clearly indicating that, if the U.S. does not want to have discussions on an equal and diplomatic footing, then Russia is not interested in discussions at all. Russia doesn't need the U.S. for anything. It is, of course, very wary of the damage that the U.S. could cause, but it has long since planned and executed alternatives with allies like China and Iran, with which it is forced to collaborate. Russia still reaches out to Europe a bit more -- in particular Germany and the eastern states -- which, although willing to work on large infrastructure projects like Nordstrom II, generally gives the cold shoulder in public. This two-faced attitude is at least partially in order to appease its ally the U.S., but also because of what is clearly a deep-seated prejudice against Russia. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article "Amid mounting tensions, US imposes sanctions on Russia" by Clara Weiss has some information about the fallout from Biden's loopy behavior. tl;dr: Russia probably won't summit with Biden and Ukraine says its going to look for nukes on the open market if NATO doesn't give it some. Fun times! "The alliance, which has aggressively expanded to Russia’s borders over the past three decades, and has backed multiple coups in countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, hypocritically called on Russia “to cease immediately its destabilising behavior.”" "Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that in the light of the sanctions a summit between Biden and Putin, which Biden had proposed on Tuesday, would not happen anytime soon, but did not rule it out entirely either." "On Thursday, the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, threatened that if Ukraine is not soon admitted to NATO, Ukraine would be forced to “rearm on our own.” Speaking to Deutschlandfunk, he said that the Ukrainian government was “considering” the acquisition of nuclear weapons." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just a week later and we're on to the next stages. The article "Vladimir Putin warns against further anti-Russian provocations" by Andrea Peters covers Putin's annual "state of the union" address to Russia. "With Russia and US-allied Ukraine on the brink of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in his annual address to the nation on Wednesday that “the organizers of any provocations that threaten the fundamental interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way that they have not regretted for a long time.” "Stating that thus far Moscow has tempered its response to “unfriendly actions” by foreign nations and continues to seek healthy relations with these powers, Putin added, “We really do not want to burn bridges. But if someone interprets our good intentions as indifference or weakness and they themselves intend to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia’s response will be asymmetric, rapid, and tough.”" These remarks are presumably aimed at not only at Zelensky in Ukraine, but also at the maniacs in Washington. "Even as he confronts a serious geopolitical crisis to Russia’s west, the Russian president devoted more than eighty percent of his speech to domestic issues, in particular the coronavirus and the economy." The rest of the article is an interesting analysis of the domestic situation in Russia. It is not rosy, as the country is still largely an oligarchy and Putin makes promises about improving things that's he's rarely kept, even partially. On the other side of the border, "President Zelensky says Ukraine “ready” for war with Russia as tensions mount" by Jason Melanovski, Clara Weiss , the rhetoric is unhinged, with Zelensky of Ukraine sounding more and more like Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia back in 2008. "[m]ounting tensions in the Black Sea region, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared on Tuesday night that Ukraine is “ready” for war with Russia. He warned that the country would “stand to the last man” in the event of a war." Fantastic. Armed to the teeth by the Americans ("[...] over $2 billion in military aid and equipment it has received from the US since [2014]") and full of stupid bravado. "On Wednesday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba revealed that he had asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to provide Ukraine “powerful means of electronic warfare” for its stand-off with Russia. He also said that he had called upon EU Foreign Ministers to cut Russia off the SWIFT system [...]" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4222 2021-04-11T22:59:57+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4221 2021-04-11T22:52:44+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

provides more analysis. Rall points out that we've set the bar way too low for a president at a press conference. It's not just whether he wandered off -- he kind of did, near the end, leaving the podium twice before just permanently fucking off without even saying goodbye or god bless -- it's whether he's capable of discussing the matters that interest a nation for an hour. Or two. Or three. He's not. As Rall points out, "Biden crashing and burning on a question about senate procedure would be like me messing up questions about Photoshop or Central Asia, two things that have been central to most of my life. If I start mixing up RGB and CMYK and Ashkabat and Astana, topics I know forward and backward and about which I am obsessed, that will point not to whatever-no-biggie but to worrisome cognitive decline." It got even worse when he was asked about the filibuster, which he seemed to confuse with the parliamentarian. That's OK for someone who knows nothing about the Senate, but not OK for someone who was in the Senate and the White House for over 40 years. If he can no longer remember how these things work, how is he fit to be president? "It took five reporters a question and four follow-ups to make Biden understand that he was being asked whether he favored the elimination of the filibuster, a question at the top of political news since he came into office. Here’s what the commander-in-chief finally came up with: “If we could end it with 51 [votes], we would have no problem. You’re going to have to — the existing rule — it’s going to be hard to get a parliamentary ruling [my emphasis] that allows 50 votes to end the filibuster, the existence of a filibuster.”" That is muddled. It's not how he was talking even four hears ago. "Pre-dementia, after all, Biden was as intimately knowledgeable about Senate rules and procedure as any human being on earth. He served 36 years as a senator and 8 years as vice president/speaker of the senate—a total of 42 years. Pre-dementia, there was no world in which Biden would have said anything so totally, crazily, amazingly incorrect. Not drunk, not asleep, not at all." If he's not running things, then who is? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4217 2021-04-11T22:37:48+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

[media] "Meanwhile, Zenz’s study accusing China of forced sterilizations didn’t contain any proof of coercion. The Grayzone showed how “Zenz consistently framed the expansion of public healthcare services in Xinjiang as" ... ]]>

[media] "Meanwhile, Zenz’s study accusing China of forced sterilizations didn’t contain any proof of coercion. The Grayzone showed how “Zenz consistently framed the expansion of public healthcare services in Xinjiang as evidence of a genocide in the making.” Characterizing expanded access to birth control as genocide is what the Christian Right does. So it makes perfect sense that Zenz – an evangelical fundamentalist himself – holds this view." "In reality, the decrease in birth rate is a normal, predictable outcome of economic development. When people are more financially secure, they choose to have fewer kids and do it later in life. In fact, China is pouring money into Xinjiang to develop its economy. According to a 2015 U.S. government study, “To decrease ethnic instability in Xinjiang, the Chinese government’s plan is to economically develop the region.”" "Then there’s Tursunay Ziyawundun. She’s the central character in the forced-sterilization narrative cooked up by Adrian Zenz. She’s delivered teary testimonies for the BBC, CNN and Democracy Now. A few months before those reports, however, she told Buzzfeed News, “I wasn’t beaten or abused.” Again, why did she change her story? And why did all of these media outlets fail to do a basic check into her past statements?" "Xinjiang is the heart of China’s Belt and Road initiative, the economic plan that connects Asia to Europe and the Middle East. It’s an alternative model to the dictatorship of the U.S. dollar, where the World Bank and International Monetary Fund turn countries into neo-colonies for American corporations – a system backed up with the constant threat of military invasion. The U.S. can’t deal with legitimate competition, so it’s resorting to smears in an attempt to isolate China diplomatically and slow its economic growth." This is an interesting theory. We have two opposed viewpoints: one is that the Chinese is government is simultaneously trying to enslave and exterminate an ethnic population. They are doing this not through actually killing them in large numbers, but by forcing them into reeducation/labor camps and controlling their numbers with birth control. At the same time, they are injecting money into the region because they are economically interested in it. As with nearly every other government on the planet, they would, presumably, like their own elites to benefit from it rather than the locals that actually provide the value. This is classically capitalist. It is still a rather convoluted way of orchestrating a genocide. Perhaps it's the modern, 20th-century way of doing so. I honestly think that this campaign is very similar to the U.S.'s desire to be in Afghanistan. It was only initially about revenge for 9-11 -- we've leave discussion of that misguided and abhorrently criminal justification to the side for now. It is now -- and has been for quite some time -- about keeping troops close to China. It is about disrupting trade routes and keeping an eye on things. It is about setting up non-Chinese resource routes, like oil pipelines. This story about the Uighurs, with its relatively sparse and seemingly unreliable and self-serving sources with dubious paychecks seems very much like exactly the kind of propaganda the U.S. needs to keep its people focused. It's like the U.S. pretending to care about women's rights in Afghanistan -- well, anywhere, really -- it's like the babies being tossed from incubators in Iraq, it's WMDs in that country, it's anything about Qaddafi. They're all just pedestrian lies told to get enough support to provide political cover for projects that would otherwise look to authoritarian and war-like. Far better to pretend, at least superficially, that one was forced into war rather than that one sought it out for personal gain. The show "Redacted Tonight: Whose War Crimes?" by Lee Camp provides a good overview of this effect through the lens of a war-crimes lie that I'd forgotten above: Assad using chemical weapons on his own people. The west has accused Assad of this 3 times (I think) and each time it's been nearly completely evidence-free. Camp shows how 60 Minutes provided a very recent report that continues to promulgate this myth without addressing any of the multiple refutations from investigators actually involved there. [Louis Proyect's Hack Job on the Grayzone] "A Short History of Uighur Resistance" by Louis Proyect "Now, Grayzone’s attention is riveted on the Uighurs. In five different articles published since August 23, 2018, its reporters have warned about an unarmed and largely quiescent population, which is .0084 of the dominant Han nationality, becoming a mortal threat to China. All of these intrepid anti-imperialists at Grayzone have probably never thought much about how Muslims speaking a Turkic language ever ended up as part of China. Anybody with the slightest familiarity with American history would instinctively understand that when Texas became part of the USA, it was the result of an expansionist foreign policy, especially since the indigenous population did not speak English and showed little sympathy for the invading army. So what’s the difference between that and China’s colonization of Xinjiang?" Fucking Louis Proyect nearly always manages to be a supercilious arrogant know-it-all troll who feels he's 100% right and that everyone else fails his purity test. God help you if you enjoyed an Avengers movie instead of some obscure Iranian socialist documentary. He is the very definition of off-putting and ally-killing every time i read him. Here, he's got his panties in such a bunch over Grayzone that he thinks he can just slander them as fake anti-imperialists and accuse them of talking about the threat of the Uighurs to the Han Chinese. They do not, as anyone who actually reads their articles already knows. Proyect is engaging in fabrication because he knows no-one will actually go check his accusations. That's also why he conveniently doesn't link or cite anything. It's just underhanded. The Grayzone has never argued that China is not authoritarian or that the Uighurs are not an oppressed minorty. Quite the opposite. They simply argue for truth and evidence, especially as relates to the charge of genocide, something that Proyect conveniently ignores -- like how his support of the accusation of genocide against China can be interpreted as implicit support of the U.S. imperial project. It's propaganda from one authoritarian state against another and the Grayzone advises not to believe it. Proyect talks about how the Uighurs are oppressed -- often with very eloquent historical context -- but it's a different topic than what the Grayzone reports on, generally. They're technically on the same side, but Proyect has to burn all potential allies because he's a pompous ass. "The USA annexed Mexico in 1845. Showing the same kind of alpha male drive, the Qing dynasty annexed East Turkistan in 1759, henceforth to be called Xinjiang, or new territory." I only know this isn't satire because Proyect doesn't have a sense of humor. "Unfortunately, Sheng’s identification with Soviet leaders included a willingness to imitate Stalin’s ruthless police state controls." So telling that this is considered unfortunate, because Proyect is desperate to retain an ally in Sheng. Thus, he uses much softer and more forgiving language to forgive the latter's actual descent into authoritarianism. The Grayzone, on the other hand, he considers to be a bunch of faux-intellectual faux-anti-imperialist nigh war criminals just for reporting about the suspicious origins of the Chinese genocide trope we're seeing today. "In October 1944, the Soviets helped the Uighurs mount a revolt across Xinjiang that led to a major step forward. Armed with Soviet weapons, they were able to secure a victory that led to the formation of the East Turkistan Republic (ETR)." This is what he deems self-determination -- assistance from one authoritarian power against another. Perhaps he supports a similar effort on the part of the U.S., which clearly shares the same moral high ground that the 1944 Soviet did. It's amazing that the Soviets had time to help the Uighurs in 1944, right when they were fighting the Japanese on one front and the Germans on the other. "In this sense, it was no longer a matter of 19th century colonialism but up-to-date imperialist predation, all of which Grayzone defends as “anti-imperialist” in Orwellian fashion." That's a filthy lie putting that in quotes. After that coherent and informative history, why keep taking shots at Grayzone, especially by making shit up? Again, he has no link to help his readers verify that what he's saying is true. Links and references aren't necessary when you're preaching to a choir. This tack of Proyect's is completely misguided. Grayzone is not the enemy. They may be overdoing it sometimes, but they are allies in spirit. They point out the lie of genocide. Thats important too. They do not say everything is otherwise rosy. "[...] only they were Communists rather than the 21st century’s emerging number one imperialist power cheered on by the neo-Stalinists at Grayzone." This dude is such a dick. He's smart and well-read but utter poison for a revolution. He will alienate everyone, splitting into factions. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4229 2021-04-11T22:36:29+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. I've highlighted and partially transcribed the bits I... ]]>

. I've highlighted and partially transcribed the bits I found interesting. The "Substack page" has more transcription (but it's also only partial). [media] At 03:00, Stoller talks about how we need to turn our tech giants back into platforms instead of purveyors of opinion. "Follow the money. There are really simple ways to fix this problem, but the basic dynamic is don't make it profitable to distort the flow of information. Don't make it a business model. That the basic deal. Take Facebook and Google and treat them like they're communication networks. Morph them into Verizon or AT&T style networks, where they can't discriminate. "If you want to communicate with someone, they get you to communicate with them and then they get you off the network as quick [sic] as possible, and you pay them directly for that service. That's the easiest way to do it." At 10:20, Stoller and Taibbi discuss the death of local journalism because of the rapacious and facially illegal business model of Facebook and Google. "Stoller: It's really local publishers that are getting screwed here. It's like if the Wall Street Journal broke into the New York Times's headquarters and stole their subscriber list and stole their subscription information and stole all the traffic patterns on their web sites and then went and tried to pitch the New York Times's advertisers to advertise on the Wall Street Journal instead [...] we would all be like, wow, that's outrageous, that's crazy, that's stealing. That is effectively what Facebook and Google are doing -- every day -- to millions of publishers. That is their business model. That's just theft. That's why they have 40, 50, 60% margins...because the costs are being borne by someone else. "Taibbi: Right, they don't have to create the content, they don't have to do anything. They don't have to attract the audience. All they have to do is pilfer from it. This is why so many local newspapers have died since 2002. It's something like 21/2-thousand now. There are whole sections of the country that just don't have a newspaper. And a lot of those newspapers were like the best examples of what journalism is. They covered town meetings. They were factual. They had beats. Really good work. They're gone. Because they're the first companies that can't compete with this kind of system. "Stoller: That's exactly right. They fulfilled important functions. They could be really shitty or they could be good. Like, we have problems with COVID because the first line for epidemiologists, local newspapers saying, we have an outbreak here. That's something, that's actually really useful information for epidemiologists. And there are so many places that just don't even have a newspaper anymore. They had a much harder time tracking the pandemic because there were no local newspapers." At 25:00, Taibbi summarizes how Facebook and Google are unlikely to release power here and will most likely capitulate in smaller ways to let themselves be used by Congress as basically another arm of the NSA. "Taibbi: For me, the threat here is -- you can kind of see this potential devil's bargain that kind of already happened a little bit -- which is, the platforms are going to want to keep that surveillance-advertising revenue-model that's been so enormously successful for them. And they're going to want that untouched. As a bargaining chip, they're probably going to be willing to make all sorts of concessions on content moderation. They're expressing a willingness to partner with Capitol Hill on all kinds of things. I worry that we're going to leave these companies with their insane revenue model intact, but then also merge it with political considerations." At 40:30, Stoller makes the argument that China has its own agency, that it's not just the good guy because the U.S. is the bad guy. "China is an aggressive, authoritarian nation and they have specific aims on what they want to do. If nothing else, they want to grab Taiwan. And Taiwan produces 70-80% of our high-end semiconductors. And if they do that, then the U.S. economy goes poof. And how do your address that? I don't know. But you have to start from the premise that these are important questions. [...] the victimhood, like the sense that that's not a problem because it's all our fault, like, that's not true. The Chinese government, they have agency, they have power, they have aims." It's an interesting point, but he could have mentioned that where the so-called left seems bent on assuming that America is the bad guy -- which would be a welcome addition to ameliorate the current unceasing belligerence -- the current policy is one of America-first that has no notion of approaching other parties on equal footing, to say nothing of entering into negotiations as an underdog. America loves an underdog, but never sees itself as one. The "left" he was talking about is a bit of a straw-man, I think. Sometimes it really is that the U.S. is 100% out of bounds and that's just how it is. Stoller also kind of assumes -- just like the State department -- that U.S. interests are paramount. But how can that be, everywhere and in other countries, or on their borders? The U.S. nearly constantly assumes that it has the same privileges near and in other countries that it would never ever consider allowing near its own borders. Take Taiwan, for example. The U.S. is highly dependent on its semiconductors. Instead of accepting this and treading lightly and perhaps trying to build up local industry to wean itself away, the U.S. sends military supplies to Taiwan to encourage it to go on a war footing against its neighbor China in alliance with the U.S., which is located around the world. As far as the Chinese are concerned, they already have Taiwan. At the very least, the situation is "very, very complex" . "Since the ROC lost its United Nations seat as "China" in 1971 (replaced by the PRC), most sovereign states have switched their diplomatic recognition to the PRC, recognizing the PRC as the representative of all China, though the majority of countries avoid clarifying what territories are meant by "China" in order to associate with both the PRC and ROC." "The political solution that is accepted by many of the current groups is the perspective of the status quo: to unofficially treat Taiwan as a state and at a minimum, to officially declare no support for the government of this state making a formal declaration of independence." "The status quo is accepted in large part because it does not define the legal or future status of Taiwan, leaving each group to interpret the situation in a way that is politically acceptable to its members. [...] The PRC seeks the end of Taiwan's de facto independence through the process of reunification, and has not ruled out the use of force in pursuit of this goal." The U.S. has inserted itself into this mix to "defend its chips" instead of "paying for them" by helpfully badgering the PRC steer straight toward armed conflict with Taiwan. The U.S. simply cannot accept that it is not in charge of everything. It just sold weapons to Taiwan. Can you imagine the Chinese selling weapons to Canada? The current situation suits everyone just fine -- except the U.S.. And why do we have to give a fuck what America thinks? Because America is a moron with a gun and storms in everywhere, demanding shit. While China has "agency" and its own "aims", it can't hold a fucking candle to how out-of-line the U.S. is in its foreign policy. If the U.S. forces the situation further, what is the likely outcome? A hot war with Taiwan as proxy? For what? The chip factories will be ruined anyway. Do you think the island of Taiwan has a chance against the PRC? WTF? And wanting to avoid that situation make the left naive? Unwilling to deal with foreign policy? I don't agree with Stoller here: I think if you're looking clear-eyed at the situation, the sanest question is to ask why the fuck are we there in the first place? Can we defend access to our chip supply without the military? Or do we just de-facto use the military for everything? What if the PRC were to finally resolve the governmental uncertainty with the ROC in Taiwan and just agree that there is one government and it's the PRC? That's the most likely way it would go -- I don't think anyone's stupid enough to think that Taiwan would somehow end up taking over the PRC, right? Unless you're really high up in the State department of the U.S., in which case you're expected to believe that and build policy on it. Time to bring democracy to the PRC and be greeted as liberators, once again. It's a mystery to me why the PRC would stop manufacturing and selling to the States if they were to unify Taiwan (eliminating the ROC once and for all). The situation is that Taiwan ostensibly has its own government, but it's under the purview of China. What exactly is going to change if the U.S. Navy backs off? The problems come because the U.S. is trying to capture Taiwan on the doorstep of China. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4230 2021-04-11T22:36:00+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

or "Ballotpedia" for more information. At 25:00, Zha discusses Biden's frailty, saying of the Democrats that "they chose this old man." Here's the video they were talking about. [media] In fairness, it was pretty windy. This on the day after Putin wished Biden good health. Putin cursed him! Putin wouldn't fall over in a stiff breeze, though. At 34:00 Zha said, that he'd read a Russian ... who was amazed that America would choose to antagonize Russia and China at the same time. He responded that (quick transcription), "[...] our leaders are not the smartest bunch. I take it back. These elites are very smart about taking grift from the military-industrial complex. They don't care if America has a bad relationship with Russia or China. What does that impact them personally? Nothing. They benefit from increasing tensions with Russia and China. That increases their funds from Lockheed Martin, etc. That's all they care about. They talk about American interests, but they only care about their own personal interests." At 57:00 Zha says that Blinken was making a statement for U.S. media rather than talking to the Chinese diplomats, which is why they got some pushback. Blinken was completely undiplomatic and was grandstanding for his own country's media for domestic political points rather than discussing salient points with the Chinese after having browbeaten them into having a summit on non-neutral territory. At 59:30 Dan says that China has 1/6 of the average GDP per-capita, yet has eliminated extreme poverty This is, of course, by the very weak definition of "extreme poverty" accepted by the U.N. ... but, the U.S. can't even clear that bar, with 6x the GDP per captita -- because it's much, much more unequal. Don't waste your breath complaining about the Chinese oligarchs who run everything if you're an American -- focus on those much closer to home who put their Chinese counterparts to shame. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4162 2021-04-11T21:52:05+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

includes a description of what the Boogaloos are like when you actually bother to cover them and ask them what they stand for (instead of just triggering on CNN's description of them). "According to Fischer, the Twitter announcement didn’t exactly" ... ]]>

includes a description of what the Boogaloos are like when you actually bother to cover them and ask them what they stand for (instead of just triggering on CNN's description of them). "According to Fischer, the Twitter announcement didn’t exactly make sense, because the protesters in Ohio were more of a libertarian ilk, and, as Farina and Chariton discovered in the Virginia crowd, not so clearly aligned with Trump as Twitter and other media outlets may have imagined. Fischer has frequently covered events involving the gun-toting Boogaloos, whom he describes as anti-authoritarian and less likely to be Trumpists than to profess a pox-on-both-houses attitude to Trump and Joe Biden both (“You might hear something like, ‘Unless you put Ron Paul on the ballot, I’m not voting,’” he says)." The article "YouTube personality Jimmy Dore promotes fascist Boogaloo Boy" by Eric London is a fantastic example of everything that's wrong with the authoritarian, smug, purity-testing left. London writes, "The affluent social layer Dore represents are hostile to the social interests of the working class and impressed by the gun-toting group of real estate agents, small businessmen and independent contractors who stormed the Capitol on Trump’s orders on January 6." This is not true in any real way. It's for some unknown reason shooting down a potential powerful ally. How many 45-minute videos does Dore need to make with him literally yelling about the elite betraying the working class and poor before this idiot at the WSWS will deign to consider him a fellow traveler? Never? "As for Dore, his own movement to the right is propelled by a more personal trait: stupidity." So Dore is "moving to the right" and "stupid". Gotcha. Ad hominem attacks without so much as a link or quote of proof. Ludicrous. Utterly beneath the editorial quality of much of the rest of the site. Shockingly bad. The comments show several people fighting back but there are a ton of commenters gate-keeping socialism by claiming that no-one who isn't poor could possibly speak for the working class. That is, if you're not poor, you are the enemy. That's a great tactic, honestly: make sure you attack any potential ally, especially if they might have the power to enact your agenda. Obviously, you should continue to question their motives. As you should anyone's really. For example, the author of this piece, Eric London, is a petty person with no journalistic character to his writing whatsoever and yet he has a job as, at least, a stringer at the WSWS, giving him the cachet of looking like a socialist. London writes just like a common American liberal, corraling people into groups without evidence, brigading people for no reason other than he's seen them brigaded by others. He didn't watch or listen to the interview. He had his opinion before he started and then wrote an article, safe in the knowledge that no-one else would bother watching the interview, either. This article is a garbage hit piece that completely ignores the content of the video. It doesn't even link the video. In the video, Dore interviewed a member of the Boogaloo Boys who gave a speech that you couldn't really argue with. He's apparently not even 100% straight (Dore: mine's Jude Law; ... Boogaloo: Orlando Bloom). Is this supposed to be misleading? Is he lying about his sexual orientation to ... what? Convince real socialists he's an ally so he can infiltrate their ranks and then what? Get at the real power in America? Why would he lie about supporting literally every issue that seems important? Why misrepresent his entire agenda? Why, in other words, should I believe an obviously butthurt author on the WSWS like Eric London, who claims that Dore and Panvidya have a completely different agenda than they themselves actually espouse, when he does so without any evidence whatsoever? Do we just believe him because Jimmy Dore bad and Boogaloo bad -- just because CNN says so? And now, apparently, the WSWS? The Boogaloos are, essentially, libertarians. This is not great, of course, because politically, they're not great at explaining how to help poor people without a welfare state. They espouse concern, but that's all. They want smaller communities to come together and help out. That way, generally, lies expression of racism in policy and a whole bunch of failed attempts. But that doesn't make them actual fascists for thinking that they can make it work this time. It makes them naive and in for a rude awakening, should they try to stick to their espoused principles without drifting into socialism. Here's the video that London was writing about: [media] "Dore: So, you reach out to BLM. You reach out to Antifa. The Boogaloo Boys reach out to Antifa. [...] You're anti-war, you're for peace, you're against racism, you're against police brutality, what are some other things? "Magnus Panvidya: Pro sex work, decriminalization, legalize all drugs, end all the wars, close the ICE detainment camps. [...] "[...] This is where we butt heads with conservative groups all the time -- because we're anti-police. [...] This is top vs. bottom, not left vs. right. We can argue about healthcare when we're not dropping bombs on foreign countries. We can talk about how much money to put into education when people aren't having their doors kicked in and being killed in their homes because they [the police] turned up at the wrong address. There are more important things going on. "Dore: So, we would agree on the war; we would agree on the corporate control of our government; we would agree on police brutality; we're not going to agree on the second amendment, [...] I go back and forth, but I'm back to being against guns again [...]" "Magnus Panvidya: We essentially live under a fascist state. If you define fascism as corporations and government working together [the original/classic definition], you see the secret bailouts, you see the public bailouts, you see how these big corporations can do almost anything and they never go under. You never hear about these mega-corporations making a big mistake and falling apart, like they're supposed to do under capitalism. They last forever. And, definitely, they're so in alignment, they work so hand in hand [with government] that I don't even consider them private companies. "Dore: What do you think are some of the solutions? How do we fix the war problem? "Magnus Panvidya: I think if we're talking in the realms of the cleanest and least-violent way to do it, I think mass non-participation, mass strikes, tax strikes, stop getting involved. [...] If you're going to use my tax dollars to blow up brown kids in the Middle East, I'm not going to pay taxes anymore." This is a Libertarian solution, of course, but it's not diametrically opposed to a socialist cause. There's a lot of common ground. Alex Jones has accused Panvidya of being a "paid CIA informant try to destroy the second amendment." "Magnus Panvidya: Free Julian Assange. Free Ross Ulbricht [Silk Road]. Free Edward Snowden. Free Chelsea Manning. [again]" "Dore: It's going to be fun watching people twist this interview, to somehow attack us. "Magnus Panvidya: They'll just say that I'm lying about all this, that I'm making it up to reach out to the left and that we're secretly infiltrating all of these groups [...]" They won't even bother to do that. They'll just report the video without ever having even watched it. They wouldn't even do Panvidya the service of actually listening to what he says and then lying about it. They'll just lie about it. It's faster that way. This isn't a softball interview. Just because the guy gave the "right" answers doesn't mean the questions were easy. He could have, at any point, gone off-trail and said horrific things, but he didn't. Dore drills him at the end about not 100% supporting single-payer. Panvidya argues that the government sucks at it, just like it sucks at fixing roads. Dore says that it's only because we're under a "failed state" (with which Panvidya agree) that government doesn't work. It doesn't mean it can't work. Dore probably didn't convince him, but neither was it a bad discussion. It's the kind of discussion you have to have hundreds of times in order to convince people. It's the work you need to do on the ground, instead of just yelling at people for not having the same opinions as you already have. Magnus ends the interview with a plea to help the Boogaloos root out Neonazis from their ranks. If someone sees a Nazi who says they're a Boogaloo, hit Magnus up on Twitter so "we can take care of him". That sounded kind of ominous, but it seemed earnest enough. The interview segment did not include the interview with "SEP member and World Socialist Web Site Labor Editor Jerry White" nor was I able to find the interview anywhere, so I assume that it went unpublished at White's request. This left London free to make up whatever story he wanted about how the interview went. He certainly took a free hand with describing this interview. [media] "Dore:I think they do a lot of great work over at WSWS -- we feature their work here all the time -- but you're going to see why they're misguided and they're bound to lose. Because they have no idea how to reach out to people who are aligned with themselves ideologically. He has no idea how to reach out to that guy. That guy who I brought on my show. Go watch the interview. The sweetest guy. He's been unemployed, he's gotten no COVID relief, he's pro-LGBT, he's pro-BLM, he's anti-war, and he hates both the parties. "That seems like a guy who would be ripe for a socialist party to have a message to help that guy help that guy come over to the other side. That's what they're supposed to do. In fact, it's incumbent on them to have a recruiting message for people like that. Because, as we all know, economic disasters create people who are ripe to be taken over by right-wing demagogues. So that's why, if you're a true socialist or a leftist, you've got to get to them. You've got to have a message for them. Especially someone who's as open-minded as that guy [Magnus]." White accuses Dore of "flirting with Libertarians", as if Dore was being lulled into Naziism without him even knowing it. You can't even talk to anyone who's not already a socialist. If they're a libertarian, you cut them off as a lost cause without investing a second in trying to get them to work with you on what you must think is the right cause, the answer, socialism. Dore asks him how White would reach out to someone like Magnus and White responded that he doesn't reach out to him because "he's the enemy [...] we fight them." People like White are so identitarian that, when they see a label, they literally don't care about the content, they care about the label. They also no longer care about whether the meaning they've attached to that label might be wrong. He just said that "the Boogaloo boys are an extreme right-wing organization" and that anyone who claims to hold other viewpoints and is in that organization is deluded and has been fooled into being part of a right-wing organization, without them even knowing it. White knows this better. He doesn't care about whether they're workers and people and citizens. "Dore: So you don't reach out to those people who agree with you on certain topics. You don't reach out to other Americans who are workers? If they disagree with you politically, they're not workers anymore?" White went on to describe how fascist the guest was, at which point Dore just lost it and took a much stronger tone, which was 100% called-for. Discussions get heated and when you see someone utterly misrepresenting what you just both literally watched, there is no need to let him go on at length. This is not a formal debate. Dore gave the guy more than enough chances to talk straight and he was insistent on promoting a narrative that was directly contravened by evidence presented in the same discussion. "Dore: That's what not the fucking guy was saying, Jerry. You're putting words in his mouth. Jerry, that's not what he was saying. You're just making shit up now. That guy was anti-racist. He was anti-racist. You're arguing something that we're not even fucking talking about, Jerry. That's not what that guy was saying. You're making a caricature of him. He said the exact opposite of everything you just said. That is not helpful, Jerry." I completely understand why Dore went off. It was a grave injustice and not serious in any way what White was trying to do. I would have steamrolled him, too, probably with the same volume and profanity as Dore. Jimmy Dore finished with: "Jerry White, editor of the WSWS. We wish you great success in your work, organizing workers, that's great work. That's amazing, that you're doing that. Let us know if we can help out. We love the work you do, at the WSWS. It's a real socialist web site, unlike other socialist web sites. I don't mind having a spirited ... dispute ... or whatever you would call it ... a discussion with you. So, I appreciate you coming on and doing that and presenting your point of view and, again, continue your great work. We'd love to have you on again, buddy." He was polite and earnest and he showed how you debate and discuss -- and get heated -- without retaining acrimony. No hard feelings. Instead, they just sneer that Magnus failed the economic wokeness purity test without even trying to educate him for one second. Terrible. Instead of reaching out, this idiot London just goes straight down the rabbit hole, calling Alex Jones an "outright fascist", which is infantile. "The Boogaloo member began by telling Dore he was a “long time fan” of Dore’s program, intimating that Dore attracts other fascist viewers." This writer is an infant. An absolute child who is so much a part of the problem. He will cause more damage than he will ever be able to heal. It's a shame because the WSWS is a very nice web site, with eminently clever people like Andre Damon. This article is far beneath the tenor of most of the rest of the material on the site. It would be stupid and misleading as a blog post, but it's much worse for its prominence on the WSWS web site. How am I so sure that Dore isn't the enemy? Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, and Cornel West are unabashed fans and supporters and have appeared on his show several times. Cornel West has called him a "national treasure". But Eric London of the WSWS knows better and calls him a proto-fascist. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4238 2021-04-11T21:11:05+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, but that link is dead now. Episode #67 is conspicuously absent from the listings on that site. I'm a bit... ]]>

, but that link is dead now. Episode #67 is conspicuously absent from the listings on that site. I'm a bit taken aback that Camp took the video down without explanation. [media] Eric London is much better in this interview than in print, but he cannot help but purity-test everyone. He mentions Jacobin offhandedly in the same breath as the DSA and the Democratic Party. He had a horrifically bad-faith takedown of Jimmy Dore a few months back (which is when I first read him). My God, how can you diss Ariella Thornhill? And Nando? Fuck, dude, find allies where you can. The rest of the interview is spot-on. But man, just back off on excoriating potential allies. I read Jacobin. They are in no way party-line Democrats. And Jimmy Dore is not a fascist, ya dimwit. Sanders also comes under the wheels, of course. The dude is quoting Max something-or-other, a politician from 1918, but Bernie is a criminal on the same level as Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell. AOC is more of a betrayal than Bernie, but not much. Bernie actually makes legislation, but he always votes wrong. I can't remember the last time he did a protest vote. AMLO and Corbyn are also traitors. I get the notion of lesser-evilism, but this is taking it so far that you will never win because you can never get started. It's possible that it draws too much energy away to support inadequate people. I agree with that. I don't understand why he thinks Jimmy Dore is a white supremacist. Or the Boogaloos are racists. The Boogaloo takedown just showed that London is willing to believe whatever the mainstream media says about certain groups, accepting their declarations without question, while ignoring what the groups say about themselves. With "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “bad faith actors”" , he slashes and burns his way through Briahna Joy Gray, who gave a very fair review of his article and its nearly deliberate misinterpretation of AOC. She does not pull any punches on AOC's abhorrent behavior, but she balks at London's salt-the-Earth approach, which has too little regard for facts. To back that up, he deliberately misinterprets the content of the podcast, which was nothing like what he writes about. I listened to it. It seemed fair and balanced. London's heart seems to be in the right place, but he paints with a very broad brush and cannot be trusted as a journalist. He has a very black/white view of the world. If you attack the Democratic party, as he does, then you're good, no matter what you say. If you take issue with what can only be interpreted as deliberate lies (or London's listening faculties are so broken by his filters that he really shouldn't be writing anything for a newspaper of any standing ... at least not without an editor, which seems to be the case right now), then you're the enemy. This is exactly the attitude that the Democrats took toward Trump and I'm sad to see him take it toward the Democrats. You can't accuse a neighbor who smokes under your window of being a pedophile. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4215 2021-03-27T13:11:05+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4189 2021-03-08T23:03:56+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

and took a bunch of notes as I listened. I've cleaned them up a bit, but most of them are stream-of-consciousness and may be a bit repetitive. People have more ability to reach others than they ever have in the past. To that end, Twitter has... ]]>

and took a bunch of notes as I listened. I've cleaned them up a bit, but most of them are stream-of-consciousness and may be a bit repetitive. People have more ability to reach others than they ever have in the past. To that end, Twitter has become more like a public commons, where everyone can set up their soapbox. First off, and obviously, private conversations should not be monitored. (Glasser expressed the same opinion.) There is no justification for anything else. Private conversations are private. I can't even believe we're having this discussion again, as if the viewpoint, "yeah, but I need to monitor what everyone else is saying to make sure they don't say anything I don't approve of" is anything that anyone worth talking to would entertain. But what about the public speech on Twitter? Most of it is public, most of it is like shouting from a soapbox. Glasser does point out that Twitter is a private company and should be able to decide for itself -- as far as the first amendment is concerned. However, when the government that is in charge of their oversight puts pressure on them to censor, then there is a first-amendment problem. It's a back door to government censorship. If Twitter is the public commons and the government is de-facto telling them who to ban, then it becomes a first-amendment issue. These conversations should be treated the same as yelling in the park. Anything you can say there, you can say on Twitter. You can't ban somebody for being an asshole. That's a constitutional right. Glasser expressed the point of view that these are private companies; they can regulate the usage as they see fit. Though, we're nearly at or headed for a private information monopoly, which isn't conducive to an open society. Anytime you have censorship, you must ask who's going to censor? Who's going to decide what's hate speech? "Ira: If there had been hate-speech laws in the 60s, then the most frequent victim would have been Malcolm X, not David Duke." "Ira: Who gets to decide what's hateful? And who gets to decide what's banned? And it isn't often going to be the ones who advocate for these codes." Granting powers of censorship is dangerous because power shifts. We're currently thinking that it's only ever going to shift toward what we are choosing to currently consider to be more justice, but it can easily go the other way, and then the censoring of dissident voices will be legal. When Glasser said that, he was talking to the scolds eager to censor whatever they've chosen to call white supremacists. But anyone who disagrees with the government is a dissident, not just people who's opinions against the government you happen to agree with. Trump is, technically, a dissident. Even the notion of sedition is kind of ridiculous to me, and not compatible with an open society and a democracy. It's interesting how no-one -- anywhere on the spectrum -- really has a problem with that concept. Sedition is agitating against the government. Well...how do you change it without agitating against it? Aren't sedition laws just ways of criminalizing protest? Anyway, if the scolds get their way, then they will have legalized censoring dissident voices -- we're just not great at thinking of people like Tucker Carlson as dissidents. If FOX is thrown off the air, though, that is exactly what will have happened. I just want to be clear that I think it's already bad if that happens -- not just when it might happen to so-called progressive voices sometime in the future, when they inevitably slip from their fleeting power. As soon as dissidents feel power, they want to exercise the exact same regime on their former suppressers. They are no more ethical or committed to principle than the idiots they're replacing. They have no empathy for their newly conquered foes as the new dissidents, whose voices should be protected. They think they're inventing something, that we've come to the end of history and can now dispense with the ladder that they climbed up. They are wrong. They are pedestrian and small-minded and woefully small in their vision. They are traveling a well-worn groove in history. This is what always happens. You're not unique. You're tedious idiots. "Joe: Do we just leave everything up like in a town square? And let people decide for themselves? Ira: I think so. The only alternative is to give someone the power to decide what is hate speech. And who would that be? I don't think you can get out of that dilemma." "Ira: Why would BLM activists want to trust their free-speech rights to somebody like Donald Trump?" Now, in all fairness, the Trump administration didn't do all that much to crack down on speech. They might have wanted to, but they generally couldn't get their shit together to do anything really concrete. Anything they did had a lot of precedent -- they didn't invent anything new. The Biden administration seems to be much more earnest about it. "Ira: Power is the antagonist. And whoever has it, is a danger to civil liberties if they're not restrained. And one of the restraints is in the first amendment of the Constitution, which reads 'Congress shall make no law...'. Now, 'no law' means no law. It doesn't mean 'some laws' [...] because you can't trust them to decide what is good and what is bad." "Ira: That's the distinction that you need to draw: not between the words that are hateful and words that are acceptable, but between words and conduct." "Ira: The charge of incitement has a long, sorry history of being used against speech that everybody would think was protected by the first amendment now." I personally think that Ira lends too much weight to Trump's words as literal, just like everyone else does. How is it that the metaphoric phrase "you have to fight" is continually referred to as the inciting statement when 99.9% of its usage in any other context is non-violent? You have to fight for that job. You have to fight to be heard. You have to fight the power. None of these are considered to mean real, fist-in-the-face violence. "Ira: Liberals are so anxious to get Trump [...] that I'm nervous that the definition of incitement will be broadened and loosened to cover speech that, in fact, should be protected by the first amendment. It took 180 years to get to Brandenburg in 1969." At the end, Ira says he "should be convicted under the impeachment process", which is pretty slippery because then he says that it's because regular people can't be impeached, so it wouldn't broaden the general definition. For a general conviction, he worries (as noted above) that the Supreme Court would ride the wave of anti-Trumpism to broaden the definition of incitement. So he's basically saying that it wasn't incitement, but he really hates Trump. This is better than many other people's opinions, but still wishy-washy. He seems to want to exploit a loophole (that there's a special rule for presidents under which due process is much weaker) to get Trump in a way that wouldn't apply to anyone else (because in a real court, the charges wouldn't hold up for a minute). That attitude doesn't have much to do with a principled stance. "Ira: You've got the guy in your sights and you shoot the gas. And then...the wind shifts -- and the political winds always shift -- and pretty soon the gas is blowing back on you." "Ira: Can the private sector so restrict speech so that it basically means that the only people who have access to speech are the people who have access to money and the means of utilizing the mediums? Yes. That's always been the case, though. When I grew up, if you didn't own a newspaper or radio or television network, you didn't have much right to speak, except to the people right around you. The Internet changes all of that." We need more distributed sites instead of giant social-media centers. Every citizen should have their own site, unable to be DDOSed and unable to be taken down. The people behind Matrix (chat) and Mammoth (messages/news) that are pushing distributed, decentralized software have the right idea. Tim Berners Lee's "Solid" project aims to move the whole web back in this direction. Instead of fighting with Twitter and Facebook to democratize them, we should move away from them, to our own platforms, platforms not controlled by private entities. Of course, those could still be destroyed by Amazon or whoever hosts the servers, so we're not out of the woods yet. "Ira: The question I have for Trump voters is, how did they bring themselves to vote for him this time? Knowing that this election was a referendum on racism and bigotry and religious discrimination. Those are the terms that Trump set. He was the one who turned our politics into a politics of either-or." I think that this is just wrong from start to finish. It was only a referendum on racism and bigotry in the fevered imagination of the people who had the luxury of spending their days glued to CNN. Everyone else was watching the economy fall into the shitter, along with their lives. The point Rogan made that "people just hate and don't trust the Democrats" is mostly correct. They should also hate the Republicans, but they hate the Democrats more. Trump did not start "either-or". He took advantage of it. Glass is making a big mistake in assuming what people were thinking. He says he'd "like to know", but it doesn't sound like he's made a serious attempt to imagine it -- or even find out what it could be. Even his question assumes the worst: that they all looked at all of the issues, with the same priorities as he and his lefty colleagues had, and still came to the conclusion to vote for Trump, despite him being the most obviously evil thing to walk the Earth (as everyone knows, according to orthodoxy). I'm not sure which latin phrase to apply to that form of argumentation, but it's dishonest and unlikely to lead anywhere constructive. "Ira: A vote for Donald Trump -- whether you intended it or not -- was a vote for white nationalism and bigotry, for authorianism." Oh, Ira, now you're making the argument that anyone who disagrees with your take on the situation is either a white nationalist or someone who's so deluded that they can't see that they're supporting white nationalism. The arrogance is breathtaking. You know better what people are thinking than they themselves do. Basically, almost no-one should have voted for Donald Trump and everyone should have voted for Biden, who is, apparently, not a white nationalist. That's the stupid narrative that the fuckers in power set up in the first place. Ira's take on this is so naive, ignoring the context of how the election even became a choice between a right-wing, doddering corporate stooge and a narcissistic man-child. Instead of chafing at the constraints imposed by the business elite (the two-party "choice") and the liberal elite (never Bernie), he falls back to Bush the younger's "with us or against us" horseshit. I can make the same argument: that Ira's vote for Biden (which he admitted to) was a vote for drone-bombing Syrian children. There's a direct line to Ira's subconscious intent and dead children. It's as a simple as that. That sounds stupid, though, doesn't it, Ira? Joe also challenged him on this. It was one of the only times he pushed back rather than just letting Glasser talk. "Joe: Don't you think that there are plenty of other people that don't share that perspective? There's a lot of people that don't think of it that way. They thought that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump has America's best interests in mind. That what Joe Biden represents is politics as usual, that he's going to bring all of the swamp creatures back into DC. "And they were hoping that Donald Trump was going to fix everything. And they would point to the fact that the economy before COVID was doing fantastic. That unemployment was very low. That the stock market was booming. They felt like he was making the right steps in the right directions to strengthen the country. To frame it all entirely as bigotry and white nationalism. I just don't think the people who voted for him see it that way." Now, that's not terrible, but, obviously, Trump had his own swamp creatures and the economy wasn't doing well -- but it never is for most of us! -- and people were suffering ... but the media narrative -- from, let's face it, all sides -- is and has been for decades that America is awesome and nothing's ever wrong. The Democratic message of "leave the machine in place for us" was never very appealing. They don't want to change anything Trump was doing; they just want to be in charge of it. It sounds very similar to how Navalny in Russia has pretty much the same platform as Putin. He's superficially against corruption as a lever to prise Putin from power, but has many similarly nefarious connections. He just wants Putin's job. He thinks it would be a neat job to have. He's not Bernie. He's not MLK. Neither are any of the Democrats, when it comes down to it. AOC collapsed. Only Bernie shows a glimmer of hope and he keeps ... capitulating. Getting back to the interview: Ira didn't care what Joe said. Just didn't acknowledge the point at all. Instead, he doubled down and answered that he knows for a fact that people voted incorrectly. That "you [voters] could tell yourself [themselves] that you [they] were voting for him [Trump] for those reasons, but as a matter of fact, that's wasn't the case." I guess my entire family are secret white nationalists. So secret that they don't even know it themselves. This is exactly the fucking arrogance that 70M people voted against. Literally this argument -- that you, dear voter, are so stupid that you can't even see that the election is about what I say it is and not what your poor pea-brain thinks it is. Good luck with that, you dumb fucks. See you in 2022 when you let the deranged Republicans back at the helm. Ira says a bit later, "One can only hope that instincts for decency and respect for other people's opinions prevails." How does he not hear what he's saying? Contrast that statement with the many times he metaphorically shat on any opinion that deviated from his own. If he really believes that, how does he square that with his previous complete disrespect and denial of people's innermost opinions of themselves as non-white-nationalists? This show was recorded on Jan. 15th, so they were still citing a lot of long-since debunked myths about that day -- it's amazing how they both just regurgitated the most extreme talking points -- like the "zip-tie guy" or the "plans to murder Congresspeople" -- with no evidence having been presented whatsoever. There was a picture! No context, nothing. Just a picture. And they both just swallowed it, despite both knowing how powerful images are for conveying a message without proof. We are pretty much doomed once the AI news-stories and deep fakes really get going. Maybe they already have. Maybe they don't need to, since people don't read past the headline anyway. Why bother producing a deep-fake video when you just dangle a clickbait article that convinces 90% of the dazed masses? Ira offers the same advice everyone gives to the Democrats by telling them to "add back concern for the people who were left behind by the modern economy." That is literally not going to happen. Democrats don't care about those people. They are deplorable. Irredeemable. "Ira: To be friends, while you continued to oppose each other, and fight in civil ways. We've gotten a long way away from that in recent years. We have to start moving on the way back. (Emphasis added.)" Note how he uses the metaphorical "fight". It's obviously not incitement, right? So why interpret Trump's call to fight as clear incitement? Ira just did the exact same thing. "Joe: I love that expression: different flavors of the same poison -- because that it what it is." "Joe: In podcasting, people think that if you have someone on that they disagree with, that you're 'platforming' them. Or if you have a right-wing person on your show, then you're now a right-wing person. They'll miscategorize you." This is happening more and more in American media. Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore and Joe Rogan and Matt Taibbi -- all considered Alt-Right because they hold discussion on many forums, regardless of ideological bent. The discussion is the important thing, not the platform. If you can reach a different audience with a good message -- that's worth nearly infinitely more than preaching to the choir. Near the end of the interview, Glass notes that it was neat that because Truman played piano, people started playing piano and Eisenhower played golf, people played golf. So he says that those are good things, that the presidents were guiding the country in a good way. "Ira: What worries me is that, when Trump lied, and created fictional realities to live in, a lot of people joined him. And, for a lot of people, those fictions are real now. And they have to somehow be weaned away from that. Not by calling them evil, and finding some way to rid ourselves of them. But by coaxing them back into the real world." Which world is that, Ira? The same bullshit world we had before? Are you saying we should go back to sleep and accept the official narrative again? I'm sorry, but how fucking tone-deaf can you be? He's literally saying he didn't like the fictional reality of Trump, but every other president was ok? Truman dropped the fucking nuclear bombs! How in the name of all that is holy is anything that Trump did worse than that? How is it even close? That's all presidents do -- blow smoke up your ass! The economy's doing great! Unemployment is low! We've got COVID under control! Greatest healthcare in the world! Syria's the enemy! Russia's the enemy! China's the enemy! There are WMDs! America is exceptional! What the hell are you talking about, Glass? Are you mad because Trump did such a shitty and extreme job of it that way more people finally noticed that it was all unreal all along? Joe asks him, "Joe: Is it because he became the king of the assholes? They realized they had a king now! And there's so many of them. "Ira: Yes, that's exactly right. The capacity of the president to legitimize certain kinds of behavior, to normalize, is very powerful and can be a force for good, and can be a very dangerous force, for evil." Like Obama? He wasn't an overt asshole, but he broke a lot of shit. He gave all of our money to Wall Street while smiling his lovely smile at Main Street. Bush broke even more shit. What is the difference? Do we only care about appearances? Or do we really wish for a president who isn't an actual asshole? A lot of us did but the other assholes dogpiled poor Bernie. There is no room for a non-asshole at the table. Biden's an asshole. He pretty much always has been. The only redeeming thing about him is that a lot of his close family died tragically. Look at his 50-year career -- full of assholery. All of the presidents are assholes. Most of Congress is. It's not even an open question. It's answered. Go back to sleep. Conversation's almost over: Glass just invoked Godwin's law. Now they're talking about Hitler. I'm not even gonna take notes. To be fair, he does end by saying that, on the whole, things are much better now than they were when he was born, that we all have to do our part to improve things and that "we tend to measure progress by the brevity of our own lives", but that "it's a relay marathon race." Since that's his area, I suppose he means individual rights and freedoms, but the sphere within which most people can exercise those freedoms is quite limited. He seems to be missing the big picture: that while people superficially have more rights now, the economy has been bent at a higher level to prevent justice. That is, inequality is phenomenally worse than it ever was in his lifetime, but he still expresses satisfaction that things are better because black people can legally vote. That now we have some black assholes in charge too. That's the most progress we can hope for. Still, it's too narrow a scope -- Glass has done a tremendous amount. He's definitely done his part. Much more than I've done (or will likely ever do). But it's this focus on the narrow by those who can really get things done that allows those who don't focus on the narrow to continue to suborn their efforts, to nullify them. While Glass fought for voting rights and was satisfied with his wins, the assholes took literally everything else from the board. Glass citing Vince Lombardi: "Ira: You know, I never lost a football game. Once in a while, time ran out. [...] In our fight for civil liberties, that's a game where time never runs out. You just keep playing. You absorb the losses. You call better plays. You tough it out. And you realize that the game is long and there have been more victories than defeats." "Joe: Thank you for that and thank you for your dedication to free speech. I worry that the young people today don't have that." Joe let Ira talk. He was a great interviewer. He could have pushed him a bit harder on the inconsistencies in what he was saying (often just a few sentences apart), but it was good to let him run, to give him enough line to be able to express his view, inconsistencies and all. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4191 2021-02-26T23:32:01+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

the other day. One comment accused Dore of being a... ]]>

the other day. One comment accused Dore of being a grifter, which is an exceedingly odd charge. It's most likely that that person has never seen or heard Dore and was just regurgitating what they'd heard from someone else who'd never seen or heard Dore. The Internet is full of foolish children who want to pretend that they're "participating" in "discussions". I remember when I was a kid, and was not allowed to watch nearly as much TV -- or stay up nearly as late -- as my friends, I'd sometimes try to pretend I'd seen a TV show I hadn't and just kind of coattail my opinion on what the majority seemed to think. Most of social media is like that. Very few people read the article or watch the videos before commenting. How could they? They're commenting on a long read or have an opinion on a 30-minute video within seconds. So, to the grifter accusation, another commentator replied that, "[f]or a grifter, he sure has pretty cool regular guests. Or maybe Richard Wolff, Cornel West, and others are in on the grift?" That's how I see it, too. Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald are on quite often as well. That's a lot of clout. I've seen Krystal Ball. He hasn't had Lee Camp or Eleanor Goldfield on yet (that I know of), but Dore wrote the foreword for Lee's book. To my mind, that's all pretty good company. No, that's fantastic company. Then I landed on this "comment" by vacuum_state , which inspired the following response. The quoted bits are from the comment to which I responded. "There’s one thing criticizing AOC or the “squad” for having no conviction or whatever, but he tries to destroy them while not doing the same for Tucker." The way I see that is that Tucker started off way to the right and seems to be willing to listen to argument, sometimes changing his mind on air and sticking to it (e.g. on Julian Assange). He's actually using his huge platform (biggest show on cable, last I heard) to get left-wing ideas and segments in front of a captive audience. Dore's working-class ideas seem to resonate with him and he shows them to his audience. It doesn't even matter in the end that he's pretending. I honestly don't know what inspired this, but I presume some number-crunchers at FOX are just following the audience. Sometimes even they have to do that, although they do a lot of leading. If Dore were on Carlson and had to "clean up" his message, it would be one thing. But the message is the same as on his show, minus cursing. That seems...fine to me? OTOH, Dore holds the Squad's feet to the fire because they started off way to the left and have veered to the center, seemingly capitulating for no apparent political gain. They are _elected representatives_. They're there to be yelled at and exhorted to do things. Even more so if they once showed the promise of doing good things and are _coasting_ now, morphing into just some more Democrats that are useless to the suffering working class, but with way better Twitter game. AOC should spend less time responding to Ted Cruz with sassy hot takes and more time watching interviews with herself from 2 years ago. "[...] he likes to feast upon what should be his nearest allies with any clout." His hatred is pure. It's equal-opportunity. It's often uncompromising. I'm not sure which "allies without any clout" you're referring to because he seems to spend a lot of time excoriating elected members of The Congress, who form an elite group of 535 people in a country of 330M. Look, I don't think Dore's presentation is for everyone, but his politics are dead-on what America needs and his passion is pure. I'm not a fan of Tucker Carlson, but I've seen him espouse some acceptable views. We should be careful not to capitulate on message, but be happy for honest exposure wherever possible. I don't think we have the luxury of liking the message, but hating the messenger right now. We're in a tight spot. I received a "reply" by vacuum_state , which made a strong point, starting with "Good points broadly. There are just things that rub me the wrong way. [...] Dore goes out to assassinate character." I again responded at length, reproduced below. "Anyone who wasn’t for his MFA [Medicate For All] push was a fraud in his eyes." Well, not anyone, just the people who actually campaigned on MFA a couple of years ago and still haven't pushed it to a single vote yet. That's why he spends less time lambasting Republicans. It's not because he supports them, but because he sees them as hopeless. If he's hammering on someone, it's because he actually believes in them. The Congress has voted against the ACA "67 times" (they finally stopped after 5 years). But there have been no votes for anything like MFA or a public option, despite a lot of politicians getting votes and mileage out of supporting those things. As Dore says, an overwhelming majority of the country would be for it, but there's no political support, other than lip service when it's personally beneficial. Of course, he doesn't say it that nicely, but he's still right when he yells that, in the middle of a pandemic, with Congress and the White House, when are the Democrats going to do one of the things that they claim differentiates them from the Republicans? If they don't step up now, of course they're frauds. There is no way of sugar-coating that message without getting into bed with them. "No one on the left should be promoting Tucker Carlson as an ally. His intentions are absolutely to not advance left wing agenda, his intentions are to build a right wing populist movement." I can't presume to know Tucker's intentions. I know that he's swung around on some issues and is playing the role of a supporter of some issues I support (e.g. Assange, working class). For example, the ten-minute video segment "Tucker Investigates: What is destroying rural America?" was interesting. That makes him useful. Obviously, we keep an eye on him for betrayal, but reaching 15M people who are otherwise unreachable is no small thing. [media] First of all, the parties have flipped in allegiances before (the Democrats used to have the nickname The Dixiecrats and the Republicans won't shut up about being "the party of Lincoln"). Second of all, though, allegiances are messy. People and institutions (like FOX) have a mix of opinions they promote and "believe" in. FOX can control its audience to a large degree, but if the audience starts to shift, FOX has to shift with it, to follow the money. If they think they have to give more voice to a suffering working class -- why wouldn't they? It's a huge majority -- then it's possible that they pivot to keep their audience. Again, stay cautious, but use them where we can. If Dore changed his message from his YouTube channel to FOX, that would be one thing. But he doesn't. He just stops swearing, which is a fair concession, I think. "I get unsure what his true objectives are and whether he comes in good faith." That's fair. If his delivery style is off-putting or too mixed with jokes, then a more sober summary (perhaps like the one I made above) is more convincing. But I bet he appeals to a lot of people because he's not that hard to understand. And he happens to be right, for the most part, happens to be on the side of the working class. We should be happy to have him, broadening the appeal of a working-class message. I just read something the other day about Rush Limbaugh that goes to that point, in "Don’t Hate Rush Limbaugh. Copy Him." by Ted Rall : "As much as Buchanan, Reagan and Trump, [Limbaugh] defined the ideological and attitudinal contours of today’s emboldened Republican Party. Had Al Franken managed to guide the benighted Air America — take a sec to Google it — to similar heights, Democrats would have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and Bernie Sanders would be beginning his second term. Who knows how many economic sectors would be nationalized by now? (Emphasis added.)" If you find yourself nodding in agreement with the entire message of a video or interview (like the Tucker Calrson one I linked above), but don't like the people, that's fine. Stay alert. But maybe don't look a gift horse in the mouth and try to burn potential powerful allies. We need all the help we can get (as long as we don't compromise principles). ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4188 2021-02-23T23:02:11+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4186 2021-02-22T18:01:45+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

are I recently wrote because, in that discussion, both Eugene and Eric kind of assumed that they were only talking about whether tech companies have too much power to control the narrative, when all media companies actually have too much power to control the narrative. [Dubious statistics about prisoners] A little later, Camp and Goldfield cited a statistic that they're very fond of: "that there are more black people in prison today than there were under slavery." In so doing, they demonstrated another way of laundering information: manipulation of statistics. At first, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, that this figure is correct for a given set of parameters. But I did a bit of research -- and it's wildly off. But there's a lot of context missing: do they mean number of slaves ever? Or that were enslaved at any one time? Let's assume that latter because the former would be a much bigger number and would be much more difficult to pin down. According to "Population of the United States from the final census conducted before the Civil War in 1860, by race and gender" , the U.S. population in 1860 was about 31.5M. Of those, 4.5M were black. This is less than 10% of the population of the U.S. in 2020, about 330M. I've taken the accepted estimate I've seen cited elsewhere because the article "Demographics of the United States" only has figures from 2010 because the 2020 census isn't finished yet. It was about 310M then. The article "Black and slave population of the United States from 1790 to 1880" indicates that, of those 4.5M, "89.01%" were slaves. So, just about 4M black people were enslaved. That's the absolute number we'll work with: the number of black people enslaved at the peak population and just before the civil war. The numbers for incarceration are more complicated. If you just go by prison population, those numbers have been declining since 2010. There were about 1.5M total prisoners in 2019, according to "U.S. Department of Justice - Office of Justice Programs - Bureau of Justice Statistics" . But those numbers don't count the people in pre-trial detention and post-detention programs (e.g. parole, which is extremely restrictive as well and technically counts as still being "in the system). There is a lot more information on the "BJS home page" . For example, another report notes that there were 738,400 jail inmates in 2018, the most recent year for which they've published numbers. That would take the prison+jail population to about 2.4M. For further corroboration, the article "Incarceration in the United States" points out that "4,751,400 adults in 2013 (1 in 51) were on probation or on parole." That makes a total of nearly 7M people "under correctional supervision". Of those actually in prison, "40%" are black. If we assume that same percentage roughly applies to those under correctional supervision, then, in 2013, there were 2.8M black people under correctional supervision. This is a much higher incarceration/supervision rate than for whites (2300 per 100,000 vs. 450) -- and horrible -- but that's an entirely separate issue from the investigation we've undertaken. It is a far cry from "more black people in prison today than there were under slavery.", as Lee and Eleanor are fond of citing. That's even being generous and assuming they meant "under correctional supervision" rather than "in prison". The number of black people in prison in 2013 (the last year for which I'm able to find numbers) was 40% of 2.2M, which is 880,000, which is only just over 20% of the number of black slaves in 1860. Their statistic is not just massaged, but completely wrong and, therefore, just as misleading as the statistics they spent 10 minutes (rightfully) demolishing. They're not the only ones citing it and either everyone should stop citing it or I'd be happy if someone could point out to me how it could make sense. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4185 2021-02-21T09:22:24+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

): "[...] 1580s, literally "of or pertaining to the region around ancient Sparta in Greece, probably via Latin Laconicus "of Laconia," from Greek Lakonikos "Laconian, of Laconia," adjective from Lakon "person from Lakonia," the district around Sparta in southern Greece in ancient times, whose inhabitants famously cultivated the skill of saying much in few words. When Philip of Macedon threatened them with, "If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground," the Spartans' reply was, "If.". An earlier form was laconical (1570s)." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4183 2021-02-19T23:50:31+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

to instead of mourning the memory of "C-beams glitter[ing] in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate", they mourn the loss of the trove of knowledge that was Donald Trump's Twitter account. "End of an era ... one of the all-time greats." At about 21:00, They move on to discuss the punishment-happy attitude of many liberals to anyone even remotely involved with the storming of the Capitol. Supposed progressives are wholeheartedly supporting the no-fly list. "Matt: The problem with the no-fly list wasn't that it was disproportionately Muslim. That wasn't the problem. Adding white people to balance it will not make it better. "[...] People need to ask themselves: what do you really believe? Do you believe that government is just the gloved fist of capital? Or not?" At 44:45, Felix points out that idiocy is independent of education. "Felix?: Money and education in America today is no inoculation whatsoever against being an absolute rube, a slack-jawed rube. Like, mouth agape, flies-buzzing-around-you rube." I consider this description appropriate to anyone espousing an argument without consideration, without logic, with giant holes. The most glaring examples are, of course, Q-Anon, Stop-the-Steal, and Russiagate and WMDs and Iran's nukes and China's genocide. At 47:20, Matt asks how people can support Trump so religiously. It's not just that they've chosen him as a lesser evil, but they really seem to look up to him as intelligent and proficient and competent and righteous. "Matt: All of these people decided they were going to go to Washington and try to overthrow the government for ... Donald Trump. I cannot respect that. You know the man, right? You've seen him on television? If you've seen him, and you think that there's anything positive, that there's anything worth suffering for, then you have put a knitting needle up your nose and scooped out your frontal lobe. "[...] The guy sold out everyone he's ever dealt with. He was never faithful to a wife, was never faithful to a business partner, he's never succeeded in anything other than scamming people. The fact that he's on TV and he looked like he knew what he was doing when he was firing Meatloaf [...] you have to put more thought into it than that." At 54:00, as is typical for Matt, he backs off a bit and gets more reflective, making an eloquent argument for the sad fact that drastically under-equipped people are wading into an ideological battle and just trying to figure out what's going on, to make sense of the world, when literally everything is stacked against them. They're poor, they're misinformed, they're overworked, they're stressed, they're in debt up to their eyeballs, and they can't remember the last time they really enjoyed something that wasn't shoved down their throats in a flood of propaganda. Much of their lives are spent moving through a miasma of misery -- even when it's not insistent in the foreground, the background buzz of it is there, diluting every experience. They wonder where their so-called American Dream went -- why did it suddenly disappear in their lifetimes? Why now? Why them? "Matt: Why am I standing when the music stops? This is bullshit. We were promised it wouldn't be us. What the fuck, we thought until very recently that it wouldn't be us. "And, I have to say, although I made fun of them and I said don't respect any of them because they were conned by Donald Trump, [...] if we're all being buffeted by the horrible precarity of incipient globalized commodification of everything while all the material basis for an ongoing economy collapses, we're all trying to figure out what's going on. "All of us on the left can pat ourselves on the back that we've solved it, we know the right answer. We're not idiots like these guys, with their stupid prescriptions and their dumb hoodoo. We have a material understanding. That's luck, man. Because where we end up, with our cultural understanding, our heuristic for evaluating the world and making sense of it? It's determined demographically. It's not determined by your decisions and your virtue as a person. [1] "[...] It boils down to where you grew up, who you grew up around, and what you grew up watching. And, that, when you find yourself in distress and you wanting to understand why the world is the way it is, you seek the cultural explanation of the people around you what they're all putting out into the ether and then sucking back in. "Cause we're all in these segmented cultural ghettos and it's only going to create idiocy. It can only create incoherent idiocy. Because it's not grounded in anything. It doesn't come from class experience. It comes from experience as media consumers." At 56:00, they return to the topic at hand, goofing on what a legend Trump was as a Twitter user. "Felix?: I would like to take the phrase "Bad food restaurant", embroider it on a banner, and raise it to the rafters. [2] Trump's style of tweeting, his way of talking, his Twitter account in particular, I truly believe, is the "Pontypool" mind-virus that will spread to all of us. It has changed the structure of my brain. I think and talk like Trump now because ... it's fun." Matt points out that Donald Trump had a much closer relationship with the people of America than Obama did. "Matt: Donald Trump, I think it's safe to say, has a greater cultural legacy than Barack Obama. [...] Barack Obama only set the stage for Donald Trump to enter. He was a void on purpose. That was what he was getting off on, the little sicko, was being not there. "[...] [Trump] is the greatest poster of all time and it is not even close. No-one has done more with the medium of Twitter than he will, and we will never see his likes again. "[...] The King. The King." At 1:04:50: "Someone: Somebody has to step up and be the next Trump and emulate the same kind of derangement and total narcissism and just dickishness. "Matt: It can't be copied. He sui generis [3]." At 1:06:30, they lament the coming loss of connection with the insane clown posse of the presidential mind. "Joe Biden will never post for himself." Then they riff at 1:24:00 about Trump's "National Garden of American Heroes " and places in New Jersey that are slobbering about the contract to provide bronze for it. Or that Christopher Columbus is on the list because "all Trump projects are done by the Mafia". The list of 244 people is pretty hilarious, containing almost exclusively completely uncontroversial people. Sure, Whitney Houston, Steve Jobs, and Alex Trebek are on there -- but those are honestly arguable and would be supported as American heroes by a large part of the public. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Here, Matt is echoing Robert Sapolsky, whose book Behave provides a scientific underpinning for a larger restriction of what we consider to be free will. I partially transcribed an "interview with Sean Carroll" where he goes into much more detail. [1] This is a sports metaphor. When a great player retires, his or her number is embroidered on a banner that is lifted to the rafters of their home stadium. [1] I just love the irony of using the latin phrase to describe DJT. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4182 2021-02-19T22:27:59+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4155 2021-02-17T22:09:45+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

puts it: "Note how this CNN imperial stenographer fearmongers about foreign bogeymen with his "foe" rhetoric. The real foe of average working-class Americans isn't any foreign nation; it's the parasitic capitalist oligarchs who control everything and their lackeys in politics and the media" Dore references Greenwald above, who was interviewed recently in "'Journalists Are Authoritarians'" by Nick Gillespie . "Glenn Greenwald: Trump gets in, and The Washington Post changes its motto to "Democracy Dies in Darkness," essentially saying press freedom is under assault. [White House reporter] Jim Acosta writes a bestseller with some pompous, self-glorifying title, like Danger: Reporting in the Era of Trump. What the fuck ever happened to Jim Acosta that constitutes an assault on press freedom? The worst thing Trump ever did to any of them was to say mean things about them in tweets. Those aren't assaults on press freedom. I was threatened by the Obama administration with prison when I was doing the Snowden reporting. I was criminally indicted by the [Jair] Bolsonaro government at the beginning of [2020] for the reporting I did in Brazil. Those are attacks on press freedom. Saying Jim Acosta is an idiot, and tweeting something insulting about Wolf Blitzer, isn't." "So you go through those metrics. George Bush and Dick Cheney started new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama started new wars in Libya and Yemen. What new wars did Donald Trump start? He escalated bombing campaigns, which he inherited, in a pretty grotesque way. But he didn't start any new wars. "When you look at things like the destruction of Iraq or the implementation of a torture regime—what has Donald Trump done that even remotely compares in terms of moral evil to any of that? Nothing. And yet we're supposed to treat George Bush and Barack Obama like morally upstanding statesmen and Donald Trump like the literal reincarnation of Hitler." Gillespie claims above that Trump "escalated bombing campaigns" but, according to Chris Woods of "Airwars" , he did not, overall, escalate bombings. According to this graphic found on "Roaming Charges: New Days, Old Ways" by Jeffrey St. Clair : [image] Greenwald continues: "Glenn Greenwald: This younger millennial set—who are now not that young anymore; they're in their mid-30s or older and starting to assume managerial authority within these institutions—grew up believing that free speech is not an absolute value, and that it needs to give way in all kinds of instances where more important political agenda items and more important political values are in conflict with it, as they understand it. By which they mean: Ideas and arguments that may endanger marginalized people by making them uncomfortable, or that might lead to the implementation of harmful policies by convincing people to support them, are not ideas that should be heard. They're ideas that should be suppressed in the name of these greater political values." "[Journalists] don't believe in the right of citizens to confront power centers. They think that reporting means somebody in power, like in the CIA or the FBI, gives you information and tells you to go repeat it to the public. And then you go and do that. And they think that's reporting. But if somebody's outside of the scope of power—like some low-level Army private, like Chelsea Manning, who doesn't occupy an important position in Washington, or Edward Snowden—does the same thing, not with the intention of propagandizing but with the intention of illuminating, they view that as criminal." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4156 2021-01-25T10:03:17+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4151 2021-01-18T22:36:57+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4141 2021-01-17T17:40:30+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

... ]]>

contains a lot of increasingly unfair "hot takes" and seemingly unwarranted swipes at other journalists and commentators. This is an unfortunate trend over the last few months. I used to enjoy the weekly Roaming Charges more, but have found my self skimming more in recent weeks. St. Clair throws everyone under the bus: in this article, he attacks Thomas Chatterton Williams, Bari Weiss, and Glenn Greenwald. I don't really know Bari Weiss, but I've seen a couple of thoughtful interviews with Williams and Greenwald's journalism is solid and his writing excellent. The attacks are usually ad hominem and never with a single mention of why we should not listen to these people. He's preaching to his own choir. I think St. Clair is spending too much time on Twitter and forgets to switch back to a more journalistic mode. Or maybe I've giving him too much credit. I just finished reading Greenwald's nuanced response to the capitol riot and it should have pride of place on CounterPunch. It is a nuanced take on the situation and its likely ramifications rather than an unhinged rending of clothes by the Editor-in-Chief, who should honestly comport himself a bit better than the unwashed masses on Twitter who squirt their every last thought into the public aether. He doesn't have to write an essay like Greenwald, but he could keep the sniping of other commentators -- who are all just reacting like him, for better or worse -- to a minimum, if not out of a sense of respect, then out of a sense of modesty and recognition that he himself is probably no better. At the very least, he could provide an example so that we can follow along. Otherwise, it feels like we're just supposed to say "amen" to any of his slanders, as if the reason is obvious. Too much of St. Clair's reaction is knee-jerk and unhelpful. He just piles on without knowing more about what he's writing about -- just like pretty much everyone else. But he's not everyone else: he's the editor-in-chief of CounterPunch and should comport himself a bit better than his most lunatic writers. For example, he writes about the killing of Jacob Blake by police, as below. "The people charged with enforcing laws in the US are the same people who enjoy impunity from transgressing them…In the latest case, the officers who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times will not be prosecuted." He makes it sound like Blake's death is another unpunished murder by police, as if to countenance the alternative -- that Blake did absolutely everything wrong in his interaction with police -- is unthinkable, if not outright treason to the cause. It's stupid. The article "Short Take: Begging for a Riot" by Scott H. Greenfield covers the case in more detail -- actually looking at the video -- and comes to the conclusion that, "There was a tragic shooting. There was no crime. "The media, however, did not fairly recite the facts of what happened, that he resisted arrest, refused to drop his knife as ordered, refused to comply with lawful commands and then opened and entered his car as police officers, with guns pointed, unaware of whether this person who they had reason to believe had engaged in violence before could have a weapon. " [Mark Crispin Miller] Another person whose web site is a bit too knee-jerk and has some weird ideas is that of Mark Crispin Miller. I recently saw an interview with him, where he seemed to be quite reasonable and well-spoken in person, but his web site is a collection of one-liner articles, each with a link -- often with no context provided at all. A small handful of links turn out to be interesting, but others are, frankly, batshit and lead to extremely sketchy-looking web-sites that I tend to open in private tabs, out of respect for my own privacy. For a professor who, in in-person interviews, makes an impassioned case for being careful about what one reads, he doesn't seem to take his own medicine. Or, at the very least, he doesn't offer any insight into why he's posting a link. Does he agree with the content? Is he posting the content to show an example of harmful propaganda? Or of propaganda that shows an alternative viewpoint? Instead, it's just a firehose of unwashed opinions, with no input from the ostensibly intelligent and discerning maven. Left to my own devices, I can only conclude that he's an unhinged believer in conspiracy theories that leverage an incorrect interpretation of statistics and improperly inflate an anecdotal case into prevalence. Just a few examples: He posted "What happened to one caregiver after his COVID shot" , in which he actually writes something: "That, according to the CDC, 3% of those injected have had such reactions is alarming in itself; and what this post indicates is that the risk is not just that you’ll have some brief, mild side effects, but that you could get gravely ill." The article he links to describes a man whose vaccination triggered a full-blown flu with 104ºF fever and, of course, an uncaring public hospital who told the husband and wife that they would be fine -- which is probably correct -- and that he wasn't in danger. The article, of course, posits it as an uncaring public-health machinery full of incompetents who don't care if people live or die. You could just as easily interpret it as a hospital rightly determining that their resources don't need to be invested in a case that would heal on its own, in their professional opinion. Instead, the article goes on to note that "I ultimately brought him to a privately held highly regarded emergency room in Hartford CT for further care", and then goes on to list all of the tests that this brave hospital is doing (for fees, of course). "At the end of the day, I am beyond thankful for this privately held highly regarded Hartford based hospital [...]" Miller uncritically posts this article as if it's telling the reality of vaccine reactions for 3% of those receiving it, which is utter hogwash. The gist of the article is both to amplify a single case into the general one and to hype private medical care over public care. It's probably a completely made-up example, created by the private hospital itself. Another link is to someone named Anonymous Coward, whose web site immediately requires that you agree to an EULA before you can even read an article. Miller offered no citation to indicate that he thought the author was positing "reasonable questions". It's just bizarre how little care he seems to put into the information he posts, almost as if he's overwhelmed by the flood of information, but unwilling to concede that he just shouldn't post something he hasn't vetted (which is odd for a professor of media/propaganda studies). ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4144 2021-01-17T17:24:47+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4146 2021-01-17T09:18:08+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

... ]]>

: "Chris Hedges: I found so much of the coverage -- I don't know what you thought -- where they were demonized as thugs -- which is not in any way of course to condone their activity -- missing the point. There was complicity within the ruling elite and within the Democratic Party establishment for what's happened and the core being the rupturing of these social bonds. "Cornell West: I think you're absolutely right, brother. I think about 17 years ago, when I published Democracy Matters and I talked about how there's hardly a democracy left because of nihilism. The very forms of nihilism, the notion not just of might-makes-right and greed-is-good, but the massive shattering of families, communities, bonds, networks, so you end up with not just isolated, narcissistic persons, but you also end up with persons unable to provide, unable to generate any kind of story to live by, unable to situate themselves in a national narrative that has any connection with reality. "I think it is a profoundly nihilistic moment -- and nihilism is a lived experience of tremendous wound and hurt. "When I was there in Charlottesville, when I looked in the eyes of the Neo-nazis, I saw deep wounds and hurts and joylessness and lovelessness and a search for meaning. They just hated me, they wanted to kill me, but I could still understand the ways in which they were very much a product of a predatory capitalist culture, that is just 'money, money, money' and they actually were being subjugated in their own distinctive ways. They just happened to be vicious, white-supremacists as well. "And I think that's in part what we're dealing with. Yes, Trump, certainly, is a symbol and a sign and a symptom, but neoliberal rule has helped create the condition for the kind of neofascist, authoritarian, populist -- whatever language you want to use -- and the ways in which the unbelievable contempt that people have across the board for neoliberal elites, for the professional classes, for the chattering classes, for the educated classes, for the Tyranny of Merit that Michael Sandel talks about in his book, for the Cult of Smart that brother Frederick DeBoer talks about in his book. "All of those have to do with the arrogance, the self-righteousness, the self-indulgence, sense of entitlement, that is so indifferent to the plight and predicament of poor and working-class people. But it's always tied on the right wing with the white-supremacist public base. There's no doubt about that. And it is white-supremacist, but it's not just that. "And what you usually have, of course, in corporate media, is the recycling of a certain neoliberal identity that is Manichean -- we're on the good side; they're on the bad side -- yes, they are on the immoral side, it's deep, but it's so much deeper than that." West also talks about how the repellent hypocrisy of the both the Republican and Democratic Parties leads directly to this sense of hopelessness. Even if you weren't already a racist, you're faced with a choice between a party that pretends to adore you and blames your shortcomings on non-whites (R) and a party that has only contempt for your stupidity and poverty (D). They form the classic rock and a hard place: loathe yourself for capitulating to racism or loathe yourself for being a failure. "Cornell West: Biden gets up and talks about a narrative that was true for the 1950s: 'we are the city on the hill'. Oh, yes, uhhuh, you just supported a military coup in Honduras and you think the Honduran people are just going to view you as some kind of democratic example? We know the history of Iran, we know Guatemala, Brazil, Dominican Republic, we can go on and on and on, ... what? 267 interventions in 67 cities since 1945? That's American foreign policy. "Then, on the other hand, you get your Mitch McConnell: 'you can't have self-government without a commitment to truth. Politics can't just be a commitment to power.' He's an example of the most raw commitment to power that we have. "Here comes Schumer: 'the most important thing is democracy.' Since when has the corporate wing of the Democratic Party with neoliberal policies not been tied to big money, and Wall Street, and Pentagon militarism? "The nihilism is overwhelming because people are saying: my God, this hypocrisy is out of control, this greed is out of control, what are the countervailing forces that allow us to fight against it? Fewer and fewer. And that's part of our challenge. Fewer and fewer. "How do you hold onto the honesty, the decency, kindness, commitments to justice, and being unflinchingly candid about the grimness, and yet still being willing to muster the courage to hold onto a love of truth, and goodness, and beauty [...]?" After talking about Biden being a creature of the past, then discussing Biden's cabinet, with Janet Yellen, who West kind-of likes, but she's problematic because of $7M of speaking fees to Wall Street over the last 31/2 years. "Cornell West: Is she going to be fair to poor and working people? I wanna give her a chance, but I'm not holding my breath. "So, we wonder whether the American democratic experiment is just running out of gas. It's headed toward a self-destruction because its willful blindness by greed and its willful ignorance by contempt for poor and working people thinks it can somehow muddle through. No. These chickens have come home to roost in a very powerful way. In an ugly way." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4136 2021-01-04T21:42:38+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

for a good introduction of his information and thesis. The article discusses the 2004 election results in Ohio; he draws almost exclusively from an official Congressional report written/submitted by John Conyers. This is not conspiracy theory; this is the official record. Miller was shunned for mentioning it. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4125 2020-12-29T16:53:28+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4083 2020-11-05T23:08:25+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. The following notes aren't all directly related, but... ]]>

. The following notes aren't all directly related, but there's a thread if you're willing to look for it. [Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti from The Hill] I've only recently been introduced to this pairing and I quite like them. They were more recently interviewed on "Useful Idiots" , which is also a good introduction to their politics and dynamic. [media] The video above had a few interesting bits in it, from Krystal, asking an obvious question of the hypocrites that have elected themselves arbiters of public opinion (i.e. the blue-check Twitterati), "Saagar has the views that he holds on the show, which are unfortunately the views of the mainstream of America. How does Saagar end up on the wrong side of that line and Joe Biden end up on the right side of that line? [...] I don't understand where we're drawing the line..." On Donald Trump, she strikes the right tone and gets to the heart of his failing as a president. "I view Donald Trump differently ... I view him as abhorrent. But I also see him as incompetent and lazy and not particularly ideological." "Trump is constantly called the ultimate evil, but he's also incapable of properly acting on his madness. America needs competence right now, so you could argue that incompetence is particularly dangerous. Ideological or no, his staff is pursuing very dangerous and destabilizing policies ... though those efforts largely go nowhere as well." [Matt Taibbi: The Worst Choice Ever] Ball's views are echoed by Matt Taibbi in an absolutely scorching pre-election diatribe, "The Worst Choice Ever" by Matt Taibbi , in which he pulls no punches on anyone -- neither candidate, the media, and the whole debacle. Taibbi hones Ball's view above that Trump doesn't do anything with his power by noting that it's because he doesn't seem to know what it means to be president. He never seems to exercise the tremendous power he has, which is pretty lucky for everyone, but is also the exact opposite of what the Chicken Littles have been shrieking about for years. It also completely belies his supporters' purporting that Trump has actually been really effective. He hasn't -- not at more than a handful of minor things, that he often partially rolled back soon after. "Trump played populist in public, but his presidency was spent parked limp and hostage-like in a robe before a TV somewhere in the White House, watching in horror as the anchors of shows like Fox and Friends informed him about the Beltway power machine’s latest successful effort to shit all over him. His response, every time, was to sob into Twitter by his lonesome, often deep into the night. "He seemed not to have a clue he was president, which again was mostly a good thing. Just this weekend, in his latest race-baiting campaign to accuse “Squad” members Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of being illegal people, he asked out loud, “Where is our Justice Department?” No one in the audience had the heart to cry out, “In your Executive Branch?” (Emphasis added.)" Taibbi's description of Jeff Sessions is inspired and is an absolute murder by words. "Jeff Sessions, who spent most of his career as the dumbest member of the United States Senate, but entered the Trump White House as the administration’s most accomplished expert on almost everything" Taibbi makes the same point as above with a nice metaphor about "stepping on a rake" to describe how the Trump administration can't get out of its own way. "This pattern, of stepping on a rake before even getting to do the bad thing at scale, was a chief characteristic of the Trump presidency." To sum up, Trump was much more concerned with -- and thus distracted by -- short-term narcissistic goals rooted in his origins as a much smaller-scale grifter. That is, his sociopathy was not commensurate to the task. People think that Trump is the worst possible person, but he didn't have the important component of long-term thinking unassociated with his own personal gain (which is, by definition, a short-term goal as compared to bending the will of the nation). He's not Hitler, folks. Hitler had follow-through, which made him deadly. Trump doesn't have anything he believes in strongly enough -- other than self-aggrandizement. "In sum, this man who secured the presidency because voters thought his blunt, unvarnished persona might prove a corrective to unchecked elite corruption proved incapable in office of doing anything except complain into his phone, and abuse himself like a zoo gorilla every time a camera was pointed in his direction. Used to getting his way as a petty corporate boss, he was uniquely toolless as a Beltway operator, a man who in a thousand years couldn’t figure out how to use the office to achieve something positive. (Emphasis added.)" Taibbi also has plenty to say about the Democratic Party and its current, vile incarnation -- rudderless and nearly completely loosed from the even the empty platitudes that they used to mouth. Unlike many others, Taibbi is careful to point out that much of what transpired against the sitting president was illegal. This fact reflects poorly not only on the perpetrators -- who remain not only not prosecuted but uncharged -- but also on the Trump administration, which didn't even try to arrest or hinder those attacking illegally (even though that's literally part of the job of the executive branch, i.e. The Justice Department). "The last four years have been a ceaseless tantrum of security state hacks, media lackeys, and Beltway nomenklatura who from day one openly sought to jail our Clown-in-Chief for the unforgivable crime of getting elected without their permission. Their behavior is the only reason the Tuesday could turn out to be close." This "worst choice ever" is not just a problem on election day -- the transformation that began a few years ago is much, much closer to completion. The country is politically split into two opposing camps that make GI Joe vs. Cobra look nuanced. There is no middle ground; Bush's pronouncement is now the only law of the land: "you're either with us or you're against us." It's pretty much the only thing the two camps agree on. Those in a "neither" camp aren't very vocal. "Certainly the idea that there’s more than one legitimate political choice has already been excised from most upper-class discourse, with not only Trump and the Republicans but also every actor from the Green Party to Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders denounced across the corporate press as favorites of foreign enemies." In the end, Taibbi argued himself out of voting for either party with another excellent broadside of the Democratic Party. "Trump’s incompetence and influence on the darkest part of the national character make it morally impossible to vote for him. But his opponents are lying, witch-hunting scum in their own right, a club of censorious bureaucrats whose instincts for democracy and free speech hover somewhere between the mid-seventies GDR and the Church of Scientology. (Emphasis added.)" [Six of One; Half-dozen of the Other] The post "Trump on Bernie. When he's right, he's right." includes a video of Donald Trump doing his thing of being a blind pig finding a truffle. He says that Bernie got "S-C-*****" by the Democrats and that "Bernie is the greatest loser in history" because he always throws his support behind whatever the Democrats find in the couch cushions to run against Trump. Trump would have been much more concerned running against Bernie, but is fine with Biden. In the comments, there was the expected back-and-forth between the anyone-but-Trumpers and the why-can't-my-vote-ever-mean-anything-ers, culminating in the following: "The only way is to join progressive organizations and become larger within the party. That’s it and that’s what we are doing. In the meantime the democrats are the on;y place we can get a foothold so support them as a lesser evil because it’s the only group we can have a voice and eventually take over." "The left hopes that replacing Trump with Biden will buy the left time. But Biden will pack his administration full of a whole new generation of vulgar careerists. It will be these people–not the left–who inherit the Democratic Party when he leaves. They will have the institutional knowledge and connections and access to money that are needed for success in American politics. They will continue servicing the oligarchs. And the Republican Party will respond by growing ever more bellicose, ever more grandiose, ever more willing to tear the whole thing down. Biden will accelerate the rise of new nationalist figures who might be able to do all the things Trump can’t even dream of doing." To which I answered: [image]I understand the argument, but how much time is this going to take? It's been like this my entire life (which is not so short anymore): the progressives have had little to no influence on the Democratic Party platform and candidates. They move more to the right every 2-4 years. This year, when there are progressives _everywhere_, all we can do is point to down-ballot wins _waaaay_ down the ballot. No-one with any clout is allowed to sully the platform. [image]Biden's web site is nearly diametrically opposed to the Democratic platform. Which one do you think is the real platform? They're already walking back any progressive statement they ever made. People keep writing that we just have to push the Dems and they'll go left, but there isn't any evidence that this is true. They go where the money is. They seem to be socially progressive, but only when compared to Republicans, who are on a jihad against abortion. [image]At every opportunity, they remove the most attractive progressive baubles from their platform. When they're caught, they might put it back in, but what kind of a relationship is that? The only hope progressives have is to work with people whose interests are diametrically opposed to theirs, but who can be occasionally shamed into paying lip service to those interests? How can you trust them? They have no obligation to do anything they say now once they're elected. They almost never do. It's like having a roommate who'll do the dishes if you tell them to and watch them while they're doing it, but if you look away, they'll sell the dishwasher for drugs. I understand that change takes time, but we have to get real. Progressives invest an enormous amount of energy and time in the Democratic Party and get nearly nothing out of the effort. Perhaps that effort could be better invested elsewhere. I've also read from certain sources (e.g. Chomsky) that former Sanders supporters are getting concessions from the Democrats and having success here, but you have to watch what their hands are doing not what they're saying. The Democrats lie about everything. They will assure everyone on one day that of course Medicare for All is an option and the Green New Deal is on the table and we'll all be standing here in four years and will seen nothing of that. Instead, you'll get increased investment in fracking and natural gas (for example) and a few more options in the ACA (perhaps it will cost $11,000 instead of $13,000 for a family of four). Hooray. I know we need patience and can't expect everything to change at once, but this is ridiculous. Progressives are being gaslighted and deluded into throwing their votes away. They will get nothing that they want for them -- other than perhaps voting out Trump. Not only that, but people like Chomsky have officially said that there is nothing the Democrats can do to lose their votes -- and the Democrats have taken them at their word and pushed the performance right up to the line -- or over it, for some of us -- of the reprehensibility and underhandedness of Trump. That is, Trump set the bar at a certain low level and the Democrats are limboing right up to it, confident that Chomsky of Hamelin and his acolytes can't not vote for them anyway. They get to have their cake and eat it, too. Or so they think. The Dems strategy is so fraught that they may blow the whole thing again because too many people see through the lies and can't in good conscience vote for them either. They're using pretty much the same formula with a candidate who's somehow even less popular than Hillary was. They're putting in a minimal effort and will get a minimal return. Perhaps it will be enough. This doesn't mean "don't vote for Biden". It just means you should be honest about what you're getting. Another commentator responded with, "Biden is an emergency transition candidate. I truly believe that. Trump is such a threat to this country we just can’t risk running a true progressive at this moment. It’s not fully tested and is only argued in coffee shops whether a progressive can win. But we do know moderates can win. "And right now, Trump is easily the biggest threat to the well being of this country we’ve had in 100 years. "So I completely understand wanting to run Biden right now as the top priority isn’t some progressive agenda that’s unproven. We absolutely can not sustain four more years of Trump. Which again why Biden is perfect. Biden is only going to be president for four years [...] "[...] But soon they’ll have no choice as they are forced out by mortality. And when that happens there will be a flood of young progressives hungry to take over from the cold dead boomer hands." This is a typical response for online discourse; it literally does not address any of my points and just parrots the original premise. This is a completely hopeless person who has almost entirely forgotten what they've started fighting for (assuming they were ever fighting for anything). It's hard even to understand what kind of a damaged mind could contort itself into writing something like "Biden is perfect." At that point, the Democrats really don't have to do anything to get that person's vote, really. The Democrats positively revel in how bad Trump is; they also have a whole media army reminding people again and again and again about how bad he is, that ousting him is such a top priority that it doesn't matter who's running against him. And then they pick the absolute lowest bar possible while bro-shaming and strong-arming and cheating Bernie out of the nomination once again. And so many people are just fine with that. They don't even consider for a moment what the Democrats would have to actually do in order to lose their vote. They don't care. This makes them no better than Trump voters who are also in a cult, unable to even conceive of changing their mind. This time, it's Democrats who have lost their minds about Trump, depicting him in Boschian terms, as the devil incarnate. The Republicans did the same thing with Obama during his reelection campaign. They are both right for the wrong reasons. Both Obama and Trump are bad for most Americans. Both of them will not change anything fundamental to benefit anyone but the already-wealthy. Substitute Biden for Obama. Why is this person hopeless? Because after 40 years of waiting for even a shred of progressivism in national politics in America, their answer is ... wait some more. Now is not the time. That is literally what we've been told for my entire life. It's never the time. It will never be the time because people like this don't make it be the time. Incrementalism can work, it's true -- except in America today. In America today, incrementalism is subsumed and redirected and pushed into highly unproductive channels until it peters out. There are great victories in the past, ones that even came about as a result of incremental changes, but the system has learned from its mistakes. It seems completely able to prevent such incremental victories from happening anymore. Both parties are wasting precious time -- we can't waste four more years. I don't believe a Democratic administration will do anything realistic to build infrastructure or combat climate change. They will dither and employ their own form of incrementalism, making sure that their paymasters and all of the usual suspects are taken care of first and then sifting through the crumbs left over to see if there's anything left from which to make some useful policy. It won't be enough. The Democrats and their enablers are basically saying: wait for the bad people to die so we can take over. That will not happen. They will not rise to power this way. You can't just ooze into power -- you have to seize it. Frederick Douglass was right about 150 years ago and he's right today: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." This is exactly the formula that the Democrats use decade after decade. Waiting for the opportune moment, waiting until the Democrats give progressives a chance, is delusional. There is also, as Jimmy Dore and Chris Hedges point out, again and again, no point in promising your vote long before an election. Withhold it. Play coy. How in God's name are you forcing the Democrats to do anything when you concede the only bargaining chip you have before you've even started negotiating? That makes no sense. I will decide who I vote for when we get closer to the election. Who knows what Biden does in the meantime? Is there literally nothing that the Democrats could do to lose your vote if you're a Dump Trumper? Have you already decided that Trump is the absolute worst possible timeline? The argument that we should just vote for Biden is an interesting one: your vote doesn't matter anyway, so why not just vote to keep out Trump? That is, you're never going to be allowed to vote for the person you want, so just give your vote to a Dump Trumper instead. But if votes don't matter, why do they want our votes so badly? The only argument is really that with Biden they think that there's a chance to get something useful done whereas with Trump there is no chance. This is a fallacy. There is no chance that anything useful will be done by the either administration. Biden will pay more lip service and drain more energy by pretending to bend in a more progressive direction...and in the end fail to do so, having expended everyone's energy and time. Is that better than just knowing that Trump won't listen in the first place? Both choices are awful. The chances are slightly better with Biden/Harris (because we have to consider the very real possibility that Biden won't even make it through the first year). So the Democrats are, once again, rewarded for having done everything they can to slow down progressivism in America while pretending to be better than the Republicans. The U.S. is at a complete impasse. There isn't always a solution to every problem. Perhaps a vote of no confidence would be better than either of the two choices. We already had that in 2016 where over half of eligible voters didn't vote. What if those voters voted, but for no-one? Or for Howie Hawkins? What if we finally get the Green Party up to that fabled 5%? I think the part that really annoys the most about Dump Trumpers is that they are arguing that there is no such thing as principles and that those of us who choose to adhere to them are fools -- and should give our votes to our betters to use. I'm not sure they understand leverage at all. I'm not sure how they reconcile the duplicity of the Democrats with the promises they keep citing Team Biden as having made. As Jimmy Dore put it in "Congress Goes On Vacation During An Economic Crisis!" , "you know who tells you to shut your mouth and vote? Dictators." and "Congress doesn't work for you, you idiot. Now go vote for them." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4077 2020-11-04T22:36:12+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

). He’s joined there by another guy you might know, Andrew Napolitano [2] -- see "his author page" -- who writes more about freedom on domestic issues, discussing actual attacks on freedom like the constantly renewed Patriot Act. If you want news from someone a little closer to home—and from someone who has recently taken a decidedly anti-Democrat turn after having been one for his entire life—there’s James Howard Kunstler, from out near Saratoga Springs. I read his book "The Long Emergency" this year (and I even read the follow-up "Living in the Long Emergency" ). He blogs regularly at "Clusterfuck Nation" and, with his newfound decision to support Trump just to keep the Democrats out of power, you’ll like what he’s saying (he’s gotten a bit too erratic for my tastes lately, but your mileage may vary). As a sample, he ends his latest post "Last Round-up at the Wokester Corral" with, "I’m under no illusions that Donald Trump will Make America Great Again in the way that many of his supporters understand that slogan. The USA is headed into a terrible ordeal of economic disorder that I call the long emergency. Mr. Trump won’t stop it, and it may yet make a fool out of him. But the Democratic Party’s agenda would add an extra layer of tyrannical and sadistic insanity to the process that will only bring more suffering to more people, and I don’t want that to happen. I believe that Mr. Trump will probably win the election, but we’ll have to see what kind of nefarious dodges his opponents will employ to prevent any resolution of that outcome." Again, I don’t agree with everything he writes—less lately—but he offers an interesting viewpoint and it’s good to keep a finger on the pulse of other opinions. Getting back to Chinese invasion: I think instead of looking for enemies outside of America, you’d be better served at looking for the enemies within. There are more than enough of those to deal with. Nearly everyone in power in the U.S. over the last 40 years has been more than happy to continue squeezing blood from the stone of the poorest 90% in America just to keep the roulette wheel spinning. Even besides COVID-19, there is plenty of dire news about America’s situation today without making stuff up about invasions. The real-life stuff is more depressing, though, I have to admit. China is not coming for us. Neither is Russia. Why bother? We’re doing a great job of tearing ourselves apart all on our own. The Federal government shoveling trillions into Wall Street can’t last forever — and those spinning plates are going to come crashing down at some point, as the “fake” economy of Wall Street re-aligns in a “short, sharp shock” with the “real” economy where unemployment is insanely high and small businesses are dying out like the dinosaurs. Trump’s just trying to keep those plates in the air long enough to get re-elected, but he has absolutely no plan for what to do after that. It’s hard to see what the plan is now, to be honest. The plan so far seems to be “protect the rich”, then we’ll see. Biden thinks he has a plan, but that team can’t plan its way out of a paper bag, either. It reminds me of that wise old man Mike Tyson’s words: "Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth." [image] Check out some of the links. I tried to choose stuff that I read that’s a bit closer to what you’re used to—no radical leftist propaganda, I promise. [Was I Wrong about China?] Since I sent the response to my friend, I have since learned that his opinions and those of Dave Hodges are actually mainstream in America. No less auspicious and mainstream a source than "Newsweek" published the following cover very recently: [image] They probably don't go so far as to hypothesize about a Chinese ground invasion, but give it time. We saw the heights of fancy to which the press could lift itself using only prevarication and bile when building the immense pipe dream [3] of RussiaGate, so don't bet against their sinophobia. Blaming the other always prevails -- especially when you have America-sized problems to solve. Update: I recently say the following snippet in the NY Times as well: [image] The NY Times continues its plummet into the sewer of conspiracy theory and clickbait headlines. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Buchanan has long been known as extreme right-wing, but he's a staunch anti-imperialist and regularly publishes at Antiwar.com, a site publishes many viewpoints -- with a focus on stopping war. [1] Napolitano is a former judge who's been on FOX News for a long time. While his on-air rhetoric is over-the-top, I find his writing on civil and constitutional rights to be well-written and intelligent. [1] Luftschloss in German is so much more evocative to the mind's eye -- a multi-turreted dream that looks like "Dubrovnik" but without substance. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4041 2020-11-03T22:54:52+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

cites Bernie, "“This struggle is not just about defeating Donald Trump — this struggle is about taking on the incredibly powerful institutions that control the economic and political life of this country,” he said in the speech launching his campaign. "I’m talking about Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, and a corrupt campaign finance system that enables billionaires to buy elections. Brothers and sisters: we have an enormous amount of work in front of us." I can't imagine any of that coming from Joe Biden. It's more likely to come from Trump, to be honest. Even just before the election, Bernie's throwing shade, but not explicitly at Trump, which is refreshing -- he attacks the system. [image] A pity the Democrats aren't on board at all. The Greens are, though. Bernie should have run as their candidate -- even though Howie Hawkins is a helluva guy, Bernie has more star power. But Bernie's not running. He might get a cabinet post, but don't count on it. Instead, it's Trump v. Biden. The video below provides an overview/prediction. [media] ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4081 2020-11-02T22:42:52+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. He's a former teamster who, until 2018, was loading trucks for UPS. He's been involved in socialist and green politics since...forever: "He supported the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968, the People’s Party in 1972 and 1976, and the" ... ]]>

. He's a former teamster who, until 2018, was loading trucks for UPS. He's been involved in socialist and green politics since...forever: "He supported the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968, the People’s Party in 1972 and 1976, and the Citizens Party in 1980. Since its first national meeting in 1984, Howie has been a Green Party organizer." He lives in Syracuse, New York. He ran for governor of New York State 3 times. He has never been elected to public office. The Green Party platform is that "[we] will be damned if we wait on the Republicans and Democrats to save the planet, confront racism, address spiraling inequality, and avert nuclear apocalypse." Their main issues are (the links lead to a lot of detail): * "Medicare for All" * "COVID-19 Relief" * "Green New Deal" * "Community Control of Police" * "Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems" * "Economic Bill of Rights" * "End Endless Wars" * "Legalize Marijuana/End the War on Drugs" The article "Third-Party Candidates Had An Impact In 2016. In 2020, They’ve Struggled To Gain Traction." by Rosie Gray is one of the few interviews with Hawkins in anything approaching a mainstream source. In it, he addresses the Chomsky complaint that the Green Party should be working on down-ballot candidates and forget the presidency. "If it were up to Hawkins, he told me before the event, he’d rather not be running for president at all; but decades of activism has taught him that the Greens must contend in the presidential race to gain any traction. He’d started out, with the birth of the Green Party in 1984, thinking presidential politics were irrelevant and that the party’s strategy should focus on bottom-up organizing. But this vision conflicted with the reality of the US system. “My attitude was that until we have a caucus in Congress, it’s not worth running for president. But what I didn't understand that I understand now is that you need to be in those races to get your ballot line.”" The Democrats and Republicans have made it so that you can't just run down-ballot -- or you lose your spot on the ballot entirely. Hawkins acknowledges that he's basically a token candidate -- he's very well-spoken and very down-to-earth. "Hawkins had arrived early for the interview, wearing jeans, running shoes, and a Teamsters jacket. The thing that struck me most upon meeting him was his absolute normalcy. Hawkins is a retired longtime UPS worker and union member who got his start in political activism as a youth in the Bay Area. I asked him if it had been especially challenging to get his message out. “Very,” he said. “I have yet to speak to a network or cable news reporter or get a segment.” He’s done local NPR and local television interviews, but nothing national. “We just haven’t got the coverage that Jill Stein got,” Hawkins said. “Even Ralph Nader.”" He's a smart dude with a good grasp of policy and what needs to be done. His background is working-class as hell and he’s been involved in politics since the 80s. What's not to like? The Green Platform outlined above looks pretty good -- it's basically a good start. It's highly unlikely that Hawkins will even get the 1% that Jill Stein got in the last election. The following 45-minute video is a refreshing talk with a no-nonsense presidential candidate who isn't trying to sell anything. [media] About 20 minutes in, Rall asked Hawkins about Edward Snowden and whistleblowers, to which Hawkins replied, "I would ask Ed Snowden to be in my administration." When Rall asked him what the difference is between the candidates, Hawkins replied that, "Biden would be better on public health, but not much else." Rall followed up with, "Ted Rall: What would you do about the pandemic, on day one?" "Howie Hawkins: Scale up. Use the "Defense Production Act" . Scale up testing, contact-tracing and isolating those exposed or infected in order to suppress community spread of the virus, so we can go back to work and to school safely. That’s what every organized society in the world has done, except this one. To me, that’s why the two governing parties are presiding over a failed state. "I mean, Trump, he’s a loser: COVID won; he wants to move on. But Biden’s had the platform and he’s not clearly mobilized the public behind what we need. And if you’re in a position to act and you don’t, then that makes you complicit and that’s where we’re at. And I’ve been probably just as outraged about that from Biden as knowing his long history as a neoliberal hawk. "He lives within commuting distance of the White House press corps. You know, he could have convened them in socially distanced news conferences, like Cuomo did early in the pandemic […] and pounded away and mobilized public opinion to get that kind of response." "I think our left intelligentsia has been co-opted into liberalism. They call themselves socialists but, in the end, when it comes to real politics, they always say support the lesser evil. I think what that means is that the Green Party, the left, has to develop its own spokespeople because these people give a good abstract reason on why we need to move beyond capitalism. When they get the option, they support the Democrats, which is the world's second-most enthusiastic capitalist party. "And it’s always an existential threat. "But like I explained earlier: it’s not so much Trump. He’s really not that different from what the establishment wants. It’s the climate emergency, the new nuclear arms race, it’s declining life expectancy due to growing inequality. Those are the emergencies and that’s what the left should be talking about instead of saying ‘Trump is bad and Biden’s not good, but you need to get Trump out of there and then we’ll fight Biden’ You know, why don’t we fight the system now?" A little later, they discussed the huge group of non-voters -- 100 million in 2016 -- and how there's opportunity there for a truly grass-roots third party. Because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to be interested in gaining new voters or actually offering half of the voting anything that will motivate them or inspire them. "The largest bloc of voters are those that don’t vote. And they don’t buy that argument. They’re disgusted with both parties. People say they’re apathetic, but I’ve done a lot of door-knocking. I think people are alienated. And they feel powerless. And they stop paying close attention to policies because it’s painful, when you feel you can’t do anything about it, so you turn to private life. That’s the future of the Green Party." On militarism, he thinks Trump's not really been effective at all, either positively or negatively (at least not on purpose). "I don’t think it’s Trump, I don’t think he’s paying attention. I think it’s the national security state" He calls for more local politics and briefly discusses the "community policing" plank in the Green Platform. "We call for community control of the police, so that they don’t police themselves. […] Rid the force of the racists and the sadists. So that police work for the people and not for themselves." People used to argue that there's "no way" someone like Ralph Nader or Jill Stein or Howie Hawkins could be president, that they're not statesmanlike enough or well-versed enough in the nuance of leadership. Trump's greatest gift to third parties has been to give the lie to that notion: it's clear that their is no lower bar of competence or experience or statesmanship that precludes becoming president. Even the Democrats have helped with the nomination of Biden: they took the ball that Trump hiked and ran with it. The Democrats looked at the Republicans and thought to themselves "that + 5% should do it". The Green Party Platform is actually quite good; their candidates are quite good; it's a scandal that an interview with a presidential candidate has 57 views and 5 upvotes. A microcosm of politics in America. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4079 2020-11-01T22:19:51+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

for people to do their best to ensure that their vote will actually be counted. * Vote in person, if at all possible. * Don't take no for an answer. * Don't allow them to give you a "provisional" ballot. [media] The United States of America is not a democracy, not by a long shot. How can it be, when the basic right of participation is contingent for so many? It's a sham and scam, plastering over its gaping holes with marketing and unearned goodwill. The American people are being conned every day into thinking that they have anything to do with how their country is run for them. Even if you do get a shot at voting, your opinion on matters generally doesn't matter. I wrote about this recently in "Corruption in the US" : "Regardless of whether Americans were completely against or completely for a policy, there was a 30% chance of it being enacted. [...] The influence of the top 10% is much, much closer to the ideal—where issues with 0% support never pass and those with 100% support always do—they effectively kill ideas they don’t support and tend to get what they do support (60% chance instead of 30%)." But, hell, if you can't even vote, then how can you even make your voice heard -- and then ignored? And, even once you have voted, there are people who care so little about democracy that they'll try to invalidate those votes on any technicality they can find, as well. The article "Republicans Are Trying To Cancel More Than 100,000 Votes in a Deep Blue Part of Texas" by Eric Boehm documents how Harris County expanded its curbside voting to anyone -- because of COVID-19 -- rather than for just people with disabilities (as it was to-date). "State election officials had previously signaled that Harris County's drive-through voting plans were legally permissible. A Republican effort to block the drive-through voting stations was rejected by the Texas Supreme Court earlier this month, and the state Supreme Court on Sunday rejected an attempt to get those votes thrown out." It's almost enough to make you give up, but then you let the bastards win. The bastards have been winning for a while -- and a bastard will definitely win this time, again. But that doesn't mean you have to like it. Part of their power is that people let them assuage their consciences by telling themselves and us a fairy tale about how they're the good guys. If the least we can do is rob them of our belief, then that's a start. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Leonardo DiCaprio has recently joined with Palast to get his message out to more people. I also noticed that Yvette Nicole Brown ("Shirley" from Community) is a producer of the video). ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4075 2020-10-27T22:26:52+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

was insightful. He and Katie agreed that Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic primary would have been a much larger accomplishment than winning the general election. That is, the general election would have been easier because Bernie had a much harder battle convincing the democratic establishment than the people of America. Americans were on Bernie's side -- he just couldn't get invited to the dance because he and his ideas were too dangerous to the establishment. He was not controllable in the classic sense that Joe Biden, of course, very much is. Joe is perfect because he doesn't really seem to have strong convictions, so it's not hard for him to adjust when something he believes conflicts with the requirements of the paymasters. Bernie would clearly have been more difficult. Later in the conversation, "Sirota explains how amorality is a requirement in U.S. politics" with a story about the end of the 2020 Democratic primaries, where most of the Democratic candidates still in the running were basically ordered by the party to drop out and back Biden. He explains why they didn't have a problem with doing that -- because they're amoral and there is no personal downside. The choice was simple. I've partially transcribed Sirota's soliloquy below. "You know, all of those candidates dropping out and endorsing Biden, they all knew that if it was a gambit that didn’t work, they’d be well-remunerated career-wise, future-political-run-wise, like, that was not a risky gambit. "Pete Buttigieg -- a former McKinsey exec -- going in with Biden at the last minute...Pete Buttigieg, at McKinsey, all he did was analyze risk. [He's thinking] I’m being paid by McKinsey, now I’m going to run for Secretary of State [...] and now I’m gonna run for mayor and now I’m going to run for President … it’s all ROI. It’s all, like, now I ran for President and now I’m going to go with Joe Biden and, even if Joe Biden loses, I’m going to go with all of his donors. It’s all, like, that’s how these people think. "And I’m not even ripping on Pete Buttigieg in any special sense. He’s just, like...that’s a very typical thing. So, all of the people that dropped out and endorsed Biden … Beto … dude, it’s like, awesome, you’re just like everybody else. Congratulations. You’re like everybody else and, like, … so, like, your [Katie's] point about fair game? I don’t judge it on fair or not fair. That’s just what this disgusting system is. "And so, you know, Pete Buttigieg and [garbled] and Beto and so on, they’re just amoral actors in an amoral system. And amorality is going to be amoral. And they’re not anomalously amoral, they’re not like sort-of super-villain amoral "You know, the thing that made Bernie stand out was that, Bernie, he’s exceptionally not amoral and the actual question that remains unanswered—or, answered in this depressing way—is: can you win high office and not be completely amoral? You know, he got to the senate. OK. Can you become president and not be completely amoral? I got no answer for you—other than a negative one. (Emphasis added.)" [Arun Gupta: The Problem with the Left] The final interview was with Arun Gupta, who has a decidedly different take than Hedges, Horne, Halper, and Sirota. They may have their flaws, but this guy is militantly adamant that anyone who doesn't agree with everything he thinks in every detail is not only wrong, but actively evil and racist. "He starts in by establishing that everything is Trump's fault" . "Trump basically took class issues and forced them through this racial, ethnonationalist lens. Because people were suffering…" He acknowledges that people have been suffering for a long time. Why doesn't he care that only Trump somehow manages to appeal to them? Is it because the Democrats don't try? Or that people watch Biden and co. hand -- and continue to hand -- people like Trump a quiver of arrows against the already downtrodden? Is it not legitimate to wonder how helpful it is to vote authority's handmaiden's back into power? Gupta would back off on blaming only Trump sometimes, but he kept circling back to it. He would pay lip service to the possibility that Joe Biden has severe failings, then upbraid anyone who thinks that those might weigh more than he, Gupta, thinks they should. This guy can’t hear the irony of how a "racial, ethnonationalist lens" is literally what progressives stand for right now. It's also questionable what sort of empathy he brings to the table when he talks about how he "went to the Midwest" and found that "People, particularly men, were bad at managing their money", which is just kind of a shockingly insensitive and wrong-headed way of starting a conversation about the poor in America. He makes it pretty clear that he thinks only the colored poor in America deserve attention — his story about white poverty starts off by victim-blaming, which is deeply ironic, considering his entire political stance. It's also not surprising because this is exactly the mistake that everyone left of Trump makes -- which is why Trump and his ilk pick up votes (they're the only ones who even pretend to listen or understand). This explains a lot about why Trump wins those people over. There’s this adenoidal know-it-all telling them that they failed to exercise their privilege and that they should get behind reparations … or, there’s the adenoidal Trump telling them he’s going to help (even though he doesn’t do that). Gupta also focuses on disproportionality, that minorities are dying in higher numbers than they should be … but the absolute numbers are overwhelmingly white people … and white people know that. So if 14% of the population is black and 60% is white. A disproportionate death tally would be 24/50 … but the 50 is still thinking that there’s a problem, no? How do you make any headway telling the people watching 50 of “their own” die that those people don’t matter as compared to the extra 10 that died “on the other side”? I'm obviously not arguing that should ignore the disproportionality and fix things for white people first, but that you have to frame your arguments more diplomatically if you're at all in interested in gaining allies. Spoiler alert: Gupta and others like him have clearly completely given up on gaining allies. They are instead engaged in a project of purging even those who would be in alignment on most issues. The purity test is alive and well. The sides exist in America; if you're at all interested in bridging the gap rather than chiding, excoriating and writing off everyone who doesn't already believe what you believe at the beginning of the discussion, then your chance of success is nil. The incorrigible are the loudest, but they're a minority (on both sides, actually). Many people who Gupta considers the enemy are just vastly misinformed, not irredeemable. Gupta also called anyone not voting for Biden or voting for a third party a "deluded idiot". He thinks that his skin color makes him better than white people, and so can dismiss out-of-hand the opinion of any old white man like Chris Hedges, whom he calls "terrible" (I thought he was joking at first, but he apparently sincerely believes it). So, essentially, Chris Hedges is the enemy and isn’t active politically and is useless and terrible. Ok, thanks, Gupta. "If you’re making an argument that no-one should vote for the Democrats or that people should vote for third-party candidates in battleground states [...then you're the enemy]" Basically, anyone who disagrees with Gupta is insignificant and doesn’t have "skin in the game" (an expression favored by his counterpart zealots on the right) and "just bitches at home" and "they’re just white people and people of color who think like white people" and "I don’t give a shit what these people do; they’re irrelevant." Honestly, anytime you basically call people race-traitors (as above), it’s time to look in the mirror, ya damned racist. It’s terrible because this kind of attitude is exactly what will get Trump either a second term or help elect someone even worse than Trump after Biden’s catastrophic failure. I suppose people just can’t accept that there’s no good answer. Or people see that there's no good answer and settle for the petty satisfaction of feeling like they've made the right choice anyway. He ends with "if you are arguing that people in swing states should not vote for Biden, then you are an enemy of everything that is just and progressive and good." I honestly can't tell anymore if he knows what Biden is, or if he's actually claiming that Biden stands for "just and progressive and good" things. It doesn't matter because that statement is going to age like milk. It’s going to be more like a shift-change at the rape factory. Just like when Obama was elected. So, to sum up, only Gupta knows how bad Trump is. If you don’t agree with him, then you’re deluded and have no idea how bad the next four years will be. And Trump is a fascist dictator who must go and anyone disagreeing is an enemy. He really doesn’t think that "white people" (a phrase he used often) can tell him anything because he knows everything better and has come to all the conclusions for you already. Basically, if you’re white, you’re a racist moron and should sit down, shut up, and let POCs run things. Because that’s freedom and progressive and anti-racist. Arun Gupta is an absolutely terrible advocate. He can only preach to a choir because he burns a bridge to anyone who disagrees with him. [Malcom X did it better (of course)] This isn't to say that race isn't relevant, but that being racist against whites doesn't magically solve racism against POC. As I read somewhere online: they want to bring back separate drinking fountains, but switch the signs. These people are ideologically dangerous and always have been. "Malcolm X expressed more disdain for liberals than conservatives" "The white liberal differs from the white conservative in one way. The liberal is more deceitful and hypocritical than the conservatives. Both want power. But, the white liberal has perfected the art of posing as the negro’s (sic) friend and benefactor. "The American negro is nothing but a political football and the white liberals control this ball. Through tricks, tokenism, and false promises of integration and civil rights…," He was also savvy to media in a way that is still highly appropriate today. "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Self-styled progressives have unfortunately lumped everyone in together and hate the people who are oppressed (poor whites) and love the people who are doing the oppressing (the Democratic party). [Biden's Mandate] So what's going to happen If Biden wins in a landslide? He’s going to scream “mandate” and try to push his awesome program through, whatever the hell that happens to be: there are the programs outlined on his web site, those in the DNC platform, and the programs he mentions when he knows that's what people want to hear. These views diverge wildly and often conflict. Which is the real agenda? Hint: it's probably a mix, but Biden's history does not bode well. He would basically have to rule nearly completely differently from everything he's actually stood for and fought for in order to be a passable leader. Biden has already caused more harm than Trump, but the argument is that he will be less dangerous in the upcoming term. I think that’s debatable. Trump talks a lot, but fails to act in the large to the degree that Biden has been able to. Trump’s damage comes less overtly and more through negligence and incompetence. Trump’s “team” (for lack of a better word) will let the nation fall apart. It’s possible that Biden’s would be better here (esp. with regard to COVID-19). It's also possible that Biden would begin to repair the damage Trump has done to the American Empire, which would be a loss for the world. The article "Joe Biden and the Possibility of a Remarkable Presidency" by Bill McKibben is more hopeful, "Taken together, a big victory and a transitional attitude [Biden indicating he’s a one-term president] might let a politician whose career has been marked by compromise and caution throw both to the wind. " I know McKibben is just trying to put a nice spin on it -- throwing some Sriracha on the shit sandwich -- but even he has to admit that it's just pure speculation: "As I said, there’s no real reason to think that this is how Biden views the world." Some of the essay is just flat-out wrong as well, as when he writes that "[Biden's] biggest virtue is the dull (if welcome) one of decency." So he's making the same argument as people made for Obama's taking the reins from Bush (the last absolutely evil Republican, if you're old enough to remember), but this time about a man who's spent a career proving he's not really a decent guy. It's a remarkable thing to write about someone who has been involved in—and proudly declaims his hand in the provenance of—much of the most heinous legislation passed in the last 40 years. Patriot Act, Iraq War, Crime Bills, etc. I think Sirota nailed it above: Biden is basically amoral. McKibben's essay is a muddled and self-deluding paean to desperation. That isn't to say that Sirota himself isn't susceptible to the allure of desperation (or maybe just punching the clock at his writer's job). The article "At the Debate Last Night, Biden Finally Distanced Himself From the GOP’s Austerity Talking Points" by David Sirota lends more weight to Biden's (most likely temporary) shift away from austerity in the second debate than he's probably due. "During a discussion about the budget, Biden brushed off his old deficit hawk buddies, outright rejected GOP talking points, and instead made the point that the federal government must spend what it takes to rescue cities and states. "[…] It is hard to overstate how big a shift this is for Biden. He was the guy who spent decades touting his work with Republicans trying to cut programs like Social Security in the name of budget austerity. Now he’s expounding on the need for countercyclical deficit spending. To use a Biden-ism, that’s a BFD. "The question is whether or not Biden musters the fortitude to stick by the position he expressed tonight." The answer is “no”, and I’m basically citing David Sirota himself from the video above, who said, "they’re just amoral actors in an amoral system. And amorality is going to be amoral." What in God’s name makes you think that a last-minute change in espoused policy to score points during a televised debate has any bearing whatsoever on what Biden will actually do once in office? Do you not remember the clip on Stephen Colbert’s show where Kamala Harris gut-laughed at Colbert when he asked her how she could support Biden so whole-heartedly when she’d excoriated him as a racist during the primary debates? She intoned that "It was a debate," as if that made it abundantly clear that one just lies one’s face off to score points. That’s obviously how politicians in the States work, for the most part, but Sirota seems to be lending import to their statements when he should know better. [Shut up and do what I say] It’s so tedious, though. Basically, the message is: get with the program we’ve designed without your input, no questions asked. Ask any questions and you’re written off as an incorrigible enemy. If you accept the program 100%, then you’re still the enemy because of your skin color (this time white). We’ve heard this all before (against POC). It wasn’t convincing then, either. This approach will fail because it's not adapted to how people are; it's not inclusive and not going to find broad support. I'm all for a "shut up while the adults are talking" approach when you don't actually need the people you're dismissing. Otherwise, you're sawing off the branch you're sitting on. Honest question to self-styled progressives: what do you think is going to happen to that 50% of America you're dismissing out of hand? Are they supposed to throw themselves off a cliff? Are they even part of your country? Are they only allowed to come back in when they've learned to behave? How do you see this working? I know that they misbehave; I don't approve of them any more than I approve of you, but what do you plan to do with them if they don't straighten up and fly right? It's not like you can throw them out -- they live here already. Nor do you have the right to do that, though that might come as a surprise to you. They certainly won't go quietly. [A lever made out of straw] Another big problem with voting in the Democrats and then pushing them to the left is: with what do people think they’re pushing? Imagine that they’ve handed Democrats the House, Senate, and presidency. The dream, right? Now we can finally get things done. What kind of things? Whatever the fuck the Democrats want. They will have everyone over a barrel because they know that people will vote for them no matter how shitty the candidate, no matter how meager the platform. There will follow the old adage that ends in "we both know what you are, my dear. Now we're just haggling over price." What are you going to do, progressives? Vote Republican next time around? Vote third-party? (In the voice of Kodos) "Go ahead; throw your vote away." [media] Voting out the Republicans or voting in the Democrats is only kicking the can down the road. They’re all useless and immanently dangerous. The Republicans claimed a mandate too. When the Democrats do the same, will it be to address climate change or health care or the pandemic? Of course not. What did they do with their last mandate in 2008? The ACA and $15 trillion of QE to Wall Street. There is no good option. Put a fork in it. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3904 2020-10-06T23:14:19+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

describes what is happening to Julian Assange. "In an Old Bailey courtroom in London over the" ... ]]>

describes what is happening to Julian Assange. "In an Old Bailey courtroom in London over the past four weeks, lawyers for the US government have sought the extradition of Assange to the US to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 and one charge of computer misuse. At the heart of their case is the accusation that in leaking a trove of classified US diplomatic and military cables in 2010, Assange and WikiLeaks endanger the lives of US agents and informants. "One of the many peculiarities in this strange case is that the evidence for any such thing is non-existent. (Emphasis added.)" The charges are trumped-up (if you'll pardon the expression). It is a show trial, a "star chamber" . There is only the barest pretense of observing societal conventions of justice. [Why No Justice?] The West, as embodied by the two powers of Britain and the U.S., is interested only in power, in greedily retaining its grip on the majority of wealth, energy, resources, and technology that it seized centuries ago. The only difference between Britain and the U.S. and the worst dictatorships is that the former have better marketing. It is not interested in having the truth told. The truth is not flattering. Despite the efforts of Assange and Wikileaks, the scales have fallen from far too few eyes -- the propaganda is strong. The West weaves a convincing tale about itself, selling the tale to its fellow travelers with promises of personal wealth and power. What did Assange actually do? He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of "WikiLeaks" , an organization dedicated to journalism in a pure form, without commercial support. It is crowd-funded and user-supported. He is a publisher and a journalist of the highest caliber. "What Assange and WikiLeaks did – obtaining important information about the deeds and misdeeds of the US government and giving that information to the public – is exactly what all journalists ought to do." Instead of kowtowing to power like other media, WikiLeaks tells the real stories that they wouldn't -- whether because of incompetence or complicity or both. WikiLeaks tells the truth; nothing they've reported has been disproven. They don't offer "spin" -- they just provide information. The data speaks for itself. It speaks volumes. These are the sounds that the West seeks to stifle. Why the West? Is it not Britain and the U.S. that are at fault here? While they are the primary players, the rest of Europe (for example) is complicit in its silence. Where are France's threats of sanctions? Where are Germany's? Why do other large countries not flex their not inconsiderable muscle to defend justice? Where is the rest of the media? The so-called mainstream media plays handmaiden to power, as usual. The article "What if Ignored Covid-19 Warnings Had Been Leaked to WikiLeaks?" by Ray McGovern points out that, "(On the chance you are wondering, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal – as well as National Public Radio – have paid zero attention to the extradition hearing in recent weeks – much less to Judge Baraitser’s Queen of Hearts-style, “off-with-his-head” behavior.)" [The word you're looking for is "Torture"] The article "The Cost of Resistance" by Chris Hedges describes what lackey Britain is doing to Julian Assange for its lord and master, the U.S. It has been and continues to torture him in a medieval justice system that does nothing to earn the epithet. "[...Julian] is taken from his cell in the high security Belmarsh Prison at 5:00 am. He is handcuffed, put in holding cells, stripped naked and X-rayed. He is transported an hour and a half each way to court in a police van that resembles a dog cage on wheels. He is held in a glass box at the back of court during the proceedings, often unable to consult with his lawyers. He has difficulty hearing the proceedings. He is routinely denied access to the documents in his case and is openly taunted in court by the judge." It is a show trial, a kangaroo court. There is no due process. The outcome is a foregone conclusion. The torture continues to keep him physically weak, psychologically off-balance, and intellectually diminished. It is a message to -- a warning -- to others who would transgress against the powerful. "Julian is already very fragile. His psychological and physical distress include dramatic weight loss, severe respiratory problems, joint problems, dental decay, chronic anxiety, intense, constant stress resulting in an inability to relax or focus, and episodes of mental confusion. These symptoms indicate, as Nils Melzer [2], the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture who met and examined Julian in prison has stated, that he is suffering from prolonged psychological torture." He was a towering intellectual, a quick wit, with unshakeable principles. He could be so again, were he freed. He is an Australian citizen whose government has abandoned him. He is being tried for treason against a foreign government. He is being punished for telling the truth. He should not be on trial -- he should win a Nobel Peace Prize had this honor not already long-since been tainted by war-mongering recipients like Kissinger and Obama. "If Julian is extradited to the U.S. to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act, each carrying a potential 10 years, which appears likely, he will continue to be psychologically and physically abused to break him." Hedges shares the words of another prisoner of Britain: Roger Hallam, the co-founder of "Extinction Rebellion" , "“The days of standing up to tyranny have long faded,” Roger writes from prison. “The life-and-death struggle against Hitler and fascism is consigned to the history books. Today’s liberal classes believe only in one thing: maintaining their privilege. Their one priority is power. The number one rule is: preserve our careers, our institutions at all cost. (Emphasis added.)" It is these people who are beholden to those in power and it is these people who want to punish Assange for daring to make them feel a twinge of conscience for their complicity, for their having profited at the expense of those less fortunate. Make no mistake: Britain, as the left hand of the United States, is trying to get away with murder. If they don't directly kill Assange in prison, they will extradite him to a death sentence in the human-rights-disaster that is solitary confinement in a U.S. federal prison. The article "Assange Extradition: The Deadly Magistrate" by Craig Murray provides detailed evidence and concludes, "Even before Covid-19 became such a threat, I stated that I had been forced to the conclusion the British Government is seeking Assange’s death in jail. The evidence for that is now overwhelming." [Pilger and Assange] The article "Julian Assange Must be Freed, Not Betrayed" by John Pilger is just one of many by one of Australia's greatest journalists about his friend and fellow journalist. Pilger eloquently describes the effects of Assange's and Wikileaks's work. "WikiLeaks has informed us how illegal wars are fabricated, how governments are overthrown and violence is used in our name, how we are spied upon through our phones and screens. The true lies of presidents, ambassadors, political candidates, generals, proxies, political fraudsters have been exposed. One by one, these would-be emperors have realised they have no clothes. It has been an unprecedented public service; above all, it is authentic journalism, whose value can be judged by the degree of apoplexy of the corrupt and their apologists. (Emphasis added.)" In his long and storied career as a journalist and documentarian, Pilger has seen myriad examples of tyrannical regimes -- official enemies worthy of opprobrium. These rulers turn out to be no worse than our own, when we turn an unflinching eye on them. This unflinching eye reveals that our official enemies are downright clumsy and limited in their vision of power when compared to our own governments. "As a reporter in places of upheaval all over the world, I have learned to compare the evidence I have witnessed with the words and actions of those with power. In this way, it is possible to get a sense of how our world is controlled and divided and manipulated, how language and debate are distorted to produce the propaganda of false consciousness. "When we speak about dictatorships, we call this brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It is a truth we rarely apply to our own societies, regardless of the trail of blood that leads back to us and which never dries. (Emphasis added.)" The logical and unavoidable conclusion is, "[...] if there is any sense of justice left in the land of Magna Carta, the travesty that is the case against this heroic Australian must be thrown out. Or beware, all of us." Or, as Ray McGovern [3] poignantly points out, "As I think of my good friend Julian, what comes to mind are the desperate words of Willy Loman’s wife Linda in Death of a Salesman:" "He’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person." Free Julian Assange. Fight for Julian Assange. Spread the word. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The usual caveats about attribution apply. See "Quote Investigator" to learn that Orwell never really wrote this -- and certainly not in 1984 -- but it really feels like something he should have written. The Internet has spoken. [1] See the article "Nils Melzer Spricht über Wikileaks Gründer Julian Assange" by Daniel Ryser (or the English translation "Nils Melzer discusses Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange" by Daniel Ryser, Yves Bachmann (Photos) and Charles Hawley (Translation) ) for more information about Nils Melzer's work as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. His work is well documented at "Wikipedia" as well. "Vor unseren Augen kreiert sich ein mörderisches System [...] Vier demokratische Staaten schliessen sich zusammen, USA, Ecuador, Schweden und Grossbritannien, um mit ihrer geballten Macht aus einem Mann ein Monster zu machen, damit man ihn nachher auf dem Scheiter­haufen verbrennen kann, ohne dass jemand aufschreit. Der Fall ist ein Riesen­skandal und die Bankrott­erklärung der westlichen Rechts­staatlichkeit. Wenn Julian Assange verurteilt wird, dann ist das ein Todes­urteil für die Pressefreiheit." [1] From the article "What if Ignored Covid-19 Warnings Had Been Leaked to WikiLeaks?" by Ray McGovern , cited above. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4070 2020-10-04T18:12:28+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, I pointed out that it's not just Trump who lacks "acts, logic, integrity, or principles". Obama talks about "values" that failed to be applied -- note the self-exonerating passive voice -- when "[w]e crossed a line [and] tortured some folks". Dore pauses the video and yells back, "You're supposed to follow your values. [...] if you don't follow your values when things are hardest, then they're not values, they're hobbies." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4069 2020-10-04T17:52:16+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

discusses the recent presidential debate. When Biden was asked about ending the filibuster or packing the court (two highly relevant election issues), he responded, "Whatever position I take on that, that'll become" ... ]]>

discusses the recent presidential debate. When Biden was asked about ending the filibuster or packing the court (two highly relevant election issues), he responded, "Whatever position I take on that, that'll become the issue. The issue is the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. You're voting now. Vote and let your Senators know strongly how you feel." What the hell does that even mean? I thought it was just wishy-washy dementia-talk. It’s not just that (because it is incoherent; read it again). He doesn’t think he has to address issues because there’s an election on. He is anti-campaigning. He’s like someone involved in a court case saying that they can’t talk about the court case. His running mate answered in just as confused a manner, but with the same sentiment, Here's a Kamala Harris (cited from the article above). "You know, let's. I think that — first of all — Joe has been very clear that he is going to pay attention to the fact, and I'm with him on this 1,000 percent, pay attention to the fact that right now, Lawrence, people are voting," So, no talking about issues before or during an election. For Democrats, the message is: --------------------------------- | Biden/Harris Campaign Message | --------------------------------- Shut up and vote for me and I’ll let you know what I stand for after I’m elected. Why do you need any more information, man? What’s the problem? Can’t you see what a monster Trump is? Why do I have to justify anything beyond that? We’ve already engineered things so that I’m the only other viable alternative, so why don’t you shut the fuck up and vote for me? What makes you think you get to pipe up when the adults are talking? SMH. --------------------------------- Obviously, this not only has massive appeal to any voter, it's bound to swing a ton of voters away from Trump. Are they not even trying anymore? What the hell is this campaign about other than "we're not Trump"? Alternatively, ------------------------------------------- | Conversation with Biden/Harris Campaign | ------------------------------------------- Biden/Harris: The sidewalk’s on fire, so just get in the van. Voter: But...where are you taking me? What are you going to do with me? Biden/Harris: Shut up and get in the van. Biden/Harris: What choice do you have? I have a van to get away from the fire. You don’t want to burn to death. I can't make it any plainer than that. You’re just going to have to trust me. I don’t have to justify myself to you … because you have no choice. Try not to think about how we've engineered things so that we think we have you over a barrel. Voter: It's pretty dark in there; what are you going to do to me in there? That van looks pretty shabby; can it even get away from the fire? Are we going somewhere better? Biden/Harris: *Tap feet impatiently* Remember those people who jumped out of the World Trade Center on 9/11? That's you. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. And. Get. In. The. Van. Voter: You know what? Fuck you, creeps. I'd rather burn alive. ------------------------------------------- We'll see. It could go either way, but the lessons of 2016 are lurking out there, waiting to be learned again. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4068 2020-10-04T13:26:01+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

describes what makes Trump tick in what I think is a far more accurate and reasoned manner than most people seem to be able to muster. I would like to preface (and will re-address in the summary), that it's pretty clear that Trump is not alone in his motivations. He... ]]>

describes what makes Trump tick in what I think is a far more accurate and reasoned manner than most people seem to be able to muster. I would like to preface (and will re-address in the summary), that it's pretty clear that Trump is not alone in his motivations. He is just a very extreme example. While there are many U.S. politicians who are interested in doing what they perceive as good for others, many of the most powerful are very clearly in the business primarily for themselves. They may not have started out that way, but they very definitely espouse and promote abhorrent views because it brings them personal power and wealth. Back to Trump's psychoanalysis. Trump's primary motivation is promoting himself. The thing that sticks out the most in his recently released taxes is that he makes the most money from his own personal brand. This is a happy coincidence, because Trump really seems to be the only thing that matters to Trump. That is, other things may matter, but they take a very definite back seat to the continued adulation of adoring fans. Viewed through this lens, it explains much better what Trump does: he's constantly calculating how to maintain as much adoring support as possible. "There is a reason Trump could not bring himself to condemn white supremacists. They love him and he wants their love. It’s not that Trump loves them. Trump loves Trump and nothing but Trump, but to the extent they serve Trump, he will say nothing to lose their love. As for anything else about them, he couldn’t care less." Because he doesn't really have any agenda more important to him than building a cult around himself, his followers' other beliefs must be secondary. A supporter is a supporter. By endorsing these supporters, he's not in danger of losing other potential supporters -- because those people have already made it abundantly clear that the effort would not be worth it. In a way, the anti-Trump vehemence obviates Trump's ever moving toward a more reasonable stance. Why would anyone, least of all Trump, bother even trying to court people who've already promised that they will never be supporters? Why waste the effort? Perhaps a coquettish approach by liberals -- wherein they dangle the possibility that they would support him -- would tame him into trying to get their support. Or maybe neither side can even stomach the thought. At any rate, the current situation only radicalizes both sides. This is not an accident; see "Modern News Media is a Business" . Trump was a lifelong Democrat until a dozen years ago. He doesn't believe in anything other than Trump. He's also not particularly adept at anything but promoting himself. He can't even choose competent people. "He has no health care plan. He has no COVID plan. He lacks the intellectual capacity and focus to make a plan. He lies shamelessly to try to bullshit his way through his inability to have a plan because, in what passes as the mind of Trump, the object is to make it out the other side. If lying is the only path he’s got, then it’s the path he has to take, entirely justifiable in his contorted capacity to reason if it saves him from exposure as the fool." While this helps one understand how Trump ticks, it also reveals that he is not a person that anyone one interested in having a sensible administration would want in there. Quite frankly, anyone so focused on self-aggrandizement is a danger to the rest of us. Greenfield finishes his article with the following rhetorical flourish. "Facts and logic matter. "Integrity matters. "Principles matter. "Trump is the death of all that matters. Trump is our punishment for abandoning the things that matter. "This isn’t to endorse Biden, but to condemn Trump." This is a powerful sentiment with which I mostly agree. I would alter it by replacing "Trump" with "Our current government". It's not just Trump who's self-aggrandizing -- posturing for power and wealth and reputation. It's so much of the rest of the government that's not interested in "facts, logic, integrity, or principles". Replace Trump with Biden. Is there now more of any of these four categories? No. The Congress -- House and Senate -- are also rotten. By all means, get rid of Trump. But it's basically the "one bad apple spoils the whole bunch" principle, when that is not at all what the problem is. Trump is an excrescence, but only in that he doesn't bother to try to hide his goals. He's does what he does -- he is what he is -- because it is what gains him the support and success that he craves. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4058 2020-09-26T13:22:55+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4038 2020-08-15T13:15:25+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is a succinct list of what to expect from a Biden presidency. I've cited most of it and added some extra notes of my own. * Supreme Court: "[...] he’ll pick a conservative corporatist [...] to placate the Republicans in the Senate." * Immigration: "Kids will remain in cages" ... ]]>

is a succinct list of what to expect from a Biden presidency. I've cited most of it and added some extra notes of my own. * Supreme Court: "[...] he’ll pick a conservative corporatist [...] to placate the Republicans in the Senate." * Immigration: "Kids will remain in cages at the border [...because] he won’t want to appear weak on immigration." * Medicare for all: "No change on healthcare." * Debt relief: "No student loan forgiveness." * Environment: "No Green New Deal." * Foreign Policy: "War with Venezuela? Entirely possible." Continued sanctions on and strife with Iran and Russia and China? Unavoidable. * Military Machine: No change from Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump * Privacy: "The dude was behind the Patriot Act." * Progressive Agenda: "He will not appoint a single progressive to his cabinet. Obama didn’t either." ["You're on your own"] Together with the article "The Senate Just Abandoned the Working Class Without a COVID-19 Relief Package" by Meagan Day , Americans should face the realization that they are well- and truly fucked. There is no-one coming to help them. The American Dream is not a lie. They literally called it a "dream"; how much more honest can you get? It has always been a dream for all but those who inherit wealth and the lucky handful of winners in the "Panem" sweepstakes. If Trump wins, we already know what we're going to get: pretty much the same as Biden's list, but executed even more incompetently. There are minor differences on how much lip service will be paid to an anti-racist agenda -- Biden/Harris will pay lip service, whereas Trump/Pence won't -- but, in the end, it won't make a lick of difference where it matters. There is an argument to be made that executing an abhorrent agenda incompetently is better than doing so competently, but let's assume that Biden/Harris will be less abhorrent than Trump/Pence. They're all committed to reducing rights for everyone -- they just differ on whether certain groups should lose rights in greater proportion or more quickly. It's a difference without distinction to the average citizen. O the lofty goals we have in 2020. [Identity takes a back seat in times of true crisis] The leaders in the U.S. are in agreement: they had a choice between funneling money to their elite and billionaire donors or to help their constituents. They elected to drop most Americans into a new Dark Age, regardless of race or gender. In the past (up until the early 70s or so), certain groups' lack of any of Maslow's hierarchy was nearly purely due to discrimination, since nearly everyone else was actually having their collective boats lifted in a way that at least resembled a functioning society. Now, though, America's inherent discriminatory policies mean that minorities and women will be overrepresented -- but pretty much everyone's invited to this poverty party. With all current and potential leaders committed to policies that will see unprecedented numbers of Americans [1] unemployed, uninsured, and homeless, what good is it to have one's "identity" (or "identities") recognized? It won't feed, house, or clothe them or their children. People with no home, no job, and no prospects don't really care about whether society recognizes their "truth" or their particular "intersection of identities". Their priorities have shifted. Until they shift back, they have bigger fish to fry. [No good will come of this] I've read people's laundry lists of all of the cool goodies that Biden/Harris will bring. These are the purest fantasy. These fools with their laundry lists will be the same ones who won't hold anyone accountable when absolutely nothing gets done over four years. Despite decades of disappointment, they think that when a politician says they'll do something, that they'll actually work on it. Get Biden in there and lean on him. Bullshit. There is no reason to expect anything interesting or different or good from a Biden/Harris administration. I would love to be proven wrong, but we have already seen that administration -- in eight years of Obama/Biden. They did none of the things America needed. The military grew, belligerence increased, drone-bombing increased, Guantánamo remained open, Wall Street ruled the roost, mega-millionaires filled the cabinet and decided policy, even the nuclear-weapons program was refreshed and grew. Instead of doing anything significant on climate change, the Obama administration oversaw the fracking boom and the expansion of fossil-fuel production to unprecedented levels. The Obama administration took a run at health care and the U.S. ended up with the ACA, which is, by all accounts, a disaster. It gives more Americans health-care coverage, but it's ludicrously expensive and complicated and ends up not providing the promised coverage to many people that it ostensibly covers. You still have a populace wedded to employer-provided private/corporate health-care that is terrified to use their insurance because of prohibitive co-pays and deductibles. So don't try to sell me this hopeful bullshit of a rainbows-and-unicorns administration full of sensible, sane, and compassionate policy from Biden/Harris. We've been here before. We know how this movie ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. [An Example: Medicare for All] Biden already said he won't do Medicare for All. Harris at first supported something like it, but then backpedaled on it during her campaign. [2] The Democratic Party voted it out of the official platform by 4-1 just a few weeks ago. Hell, Trump is more likely to do it, purely on a whim, and by accident. Were anyone at that level even interested, the Congress would never pass it. They don't pass anything except for salary increases for themselves. Executive orders with no legal standing fly back and forth. None of it means anything for a social-safety net that would provide stability to people's lives. This is all without even discussing Biden's dementia or Harris's tendency to say whatever people want to hear while coincidentally always doing what her rich donors want. [3] Even were Biden able to stay at the helm, he's been in politics for several decades and has been instrumental in starting wars, surveilling Americans, building up the military, and expanding the carceral state. It's a marketing coup that most Americans consider the Democrats to be "left of center". [Ruled by the Cabinet [4]] We know what we would get with Biden/Harris: rule by self-appointed unknowns with financial-company pedigrees (most likely Goldman Sachs). That's what we got with Obama; Biden would be no more progressive than that and would likely be even worse -- especially now that he's having a harder time than ever hiding his real personality: a mean old man afraid of his own diminishing capacity. [5] Would this council of "philosopher kings" be worse than Trump's ship of fools? No. That's almost impossible. They would almost certainly have handled the pandemic better, but would also have -- just like the Trump administration -- ensured that the rich benefited from the crisis. [6] They would listen to experts more -- but would take advice that helps the people only if it doesn't conflict with their benefactors' wishes. The response would perhaps have been more coherent and more organized and, if not more compassionate, then at least less casually stupid and brutal. [7] Would they be more insidious because they're less obviously corrupt? Yes. Biden/Harris would lull enough of America back to sleep just at a time when everyone should be wide awake and rowing like crazy to avoid the jagged rocks. [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] A stunning feat, to be sure, since America already leads all wealthy nations by far in the number of people living in absolute or just plain-old regular poverty. It also leads the wealthy nations in hunger, malnutrition, and infant mortality, while trailing on nearly all health indicators, including life expectancy. Those are averages, though. The privileged classes are doing fine; underprivileged minorities have it so bad that they drag the numbers down for everyone else. [1] It doesn't matter anyway, because she'll be vice president -- at least until Biden completely breaks down. The vice president's only official function is to break ties in the Senate. [1] They will be about as self-interested as the "Small Council" or the "Curia Regis" . [1] I believe that's the OED definition of "politician". This makes her no better or worse than Biden or Trump or Pence, but it means she's of no use whatsoever in getting anything enacted that would actually benefit most Americans. [1] Biden's anger flares more and more quickly these days. He reminds me of George W. Bush: an affable and jocular exterior until you make him mad. Then he turns into a completely different person -- the one he's been all along. [1] Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" comes home to roost. [1] Lack of real leadership and cooperation in the face of crisis in the House, Senate, and the White House contributed to this. People blame the Trump administration exclusively, but Trump didn't have to veto a single piece of COVID-response legislation that Congress passed but with which he disagreed. Not enough of them were willing to try very hard at all. [1] In a political cartoon, those rocks would be labeled "Shocking Inequality", "Climate Crisis", "COVID-19", "Racism", "Neoliberalism", "Neofeudalism", "Unemployment" and "Poverty Crisis". [9] [1] H/T to "Economic Update: Socialism vs. COVID-19: A Very Different Story" by Richard Wolff or " Global Capitalism: As US Capitalism Shakes, US Socialism Renews [July 2020] " by Richard Wolff , from which I got some of this list. (I can't remember which of the two videos it was, though ... they're both good.) ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4016 2020-06-23T20:12:15+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

as a... ]]>

as a separate video. [media] Dr. Cornel West is absolutely on fire in this interview. Here he is offering a nuanced and absolutely correct take on voting for the lesser evil. Emphasis is mine. "Cornel West: I was not going to run around the country and talk about how wonderful Hillary was. Even though, given the fact that in those certain swing states, I could understand people voting for her. It's like right now, with Biden, I think we, in the swing states, we gotta go Biden to get the neo-fascists outta there. But, at the same time, you don't go running around telling everybody how great Biden is. We know just how tied he is to deep structures of domination and policies that promote social misery." And here Katie Halper delights West for the first time, with her excellent re-purposing of the phrase "rainbow coalition" to describe the power structure. West and Taibbi follow up with a discussion of how everything is connected, how it's not just racism -- though the racism makes it unspeakably worse for Blacks -- but a general suppression of the lower 90% through many, interrelated means. Again, emphasis is mine. "Katie Halper: I always think of it as, the neoliberals want to replace a top 1% that's straight, white, and male with a diverse top 10%. Like, a rainbow coalition that's slightly more equitable but still totally about power imbalance. "Cornel West: Absolutely, you see, the imperial hierarchy remains the same. 800 military bases: still out there. Africom: still operable. You still got the policies in the Middle East and Asia and Latin America being promoted. It's just more colorful now. Ooooh, we've got some black generals now. And they love to wave that flag just like the white ones do. In fact, they might even be better at it. "Matt Taibbi: That's been a consistent theme of yours over the years, that you can't argue for racial progress without arguing, for example, against Wall Street corruption and that these have to be tied together and that you have to be suspicious when you see one critique without the other, or with these other issues tied to it. "Cornel West: Exactly. Even now on the streets, this marvelous, marvelous flow and wave of brothers and sisters of all colors, disproportionately younger, you know, they've got to make that connection between police murder, Wall Street crimes, drones, imperial crimes, all being part and parcel of a system and politicians of whatever color, for the most part, beholden to police power, to Wall Street power, and the Pentagon power." West argues that, in order to excise the tumor, we have be holistic and color-blind, that we have to understand the many weapons that the upper class uses to maintains control, only one of which is racism. Though he is hopeful that, if we recognize these mechanisms, we can combat them, he is not exactly hopeful that they will change. Instead, it seems that America's structures are so ingrained and rigid that they will not bend and that they must instead be broken "Cornel West: The challenge here and, this is where we have to get very, very serious and in some ways sad. You see, there's a real chance that the American empire does not have the capacity to be fundamentally transformed. "[...] it will allow for all of the soft power and culture in the world, but when stronger movements on the ground actually begin to bring power and pressure to bear -- they shoot us down like dogs. "The repressive apparatus of the United States is so thick that, if for example, Prince [the performer --ed.] [had] decided to join up with Malcolm X's legacy and create a movement with his music, he could start off playing a little Kiss and then move on into I Adore, and then the next day, people are willing to move into DC and seize power. "Prince is a dead man. In America. He's gone. They will kill you. in. a. minute. "One can argue, well, everybody does that. But, in the United States, there's this illusion that you got all this freedom, the social movements have the right to protest and so forth and so on, but in the States, for example with racism, anytime you choose to challenge white supremacy in any serious way, you're a dead man or woman. Or, if you're alive, you get character assassination." Finally, West again: "Cornel West: People saying, aren't you black folks happy? What more do you want? As Malcolm used to say, You don't stab someone nine inches, pull it out six inches and then celebrate your progress. Even when you pull the knife all the way out, you don't celebrate, because the wound is so deep, the blood is still flowing." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4012 2020-06-10T23:16:40+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

describes the effects of non-lethal "rubber" bullets as follows: "Such "kinetic impact munitions" are meant to cause pain but not serious injury. They are expected to produce contusions, abrasions, and hematomas. However, they may cause bone fractures, injuries to internal organs, or death. In a study of injuries in 90 patients injured by rubber bullets, 1 died, 17 suffered permanent disabilities or deformities and 41 required hospital treatment after being fired upon with rubber bullets.[6] A review of studies covering 1,984 people injured by "kinetic impact projectiles" found that 53 died and 300 were permanently disabled. (Emphasis added.)" That's a lot more dangerous than the mainstream media leads us to believe. I think it's clear that the U.S. police is more violent and more militarized than other OECD countries and that this is what people want to change. [I thought we were already post-racist?] There are those that will argue that America is already post-racist, pointing to affirmative-action programs or other quota-based mechanisms that purport to "fix" racism. What these programs do is pay lip service to equality without actually changing anything or without making the powers-that-be give anything up. Despite the ostensible good intentions of these programs, black people are still much more likely to be discriminated against, arrested, and harassed by police. They have lower income and far less wealth (by an order of magnitude, according to Mark Blyth in "Mark & Carrie: The Anger Will Out" ); they were nearly completely wiped out in the 2008 crash; they are disproportionately hit by COVID-19. Either these programs are completely misconceived or mismanaged, or they were deliberately sabotaged, or they were never intended to "work" in the first place. Paying lip service to equality doesn't amount to anything. The situation on the ground keeps getting worse, though quasi-racists will constantly hold up "all of the things we do for them", effectively complaining about how great black people -- or poor people, or unemployed people -- have it. I direct these people to answer Jane Elliot's question in "Being Black by Jane Elliott" (1min): "If you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. "You didn't understand the directions. "If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are, in this society, stand. "Nobody's standing here. "That says very plainly: you know what's happening, you know you don't want it for you. "I want to know why you're so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others." If everything's so sunny for blacks and the poor in the U.S., then why wouldn't anyone switch places with them? [2] A deficit of principle, obviously. [Possible Definitions] Eliminate police entirely If you take away all of their money, then there is no more police. No one is seriously talking about this definition. It is highly unlikely that anyone means this. This is the definition that unserious commentators will accuse their ideological enemies of using. Replace the police with something else The organization and most of the people involved are highly suspect and should be rebuilt from the ground up. Some people probably do mean this. It's not unreasonable, given the systemic and entrenched corruption and nearly complete disconnect between the goals of the police (growing larger, more powerful, and richer) and the society that pays them for safety and protection and keeping the peace. John Oliver pointed out that the city of Camden, NJ fired its entire police force and invited them to re-apply to a new organization. Their results were promising. Reduce the role of the police The police in the states fill myriad roles. They are in charge of homeless people, mental-health complaints, social service, evictions, and dozens of other roles for which armed personnel are not required and are actively detrimental. These two "comments" by bitches_love_brie are interesting and seem legitimate. I've cited the parts I find interesting, but the full comment includes a litany of useless calls from his logbook that are also interesting but too lengthy to cite. "I'm a current US police officer, I spent 6 years in the military, and have a 4-year degree. I'm not old and salty, or brand new to life or policing. "[...] "Problem is, everyone has a phone in their pocket now, no one wants to risk getting involved, and people know that if they call 911 someone will come and try to solve the problem any time of day, every day of the week. "[...] "it's time for the silent majority to speak up because if the loud people that often represent the extreme ends of the discussion get their way, shit is going to go from had to worse. Vilifying all cops is only going to widen the divide between the public who want to see things improve and the cops who want things to improve. As a good cop (by my own assessment, and by my professional record of car stops, public interactions, and use of force history, all of which I can't share with Reddit so you'll have to take my word for it) it SUCKS to be a good cop right now." Not to diminish at all what the commentator is feeling, but cops have been under pressure for two weeks now and are losing their shit and can't figure out how to deal with it. Most of them, however, can take off the uniform and blend in, though, can't they? They get weekends off from being discriminated against, if they want to. As another anonymous "comment" writes, "I'm pretty sure we are watching the police collectively having the experience of being pulled over for a crime they didn't personally commit because they "fit the description" and are actively resisting, while the entire world is yelling repeatedly "stop resisting!" and they really don't like it." Demilitarize police This goes in the direction of reduce, but also wants to reduce the role of enforcer drastically. No other country in the OECD has a police force that looks anything like that of the U.S. This option would bring policing in the States more in-line with how our allies do it. [A Disconnect from Other Jobs] Without considering the danger -- which is not really pervasive and is often caused by their own actions -- being a police officer is a very attractive job compared to the utter shitshow that is the job market in America. In a country where millions were cut down to 29 hours per week in order to avoid having to pay for Obamacare, police get (often extravagently) paid overtime, sometimes guaranteed overtime, and generous pensions. They get to retire ridiculously early -- a friend I graduated high school with is already retired on a full pension and we're not even fifty yet. This, while the rest of the country contemplates working until they fall into a grave. This is a serious disconnect: a country trashes nearly every other person's pension -- letting private equity companies just eliminate them with the stroke of a pen -- but somehow police retire in their mid-40s with full and quite-generous pensions. If they spend their 25 years of service drumming up reasons for why they should continue to exist by arresting people for bullshit infractions, that's even more scathing. And they almost always get their pensions. For example, the "Shooting of Daniel Shaver" tells the tragic story of a young man who was drinking with friends when someone called the police. Police Sergeant Charles Langley gave him deliberately conflicting orders until he eventually screwed up. Officer Philip Brailsford shot him five times with his AR-15, killing Shaver instantly. This is obviously bad enough, but they weren't finished. Brailsford was fired, taken to trial for second-degree murder, and acquitted. Soon after, he declared bankruptcy, and was reinstated as a non-active police officer, had his medical bills for PTSD from the shooting paid for by the department, then retired 45 days later on a $2500/month pension, having put in a whole four years. He got his pension for life, having retired early for medical reasons brought on by his having murdered a man in cold blood. The system works. It works very nicely for some. Speaking of which... [Defunding Already in Progress] As many people have pointed out, "defunding" is in progress in myriad other areas like education, welfare, infrastructure, healthcare...the list goes on. The article "Republicans Only Want Certain Cops on the Beat" by David Sirota discusses the many ways in which police have specifically already been defunded: "Republican leaders would have us believe they love law enforcement and cops, but that is belied by an unmentioned fact: these are the same greedheads who have eagerly pushed to defund the police charged with protecting us from the world’s most powerful criminals." The EPA under Trump? Eviscerated. The IRS under all presidents? Too poor and understaffed to chase after "big fish" because that would be too expensive. Corporate crime is essentially not prosecuted. No-one responsible for the 2008 crash that robbed trillions of dollars worth of assets -- and wiped out 70% of black America's equity and wealth -- was even charged, to say nothing of prosecuted or sentenced. Almost all of them are much, much, much richer now than they were then -- that 70% had to go somewhere, ammirite? You see? They already know how to do it. They've made sure to disband the police for big crimes -- the ones they're most likely to commit themselves -- while turning the screws on everyone else. To control the people, though, Bush invented a whole new Department of Homeland Security -- to complement the already existing Department of Defense, which focuses exclusively on Offense -- including the gigantic TSA and a massively increased ICE and Border Patrol. There's plenty to be mad about and plenty of reasons to want to reform or rebuild the police. There's also plenty of reason not to trust anyone in power to do so. It's going to take patience and perseverance -- and, honestly, we may never get there. The odds are long, but what else have people got to do? It's not like there are any jobs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] A friend just sent me the link "How did Georgia get it so wrong (again)?" by Chris Cillizza , which outlines how America managed to combine long lines and long waits to both thwart democracy and start a new COVID outbreak. "Many admirably waited in long lines through downpours and searing heat, and some stayed beyond midnight to exercise their right to vote. But untold numbers were dissuaded from voting by the lengthy lines and other issues that plagued the primary." [1] I'm really asking people like the author of "Requiem for George Floyd" by James Howard Kunstler , whose column I've followed for years. I've read and liked some of his books (most recently "The Long Emergency" ). He's well-informed, rational, and well-worth listening to on a plethora of issues, but on issues of race, he's utterly awful. He sometimes rises to "less offensive, but still vaguely unsettling", but the piece linked above sees him rehashing the worst of his old canards. This seems to be the baseline attitude for people of a certain age in upstate New York, where he lives and where I grew up. I know a lot of old farts from that region who almost uniformly nice people with awful, small-minded opinions on race and poverty. He is not alone is posing questions that ignore the wide swath that racism has torn through American society. We don't need to bother answering his questions, but should maybe get people like him to answer Jane Elliot's question. To be clear: Kunstler is not the worst of the problem. He seems to at least acknowledge that what he's saying is wrong, but he keeps claiming that his logic and rationality leads him to only that conclusion. He's kind of from the Bill Cosby school: telling people to pull up their pants and to learn to speak English correctly. He writes this seemingly without understanding -- or deliberately ignoring -- the systemic and brutal practices that infuse everyday life for many black people. You can't ignore Jane Elliot's question and you can't ignore the arrest numbers and you can't ignore the wealth and employment gap. If you keep claiming that our society hands blacks everything on a silver platter while ignoring the fact that society actually ends up taking everything away from them, then you're a racist. Whether you come by this label deliberately or not makes no difference, in the end. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3997 2020-06-09T23:27:17+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

points out, it used to be different: "It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the accidental president himself, LBJ, who, despite his many other grotesque failings, could at least understand the incendiary rage that ignited the riots of ’68:" "What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off." The level of understanding expressed by LBJ is no longer evident at most levels of government, to say nothing of much of the population. It's not just compassion and empathy that have left the building, but also any logic, consistency or, God forbid, a need to avoid hypocrisy. No matter how stupid or illogical or indefensible the viewpoint, it will be defended from all attack. You can no longer convince anyone of anything they don't already believe. Attempting to do so leads to an ever-more deeply entrenched mindset, like a tick burrowing into its victim. [Police vs. Protesters] The same people who are absolutely comfortable absolving the police in general for the behavior of a "few bad apples" are also able to, in turn, condemn millions of protesters for the behavior of a few "bad apples". Those two things easily fit in one head. Those two opinions can easily be espoused nearly in one breath. Should we not expect the protesters to control themselves? If we're arguing that police should control their members, then why not expect the same of organizers of protests? The police are an organized unit who can reasonably be expected to have hierarchy and procedures for responsibility. It is not unreasonable to call them a "system". The protesters, on the other hand, are ad-hoc and very loosely organized. The individual groups have no control over who shows up or who is a member of any given protest. [2] It is far less reasonable to expect the protesters to control the actions of all members than to expect the police to have some accountability for its members. The police are a cohesive unit; the protesters are not. There is another difference as well: police are trained and have the duty to uphold laws and protect citizens. They are exactly the people, however, of whom the least restraint is expected, who are quickly absolved for horrific behavior, often seeing no punishment at all for crimes for which non-police would spend years in jail. On the other hand, everyday citizens, with no training, are expected to act cooly and calmly in the face of horrifying scenes of violence when they were just exercising their first-amendment right to peaceably assemble, which they almost all do. They are expected to avoid any sudden moves or panic or do anything else untoward that would then earn them a well-deserved shooting from a nervous, terrified, and trigger-happy (albeit ostensibly trained) police officer. [3] The police also exercise collective punishment, which is illegal in all other forms of combat in the world. If one protester mouths off, they're all collected, kettled, and arrested. They're all tear-gassed, they're all hosed, they're all shot with rubber bullets, the batons fly more-or-less indiscriminately. We have overwhelming video evidence by now of how the law acts toward its citizens when push comes to shove. It is not flattering. There is little to no anarchic or left-wing part of the protest. This is a mainstream protest. You don't have to be left-wing or an anarchist to welcome change to the brutal, racist, unequal, and cruel system that rules the U.S. It might help to be one of those things, but a healthy, normal dose of compassion and common sense is more than enough to get you on the right [4] side of history. [Fairness & Justice] There is no sense of fairness for some people. They ask why people can't just protest peacefully when they disparaged peaceful protest on the handful of rare occasions when they acknowledged it at all -- to viciously eviscerate Colin Kaepernick, for example. [5] These are the same people who hear about a prostitute being raped by a cop and wonder what the problem is. She obviously deserved it; she's a whore. They do not care about justice or morality. That is the great failing of American society, an utter disregard for ethics and morals. A breathtaking lack of philosophical underpinning. A virulent anti-intellectualism. They pay lip service to goodness, but it's hollow -- they really only look out for their own and fuck everyone else, when it comes right down to it. It is so twisted that otherwise good people see literally no issue with asking whether George Floyd really was trying to pass off a fake $20. They don't see that it doesn't matter. No matter what he did that day, there is no (legal) death sentence for it. They don't understand how stupid and mean and evil it is to think that way. They never will. Not until something happens directly to them. And when it does happen directly to them, they'll go on a jihad that burns undiminished thirty years later. Then they'll definitely get it -- because it's happening to them. Then it matters more than anything else and anyone who doesn't think so can go straight to hell. But when it happens to someone else? Those losers deserved it. That girl who got killed? Wasn't she on drugs? Wasn't she a slut? The town mattress? That guy mouthed off to the cops before they beat all the teeth out of his mouth, no? I guess he shouldn't have mouthed off. I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cops sought him out because they were bored? [6] Oh. I guess he should have kept his mouth shut, then. An 18-year--old girl claims that two police officers raped her. The press coverage focuses nearly exclusively on whether they are legally allowed to obtain consent from a person in their custody in the state in which they work. This is madness. How can police legally have sexual congress with prisoners? How is that a thing? Why are we even discussing whether she gave consent? [7] Oh, because we don't know her, so she was probably asking for it. Fuck her, anyway. She should have known better. Probably mouthed off to the cops. [Meta-racists] People are passing this thing around on Facebook. I know these people. They would swear up and down that they are not racist, that they have black friends, that they ... yada yada yada. [image] The title is horrific and the article is not fake news, so it easily passes Facebook's new filters, which might have flagged it. A cursory search showed the first few links from FOX and The Daily Mail, both obviously unimpeachable sources. There are other links but all of them contain the word "indicted" or "charged" or "alleged" in the title and initial content. I could find nothing about an actual conviction or trial. Why would it be so far already? Oh, because the article is from October 2018. What was the point of posting it on June 7th, 2020? Why is it suddenly trending to the point that it ended up on even my pathetic Facebook page? I cannot know, but can only strongly, and with much regret, suspect, that the people reposting this and upvoting it are doing so because it shows that black people are all the same -- just irredeemably evil. Look at those two so-and-sos. The posters can't quite bring themselves to write the n-word (yet [8]), so they pass around a picture with baby rapists on it. You know what I mean. Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink. I must conclude that the point of posting this in June of 2020 is to say that the protests are bullshit because black people get what they deserve and everyone should just calm down and go home and let the cops do their jobs before more fucking babies get raped. They can't say this or write this, but they can post this picture, which more than adequately expresses their opinion that if you think that Black Lives Matter, then you are pro-baby-rape. Simple as that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I am aware of the irony. [1] This is without even going into the issue of infiltrators and deliberate instigators of violence, often from the state itself. [1] This is not all police, of course, but people who defend the police defend even the worst, the least qualified, of them. If they are unwilling to make a distinction, then neither, for the sake of the argument, will I. [1] "On the correct side of history" would be less confusing, but that's not the expression. [1] Speaking of whom, the article "Is This the Last Straw?" by Mamadou Tall wrote, "Colin Kaepernick summed it up perfectly when he said, “when civility leads to death, revolting is the only logical reaction.”" Which reminds me that I just watched a documentary about Colin Kaepernick a few days ago. It was on TV. Did you not see it? I think I know why: it's in German and it was broadcast on Arte in Switzerland. I wonder whether there is even a distribution in the States. It's called Colin Kaepernick: Amerikanischer Held or "Colin Kaepernick: American Hero". It's quite telling that the movie had to be made in Europe. Tall continues, "This murder seems like the last straw, but is there such a thing as the last straw with racism in America? No matter what we do we find ourselves back at square one, back in the same state of mourning and anger. Racism is a part of America’s identity and it’s impossible to shake it. Emmett Till should have been the last straw, Rodney King should have been the last straw, Amadou Diallo should have been the last straw, Trayvon Martin should have been the last straw, and George Floyd should be the last straw. In reality, this will continue to happen, it’s in America’s DNA." None of this is new. I hope something good comes out of the revolutionary attempt this time. It’s hard to imagine that simple reform will do any good, as it will almost certainly be subverted nearly immediately by whatever remains in power. [1] This "series of tweets" by Sean Trainor tells the story of a ride-along with a high-school-friend-turned-police-officer: "My classmate was so bored that he’d punch pretty much anyone’s plate into the database. But he devoted special attention to beat-up cars or drivers who looked “out of place” — which typically meant black or brown drivers in predominantly white neighborhoods. [...] for the most part, he spent the night driving around aimlessly. "[...] a colleague of his had pulled over a car for some trivial reason [...] and then discovered that the driver was, as I recall, an ex-convict driving with an expired license. The guy (who was white) had gotten out of prison earlier in the week and hadn’t had a chance to renew his license. When he got pulled over, he was driving around with his wife and young kids. "Not content to leave this poor guy with a warning, the officer who initiated the traffic stop asked him to step out of his car for a conversation. As they were talking, more and more bored cops rolled up, including my classmate. "Not surprising, the situation kept getting more intense. The guy who had been pulled over looked increasingly stressed as more cops materialized. And the cops responded to his stress with heightened levels of aggression. Eventually the scene came to a boil. "[...] he wound up face down on the curb, his hands cuffed behind his back. His family looked on screaming and crying as the cops hauled him away. [...] because this guy had violated his parole, he would likely do a multi-year stint in prison. "And that was night: a full shift devoted to manufacturing crime — desperately searching for reasons to pull people over and then harassing people until they snapped. "In short, nothing he did made anyone safer. He didn’t protect or defend a damn thing, except white supremacy and class domination. His entire shift had been devoted to profiling, harassing, and intimidating people." [1] This is called framing and the American propaganda system is exceedingly good at it. They can very quickly and, seemingly without effort, change the discussion to focus on a molecule of the main problem and get opponents to expend all of their energy dying on a hill they never even wanted to climb in the first place. [1] Perhaps, before this is all over, we will get to experience this portion of the country feel that all bets are off and they will, once again, adjust their vocabulary accordingly. Lord knows that they are pissed off and confused enough to think that that would be a smart and justifiable move. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=4009 2020-06-08T23:15:48+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

has finally had to move a bit from a 100% pacifist position [1] -- because the State will. Just. Not. Listen. Every peaceful move has been met with a counter-move that meant lost ground and more suffering. The short-term suffering engendered by semi-violent revolt may be the only way to avoid even more long-term suffering. When Oliver says that this "is going to sustained attention and sustained pressure over a long period of time", he's absolutely right. This is where I wonder whether the spark that has been lit is finally burning hotly enough to not be extinguished by the few crumbs that the state and its elites will eventually throw to the masses to settle them back down. Oliver says, "It's going to be far too easy for nothing to meaningfully change here because that is what has always happened before" Nearly at the end, Oliver even mentions the Kerner Commission and its report from the late 60s, whose conclusions contain nearly literally all of the measures we're considering today -- over 50 years later, as if it were a new problem to tackle. Even at the time, the social scientist Kenneth Clark said, "I read the report of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee of the Harlem riot of 1935, the report of the investigating committee of the Harlem riot of 1943, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot [1965]. "I must again in candor say to you...it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland with the same moving picture reshown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction." Oliver deftly lets an amazing woman give the final words of his show. Here he shows a video of an extraordinarily eloquent, passionate and seemingly completely extemporaneous speech by Kimberly Jones from the full video "How Can We Win" by David Jones Media . "You can't win. The game is fixed. "So, when they say, why do you burn down the community, why do you burn down your own neighborhood...it's not ours! We don't own anything! We don't own anything. "Trevor Noah said it so beautifully last night: There's a social contract that we all have. That if you steal, if I steal, then the person who is the authority comes in and they fix the situation. But the person who fixes the situation is killing us! "So the social contract is broken. And if the social contract is broken, why the fuck do I give a shit about burning the fuckin' football hall of fame, about burnin' the fuckin' Target? "You broke the contract when you killed us in the streets and didn't give a fuck. You broke the contract when, for 400 years, we played your game and built your wealth. You broke the contract when we built our wealth again, on our own, by our bootstraps, in Tulsa -- and you dropped bombs on us. When we built it in Rosewood and you slaughtered us. "You broke the contract. So fuck your Target. Fuck your hall of fame. "As far as I'm concerned, they can burn this bitch to the ground. "And it still wouldn't be enough and they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Hedges actually said, starting at 31:56, that. "Ishmael Reed was a good friend of mine in Oakland. He was very angry at Antifa, for showing up in Oakland during Occupy and smashing the windows of local businesses. He said, 'look, I don't have a problem with smashing windows...but drive up to La Hoya, where Romney lives, and smash his windows.' "And that's what's interesting about this uprising: they're not burning their own neighborhoods. Fifth Avenue in New York got shellacked. Now that's different and it shows a kind of class consciousness. "Which, I don't think that property-destruction or attacking the police...I understand it, but that's not the same as to condone it. I don't think that that's going to be effective. What I think is effective, in a kind of dark way, is that idiot Trump, taking peaceful protesters outside the White House and using pepper spray and rubber bullets to remove them so he can stand in front of a church in his welcome-to-fascist America speech. That will really ignite the protests. (Emphasis added.)" Now, he still says that he doesn't condone violence, but damned if he didn't grin from ear to ear when he said the word shellacked. Also, as emphasized above, Hedges also sees Trump now as a catalyst that will keep the fires of the revolt going longer than previous revolutionary fits and starts. He acknowledges that it's "dark" because short-term people are going to get hurt, but in the long-term, the revolution will reduce suffering -- there is, perhaps, no other way. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3985 2020-05-31T22:37:32+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

for more information. [How can they do this?] George Floyd was executed in the street in broad daylight on the suspicion that he had tried to use a fake $20 bill. Swift justice from self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner. Does that sound harsh to the officers? Is it possible that they made a mistake? That their use-of-force led to an unforeseeable accident? How could this accident have avoided? Was he really resisting arrest? No, the video belies that claim. He was handcuffed prone. He was not a threat. They were armed with pepper spray, truncheons, and pistols. He had no weapons and was face-down on the ground with his arms pinned behind him in cuffs. He couldn't even have gotten to his feet alone. Where was the threat? Why were they sitting on him? Had he perhaps been disrespectful? How could they ignore his pathetic mewling? Why did they not even care that they were being filmed? They obviously thought that they were perfectly within their rights to teach this POSPOC a lesson. Let people film it -- then they can show the lesson to others. That should keep the other animals in line, That's what they were thinking. Anyone without a badge who did what they did -- even without the unfortunate code -- would have charged with assault and battery. Certainly the officers felt secure that nothing really bad would happen to them, no matter what the outcome. [George Floyd wasn't human] These officers don't see people like George Floyd as human beings. It's not that they don't care if they live or die, but that they get what they deserve. And they're not alone in thinking this. Look at the reaction of at least half of the rest of the country: George should have known better and not been counterfeiting money. Right? These people don't care that it's not a capital crime. They don't care about cruel and unusual punishment (that was a poor choice of words on the part of our founders, as this type of punishment is no longer unusual). They don't care about trials or evidence. A black man was out of line and putting him back in line killed him. Tough titties. You gotta break some eggs to make an omelet. I'm reminded of the photos from Abu Ghraib, which soldiers took of themselves, evincing the same attitude toward what they clearly didn't consider to be other human beings. These are the people we entrust with the power of state violence to protect us, to enforce our laws, not break them. Or so the story goes. [Police Violence is a Symptom of the Class War] The article "White Supremacy is the Virus; Police are the Vector" by Nick Pemberton makes an important point, though in a circumlocutory manner, "If the cops are the problem, we are absolved. This horrifies me. Perhaps yes it is a privileged horror but a horror nonetheless. I very much fear the death of white guilt. As toxic as it is, it’s the best we got. "Forgive me but just as I see the prisoner as fully human, I also see the policeman in the same light. "[...] "I see the police officer doing his job when he kills the black man. To me this is far more horrifying than him being evil [...] "[...] "Not to extradite the problem by washing our hands but to admit that maybe if I was raised in the same way this cop was raised, or if I had the same job he had or if I had the same mental illness he had or what have you, well that could have been me." That is: the real horror is that the system is working as it was designed to. People ask when will the looting stop? It will probably stop when the officers responsible are arrested. But that's just the vector. The disease is still at large and will strike again. When should the looting stop? Now. It's a waste of effort and energy. When should the revolution begin? Also now. Pemberton asks white America to understand that it is at least partially by the grace of their upbringing that they have the luxury of pointing the finger at the police. There are many who have failed to be indoctrinated despite their upbringing but more than enough otherwise nice people who have the most horrific opinions about their fellow human beings, their fellow citizens. Pemberton continues, "I do see the police as working class. They operate on the front lines for the capitalists and the white supremacists while we attempt to socially distance ourselves from the days they accidentally fulfill our own ideology and hatred. I say this not as a conspiracy but as a believer in the subconscious racism. I know that most ruling class white people would shoot a black person quite quickly if they went through the police academy. (Emphasis added.)" Because the problem isn't a strong state, or a government per se. The problem is a corrupt government, one that works for only a privileged class. The working-class police should actually be there for the downtrodden and disadvantaged, to protect them from the ravages of the privileged elite. Instead, they work for the elite, because they are fed table-scraps in the form of higher-than-average salaries for a locality and, usually, ridiculous amounts of overtime and membership in one of the only surviving and very strong unions in the land. Pemberton is spot-on, though: most people would look away, walk away, assuming that the police have a good reason for doing what they're doing. After all, just like the police know in their guts that nothing really bad will happen to them -- white males FTW -- these other people also know in their guts that this kind of police assault will also never happen to them or to anyone they know. That's why they don't care. Because why should they care if a bunch of animals get what they deserve while they're trying to steal what other hard-working people have to earn? So goes the logic, right? It's so easy for them to convince themselves of their righteousness in their horrific racism. The mechanics of this argument are employed everywhere: thinks back to the 80s and 90s when AIDS raged across the world. It took forever for treatment to gain traction because it was just happening to a bunch of homos who couldn't keep their dicks out of each other. Othering is probably the most powerful social driver humans have. Pemberton continues, "Who needs a strong government, including a strong community-controlled police force more than people of color? Who is more ravaged by crime than these communities? And the crime I mean isn’t just street crime, such as the McMichael dad and son duo, but also crimes such as Flint water. We can’t have it both ways here and say all government is bad when it is the most white and privileged who can survive without it." The call to "get rid of police" is made from a position of privilege. The underprivileged want police, but they want them to stop attacking them. Instead, they want to be "protected and served" as more than just an expression, but as an actual credo. "To say we don’t need police, they’re all bad, well that’s easy for some people to say. Without the police who is to say that MAGA killers wouldn’t be lynching people in the streets?" "To beat the virus of white supremacy we must control the vectors. We must hold them accountable. But the virus is white supremacy. [...] We shouldn’t just be scared of the cops. We should be scared of becoming them." "Slavoj’s insight that Trump is hated because he is the last thing left-liberals see before they see the class struggle also applies here." I just want to reiterate that I agree whole-heartedly: anyone who hates Trump to the exclusion other political opinion, anyone who needs to get rid of Trump above all -- is likely blinded to the class war that will continue even when Trump is dead and gone. And that goes double for anyone who thinks Trump will save them: how do they think that Trump has his forces in check? This "comment" shows Trump's National Guard troops following an MRAP (it's a fucking tank, people) up a neighborhood street in America, bellowing at people to go inside. They gave no warning to those that remained on their porches -- where they had every right to be -- before exhorting their comrades to "light 'em up" and then firing ostensibly non-lethal ordnance at innocent civilians, who are citizens of their own country. You know what Trump supporters are saying, though? If they have their Trump signs in their yards or on their houses or on their cars, then they'll be spared. Anyone who subscribes to this viewpoint does not care about the rule of law. They do not have principles. They are saying: "I have no principles other than a belief in the law of the jungle predicated on my belonging to a group that has classically been the apex predator.” Shorter: “I got mine, Jack.” [Why are the police involved?] As noted on "Redacted Tonight: ~293~ U.S. Spy Mission Against Assange Revealed" by Anders Lee , Anders and Lee discuss whether "Should guys with guns be called to deal with somebody who's got a fake $20 or a bounced check or somebody peeing in a fountain. We call guys with guns -- and women with guns -- to come deal with all kinds of shit that they should not be involved in." Anders pointed out that he actually grew up in Minneapolis and used to work in a store near that neighborhood and the "policy used to be to just not accept it [the counterfeit bill]". [Of course it's about race] "The Death of George Floyd, in Context" by Jelani Cobb "The video of Floyd’s death is horrific but not surprising; terrible but not unusual, depicting a kind of incident that is periodically reënacted in the United States. It’s both necessary and, at this point, pedestrian to observe that policing in this country is mediated by race." [Hot takes] "Comment" by Leonardo Jacobs : "Some dumbass: Burning an American city to the ground won't bring back George Floyd. Leonardo Jacobs: Bombing Middle East countries won't undo 9/11." "Citing Malcolm X" by Kentah Gwanjez "A hundred years ago they used to put on a white sheet and use a bloodhound against Negroes today they have taken off the white sheet and put on police uniform, they've traded in the bloodhounds for police dogs and they're still doing the same thing" From "comments" "When Floyd stopped moving and became unresponsive, Kueng checked for a pulse and said he couldn’t find one. "Two minutes later, Chauvin removed his knee from Floyd’s neck and the ambulance arrived." "But he didn’t die of strangulation guys it was the drugs and counterfeit money that killed him." [A more positive police response] This next article notes that there is a difference in how other police departments are reacting to this murder. Black people are still being murdered and America is still nearly hopelessly and probably irreparably racist, but it’s getting better. The article "A Second Chance For Black Lives Matter" by Scott H. Greenfield lays out the facts quite well. "But unlike the dead men before, the reaction wasn’t to defend the practice and explain why it’s necessary or justified. It wasn’t even to tar Floyd with whatever was available, a prior, a random accusation, anything, no matter how irrelevant, to remind us not to care too much about his killing because he just wasn’t worthy of living. "[...] "Notably, Chief Arradondo didn’t suspend them pending an investigation, but fired them. Don’t be surprised if they don’t stay fired, as union arbitration will be used to challenge the discharges. Or they will find a new home in a neighboring force. There is a possibility that the cop whose knee killed Floyd may be the subject of criminal charges. Or not. "{...} "Chief Arradondo gave up four names of four street cops whom the brass condemns. This alone will outrage the rank and file, the street cops who believe that no one who doesn’t walk the mean streets understands them, their job. They scoff at the brass, who concern themselves with politics while the street cops concern themselves with the First Rule of Policing." Another article, "Tennessee police chief tells officers who 'don't have an issue' with George Floyd arrest to turn in badges" by Aris Folley cites a tweet: "There is no need to see more video. There no need to wait to see how “it plays out”. There is no need to put a knee on someone’s neck for NINE minutes. There IS a need to DO something. If you wear a badge and you don’t have an issue with this...turn it in." The following "comment" by W. Patrick Swanton comes from a retired Waco, Texas police officer: "What you did was kill more than a human being today. What you did was kill a piece of America that law enforcement officers everywhere will have to pay for. You not only killed George Floyd, but you also killed a very fragile thing law enforcement strives to maintain today called trust. "I, along with thousands of other real cops watched in horror as you kneeled on the throat of not only your community but ours as well and killed something you may never get back [...] "I speak for thousands of officers when I say you are not a part of us and your actions can never be justified in any way, shape, or form. "[I hope they are] brought up on criminal charges and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." There seems to be hope that the baseline attitude has changed, but it might not be nearly enough this time. Let’s hope we don’t ruin everything by insisting on passing purity tests for woke-ness. [Will the charges stick? Were they meant to?] The article "Chauvin Charged, But Is It Legally Sufficient?" by Scott H. Greenfield tackles the legal wording in the complaint against the police as well as the statement of probable cause filed by the police. "Yet, the complaint filed by the Hennepin County Attorney made almost no effort to assert that the elements of the charge were met, that Chauvin was “perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.” "While the video clearly showed Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck, which was naturally assumed, for obvious reasons, to have been the cause of death, that alone does not suffice to meet the element that it was an “act eminently dangerous.” It’s hardly an undangerous immobilization technique, but it’s also not an uncommon restraint, and is a permissible use of force in Minneapolis. That it’s only supposed to be used to restrain someone actively resisting gives rise to a departmental violation, but doesn’t elevate a lawful use of force to an eminently dangerous act. (Emphasis added.)" In the charges, the medical examinerpolice citing preliminary ME results pointed out "potential intoxicants" as a possible cause of death, so I think we're right back to the usual bullshit. The "statement of probable cause" includes the following: "The Hennepin County Medical Examiner (ME) conducted Mr. Floyd’s autopsy on May 26, 2020. The full report of the ME is pending but the ME has made the following preliminary findings. The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death. " Here's a much-shorter video from another angle, showing that there were three men sitting on the victim at once. The original 8.5-minute video is also linked in the Greenfield article, but this one suffices to show the situation. [media] So a handcuffed man was pinned to the pavement by three men for over eight minutes, the final two of which he was unconscious and the officers had confirmed that he had no pulse, but this was somehow an accident due to his heart condition and "potential intoxicants"? I understand that, scientifically, certain intoxicants can't be ruled out until a final report is made. I also understand that this might be seen as exonerating by some -- if he wasn't strangled, then he just happened to die of a heart attack as he was being brutally assaulted -- but it's like the kid who blames the cat for pulling its own tail -- "I was just holding it". [Minneapolis is lily-white and racist AF] The article "George Floyd death: Why has a US city gone up in flames?" by Jessica Lussenhop learned me a thing or two about a corner of the country about which I'd known little and assumed much. "The Twin Cities, as Minneapolis and St Paul are known, are still overwhelmingly white - about one-quarter of the population is non-white - and its neighbourhoods are still highly segregated. Most people of colour live on the cities' north sides. "They were shaped by racist red-lining policies dating to the early 20th Century, when black families were not allowed to buy homes in certain neighbourhoods." I'd known about Robert Moses's red-lining in NYC because I'd lived there. I knew about his majestic Cross-Bronx Expressway that he used to segregate the Bronx in the same way as described above for St. Paul. I guess NYC is not alone in its horrific though denied racism. The policies do so much more damage than an individual act of violence, about which much more later in this article. [Kelly Thomas] For those for whom the death of human beings isn't enough -- especially when they're people of color -- let this next case remind you that the police are indiscriminate in their hatred of the lower classes. They may subjugate black people more, but they are indoctrinated to hate all poor people. And it's not just the police: everyone in America -- no matter how poor they are themselves -- is trained to hate other poor people. The state religion is that everyone deserves what they get: the rich and the poor. All is as it should be -- just the way late-stage capitalism wants it. Warning: the "photo of a poor man" link is to a graphic photo of a man whose face has been pummeled to a point where it can barely be recognized as having once been human. This "comment about Kelly Thomas" links to a "photo of a poor man" who was, "[...] a homeless man with schizophrenia [who] was beaten and tased into a coma by 6 members f of the Fullerton Police Department (CA) on July 5, 2011. He died 5 days later. Three officers were charged with manslaughter, but none were found guilty" The photo includes an exhibit from the trial where the man's piteous and nonthreatening pleas with his assaulters were listed: * Dad help me...they're killing me (31 times; his father was not present) * Sir please...okay...okay (30 times) * Help me...help me, God (26 times) * I'm sorry (15 times) The officers beat him mercilessly, despite his pleas. See "the Wikipedia article" for more information. Individual incidents of violence are not rare and are not purely racial. The police are shock troops in a class war with a strong racial component. [On "looting"] Looting is what black people do when they step out of line. When white people do it, it's called "arbitrage". "Who Exactly Is Doing the Looting, and Who’s Being Looted?" by David Sirota "Working-class people pilfering convenience-store goods is deemed “looting.” By contrast, rich folk and corporations stealing billions of dollars during their class war is considered good and necessary “public policy” — aided and abetted by arsonist politicians in Washington lighting the crime scene on fire to try to cover everything up." "Comment" by Warren Gunnels : "Looting is the wealthiest person in America (Jeff Bezos) increasing his wealth by $40 billion in a pandemic while his company (Amazon) pays nothing in federal income taxes for 3 years, receives a $104 million tax refund, ends hazard pay and denies paid sick leave to its workers." "Comment" by Ryan Knight "You want to talk about “looting”? Over the past 30 years the top 1% gained $21 trillion in wealth while the bottom 50% lost $900 billion in wealth. That is the only looting that I care about." "Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First" "I understand that people are angry, but they shouldn’t just endanger businesses without even a thought to enriching themselves through leveraged buyouts and across-the-board terminations. It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this." "No, We Should Not Condemn Uprisings Against Police Murders Like George Floyd’s" by Peter Gowan "Yes, we should condemn the looting of the Global South by Western militaries and multinational corporations. We should fear the terrifying possibility that the COVID-19 vaccine will be enclosed, privatized, and sold for profit; and the looting of underdeveloped nations and underinsured people that would ensue. "We should fight back against the looting of underdeveloped nations’ coffers by odious debts and structural adjustment programs being drawn up and imposed by international institutions at this very minute." "Should we blame working-class black people for lashing out at a government and economy designed to repress, exploit, and subdue them; during a pandemic in which capitalism has made it near impossible for them to survive? Should we participate in this ritual condemnation even though our media consistently treats identical acts of property destruction by sports fans as simply revelry and exuberance, and corporate looting of working-class communities as business as usual? "[...] "If you care about looting, turn your eyes to the militaries, the police, the pharmaceutical companies, the private equity ghouls, the landlords, the real estate speculators, and the billionaires. And demand that a world once looted from the vast majority be now returned to them." [Killer Mike] Killer Mike held a press conference with the Atlanta mayor to plead with people to stop destroying property -- to not attack the CNN headquarters. He's trying to be the voice of reason and doing a wonderfully passionate, emotional, eloquent, and seemingly extemporaneous job of it. Masterful and moving. [media] "We don't want to see a Target burn. We want to see the system that sets up for systemic racism burnt to the ground. [...] Stop making people be so fearful and give them hope." [Cornel West] In a similar vein, Cornel West was allowed to hold forth at length in an interview with Anderson Cooper. [media] "I think we are witnessing America as a failed social experiment. Our culture is market-driven with everybody for sale, everything on sale [...] What we're seeing now in America is chickens coming home to roost. [...] What we are witnessing is a lynching at the highest level. I thank God that we have people in the streets. Can you imagine if something like this happened and nobody cared? [...] Unfortunately, it look as if the system cannot reform itself." It's nice to see that brother West has got his mind right once again. He spent some years wandering in the wilderness during the first few Obama years. He is absolutely right that the system cannot reform itself -- because it doesn't want to. Why should it? As far as the system is concerned, everything is working as designed. It's a race problem yes, but it's so much more a class problem. That's why putting "black faces in high places" just assimilates them into a different class. The skin color doesn't matter; the hierarchy does. It's not that white people can't speak out, but they should really shut the fuck up about rioting for a few days and see where it goes. There's no need for us to voice chiding opinions right now. Especially if you're going to reprimand those animals for misbehaving. Especially if you said nothing when armed white men stormed state capital buildings because they didn't want to wear masks. Or if you said nothing about protesters blocking ER entrance lanes at hospitals -- all while carrying AR15s. [Acceptable and unacceptable violence] We all know the powers-that-be are secretly delighted while publicly scolding whenever a Target goes up in flames or a Louis Vuitton bag is stolen. They know that they'll be able to use that handful of examples to represent the "whole lot of 'em" and regain control in no time whatsoever. The article "Protest, Uprisings, and Race War" by Tim Wise <> "Those who have rarely been the target of organized police gangsterism are once again lecturing those who have about how best to respond to it. "Be peaceful, they implore, as protesters rise up in Minneapolis and across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd. This, coming from the same people who melted down when Colin Kaepernick took a knee — a decidedly peaceful type of protest. Because apparently, when white folks say, “protest peacefully,” we mean “stop protesting.” (Emphasis added.)" He makes the salient point wonderfully: there is no acceptable way for subjects to revolt. Anything they do other than bow and scrape and suck up their own misery is stepping out of line. They are like children of old: to be seen and not heard and, honestly, not even to be seen. Just clean the public bathroom when no-one important is in there and move on. Wise goes on, "We [Americans] are here [America] because of blood, and mostly that of others. We are here because of our insatiable desire to take by force the land and labor of others. We are the last people on Earth with a right to ruminate upon the superior morality of peaceful protest. We have never believed in it and rarely practiced it. Instead, we have always taken what we desire, and when denied it, we have turned to means utterly genocidal to make it so. (Emphasis added.)" This is the crux of it: the people rioting are being as American as they know how to be. They have stopped being subservient -- but they are the wrong ones doing it. They are exactly the subjugated peoples who should be making everything run smoothly for those who used violence to subjugate them before. Wise continues, "To speak of violence done by black people without uttering so much as a word about the violence done to them is perverse. And by violence, I don’t mean merely that of police brutality. I mean the structural violence that flies under the radar of most white folks but which has created the broader conditions in black communities against which those who live there are now rebelling. (Emphasis added.)" This is a powder keg of injustice lit by George Floyd's murder. This is a large swath of America admitting that they don't believe in America anymore. And it's not just black people -- this is really a class war, after all -- but anyone who knows that the game is rigged against them, who knows that their services are forced from them in what in any fair world would be called a slave system (we call it a "gig economy"). People are rioting partly because they care about their lives, but also because they no longer care what happens to America. America has never done anything to show them that it cares about them. People have finally (maybe) given up. And thus, "burn it to the ground" seems like as good an idea as any other. That's always been the danger of bringing people too close to desperation. The U.S. ruling classes used to be much better at controlling the masses, at tempering desperation with hope to keep its subjects under control. No longer. The rulers have gotten meaner and meaner -- in the sense of "stupider and stupider" -- they're piggy-eyed greed overwhelming any instincts they might have had. They forget -- or likely never learned -- how the system actually works. And now they're breaking it -- or may have broken it. Maybe that's ascribing too much thought to it. There are certainly people who are there to spread mayhem and steal while the stealing is good. Still, in the scale of violence, burning down a Target store is peanuts. The real violence is state violence and it is perpetrated even more insidiously; in an overwhelming number of cases, it gets its victims' acquiescence. "Zoning laws, redlining, predatory lending, stop-and-frisk: all are violence, however much we fail to understand that." This is a point also made by Slavoj Žižek in his book on Violence: the larger the violence, the more likely it is to be subsumed in the tapestry that underlies a culture. How easy it is to moralize about so-called looting and rioting when you control the terms of the debate. "[...] it is bad enough that we think it appropriate to admonish persons of color about violence or to say that it “never works,” especially when it does. We are, after all, here, which serves as rather convincing proof that violence works quite well." I suppose that's the main point: at the same time that we enjoy the fruits of our past and very-much ongoing violence, we admonish against using our weapon against us. It's hypocritical, but makes sense as a strategy. We've never been much worried about being hypocritical. "What is worse is our insistence that we bear no responsibility for the conditions that have caused the current crisis and that we need not even know about those conditions." The first rule of Fight Club is we don't talk about Fight Club. [You're protesting wrong] And, just in time, the article "Roasted Coffee" by Scott H. Greenfield lands in my newsfeed. I'm going to pick on Greenfield, not because he's particularly egregious, but because his article is right there, ripe for the picking. What's he going to do? Tell me I'm blogging wrong? I praise him for a different article in a previous section. Greenfield writes, "Cornell West may be right, that the system can’t reform itself, at least not to his satisfaction. It gets better. It gets worse. But it never gets fixed, and never to everyone’s satisfaction. Even as people try to fix it, it just gets more broken under the weight of good intentions coupled with simplistic solutions, hysteria and outrage." I agree that "good intentions coupled with simplistic solutions, hysteria and outrage" are the source of much grief in the world. But not even half of the parties responsible for a large part of the current boondoggle of public policy in America can be said to have had "good intentions". He writes that "[i]t gets better. It gets worse.", but goddamn if it doesn't seem to break the same way for the same beneficiaries most of the time. Even when it breaks for the underdog, it's just on the surface. Below the surface -- where it matters -- the proper and ordained beneficiaries are still cleaning up. They win no matter what. And others lose no matter what. It stays the same with barely a blip of difference for the overall goal: keeping a large supply of what is essentially slave labor available in order to keep the world functioning so that Greenfield can go motoring in his Healey with the Missus. As much as he and I can sympathize with what's going on, we cannot, not really. We may have started out suffering or poor or uncertain, but the world rewarded us for hard work. That's not how it works for everyone. Some people can't win for losing -- by design. So up rears that word "privilege" -- but it's not impossible for those of us who benefit from privilege to be aware that we do. I know that Greenfield does (I've been reading him long enough). Telling people who've never benefitted from a single privilege -- who suffer from anti-privilege wherein they can do no right -- what the right solution is -- and it's not rioting -- is kind of horseshit. The U.S. is already a dumpster fire for 99% of the people living there. Greenfield knows it, but instinctively, he's going to try to keep them from burning it to the ground in a way that will affect his 1% way of life. I know how he feels. When the world burns, my own privilege will burn up with it. I have the benefit that I don't actually live there anymore, but I'm still saddened to realize that America may be too dumb to avoid driving itself off of a cliff. "But burning a Starbucks won’t stop police from acting upon their presumption that black men are more likely to be violen[t] criminals." Burning the Starbucks doesn't have a point. It's not going to fix racism, but it's also not meant to. It is an excrescence of a poisoned system. It is underprivileged, underfed, undermotivated, undereducated, and probably some criminally-minded people acting out. When a riot starts, the rats enter the sinking ship. [1] A lot of people have never been given any indication that what they do matters at all. They've never benefitted from a positive feedback loop, as I have. No matter what they've done, the system has called them garbage -- useless refuse who should be happy to suck pondwater, who should be happy for the dribs that circle the drains where they're told they deserve to live. It doesn't matter. Be a bad person? Get killed in the street. Be a good person? Get fucking killed in the street. They are doing what they've been taught, just like we are. They have their role to play and we ours. They act the part of mindless apes hooting and hollering at the fire they've lit -- and we hoot and holler to defend the status quo that guarantees our own subjugation to the true rulers. Our scraps are just bigger than theirs. The masters of the universe do this on purpose to get our allegiance and have us play the role of scold for those lower than us on the totem pole. The question is always the same: will we hold it all together for one more go-round? This time, however, it's being asked in the context of an economy absolutely shattered by COVID-19. This time, there may not be enough scraps to go around to keep all of the myths in the air. The corporations via the Fed are getting their share, as usual. Americans -- "main street" -- were already not getting their share. If enough people stop believing the myth, it doesn't matter how loudly Greenfield and Co. clap -- Tink's gonna die. It's coming down. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Here in Europe, the May 1st protests are ostensibly worker-positive, union-positive, leftist, peaceful marches celebrating labor -- but are, often enough, infected with "riot tourists" who show up to ruin it for everyone. Who gets coverage in general? The guys breaking shop windows. Are there a lot of them? No, the numbers in Zürich are usually quite minuscule when you read the police report the next day. Who gets coverage in business-friendly papers? You better believe it's those damned leftists and their inherently violent tendencies -- we should totally ban all unions, just to be on the safe side. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3981 2020-05-23T23:36:57+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

includes the following statement, "We have failed to reorient the defeated nations to our way of thinking. We have failed to win the peace." This is factual. In the first sentence, though, it already feels like he's lamenting the fact that we were unable to exert our force successfully. Instead of using a word like "conquer" or "browbeat" or "subjugate", he writes "reorient". I'm quite sure none of America's vassal nations feel like that would be the appropriate word. In the second sentence, he reveals the reason for his choice of words: he still thinks that the U.S. onslaught over the past century has been for the noble task of "win[ning] the peace". So, here we have Buchanan, an American proponent for peace, who still can't see past using overwhelming American force to "win [a] peace" that was already there in the first place. Buchanan makes his general disdain for any people or its principles other than his own evident in the next few sentences. "While we can defeat our enemies in the air and on the seas and in cyberspace, we cannot persuade them to embrace secular democracy and its values any more than we can convert them to Christianity. "John Locke means nothing to these people. As for our Bill of Rights, why would devout Muslims, who believe there is but one God, Allah, and that Muhammad is his only Prophet, tolerate the preaching of heresies in their countries that can cause Muslims to lose their souls? (Emphasis added.)" That the U.S. has been unable to conquer other nations is not due to its own bungling -- to say nothing of the immorality at the core of the endeavor -- but because the target populations are so recalcitrant, so stubbornly moronic as to fight to the death of their very last citizens rather than see the light of the shining city on a hill that is the glory of American society, the obvious pinnacle of human development. He develops the argument to the following point, "Millions of Muslims are familial, tribal, nationalistic, resistant to foreign intervention and proudly anti-Enlightenment." Buchanan seems to utterly miss the irony that this statement nearly perfectly describes the American people as well. On the one hand, there are countries throughout the world who cling, bloodyminded, to the notion that they should be left in peace to live as they see fit; on the other, we have an equally bloodyminded America, intent on bending every nation to its own deranged will, to mold it to its unsustainable, wasteful, demented, and overwhelmingly childish vision. Here again, Buchanan can't help but get a dig on the to-be-conquered peoples: that they are "anti-Englightenment". These people are benighted souls who need to be "saved": a crusader mentality (he even uses the word "crusades" in the next citation). Ironically, of all of the supposedly civilized and advanced peoples of the world, no other could be more appropriately deemed anti-Enlightenment than Americans, who have been trained to be nearly rabidly anti-intellectual. In America, at this point, the querulous demand to know "why listen to experts; what would they know?" no longer even sounds dissonant -- it's become common sense for most. Buchanan continues, "With our "democracy crusades," we have been trying to conquer and convert people who do not wish to be converted. Moreover, we lack the patience and perseverance to change or convert them. (Emphasis added.)" In this short essay, Buchanan repeats his by-now standard, implicit understanding that American values should be promoted throughout the world, that we have a right to do so. Even when he admits that "they" do not wish to be converted, he laments that we don't have the perseverance to force it on them. He laments several times that we have "failed" in what is, in essence, a noble and laudable mission. His core message is that America should give up and leave the world in peace. That is, his heart is in the right place, but he comes to the right conclusion from a very twisted and immoral ideology -- that of American exceptionalism, "If they don’t attack us, why do we not just leave them be? "Our enemies in the Middle East do not defeat our military. They outlast us. They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers willing to give up their lives in suicide attacks. They are willing to fight on and trade casualties endlessly. They do not subscribe to our rules of war. "They tire us out, and, eventually, we give up and go home. (Emphasis added.)" Once again, he utterly fails to see the irony that a statement he thinks perfectly suited to describe the bloodymindedness of an implacable, unreasonable, and suicidally stubborn enemy...also describes his own country perfectly. It arguably describes them even better. His suggestion that they "do not subscribe to our rules of war" is reflexive hogwash. When you're defending your own country from an overwhelmingly better-equipped and -armed enemy, all bets are off. It's ludicrous that the U.S. attacks countries all over the world -- almost inevitably carpet-bombing and strafing them from above -- then whines that they don't play fair if they fight back in any way. It would be laughable if the U.S. weren't killing so many millions of people while it throws its tantrums. Even the way they describe any resistance is designed to demean the techniques of the enemy. Consider what the U.S. or its allies does to prevent troop movements: it mines roads and harbors. When an enemy does it, they are using IEDs -- improvised explosive devices. They are not mines when the enemy uses them -- they are ad-hoc and inadmissible, the weapons of cowards and cheats, unlike the honorable landmines used by the U.S. Buchanan continues, "They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not ours. "They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain who they are. (Emphasis added.)" Here he almost gets it right, but I detect more than a bit of judgment in the emphasized statements. They aren't actually fighting for their own values, they only "believe" they are doing so. Were they to see the light (of the shining city on a hill that is the glory of American society), they would stop fighting because then they would see the error of their ways. He strongly suggest that they would rather remain the patriarchal, enslaving, most-likely-bestiality-loving monsters that they are rather than to be democratized into loving McDonalds and American automobiles and rolling over to American hegemony. By what right does America think this? By the right of overwhelming firepower. By the right of having cowed all other nations into letting it run roughshod over the weak and overly/unfairly resourced. Might makes right -- and America still has 10x the military might of its nearest competitor, none of whom really has any chance of slowing the American bulldozer. All attempts to convince the U.S. through reason have failed. Though Buchanan does his damnedest to sound reasonable -- and he is genuinely anti-war -- he is still an American exceptionalist unwilling to question the core reasoning behind his nation's aggression. He writes that "[a]s imperialists, we Americans are conspicuous failures", but it seems more a lament. He seems to wish that we were better at it, that the destiny of America is to rule the world, that the greatest problem is that America is failing in its duty to lead the peoples of the world to greatness -- whether they want to or not. He simply prefers that they do it militarily but, somehow, peacefully. There is much contradiction in his position. Still, reality bites. The pandemic is showing that America isn't really even capable of ruling itself. This fact has been evident for a long time, to those willing to look past the bluster and lies and the near-constant self-adulation and celebration of ephemeral and grossly unequal wealth. It is exactly this poor planning of its own society -- the hyper-consumerism combined with happy motoring, ex-ex-ex-urbs, monopolistic consolidation, skyrocketing inequality, a completely unhinged economy filled with non-jobs and misery -- that leads America to wage its criminal wars. It needs oil. It needs a lot of energy. It never occurs to America to just trade for it, as other countries do. No, America's intuitive and by-now deeply ingrained solution is to assume that it already belongs to them -- and not to the piteous and pagan savages who live on top of it. From there, the rational solution that occurs to the American is to seize what has always been theirs. This is not a laudable or moral stance. This is piracy. We are the baddies. [1] Yes, America is bad at running an empire. But, It's just as bad at running itself. It performs horrible crimes against humanity in both endeavors. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See the video "Mitchell and Webb: "Are we the baddies?"" for the origin of the phrase. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3953 2020-05-02T00:32:03+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

writes, "Joe Biden for President is Emperor’s-New-Clothes caliber deceit, requiring a rank-and-file so marinated in falsehood they couldn’t tell you the difference between a red light and a green light." Bernie was old, but vivacious, even spry. Biden is just old, the poor guy. How can Noam not even address the fact that the Democrats have chosen an avowed supporter of segregation and great friend to the most virulent racists American politics has ever produced, a great friend to the banks and insurance and credit-card companies, who has a seriously bad history of touching women and little girls and has a rape accusation hanging around his neck? What's not to love? Even his old affable charm is gone, robbed by a late-onset dementia that's clear to anyone who watches him speak for two minutes. Are we not concerned that this is the man who should lead us into the teeth of COVID over the next two years, but he hasn't proposed a single policy since the pandemic began? He's had one softball interview that he completely bungled, failing to read coherently from cards he shouldn't have needed? What the actual fuck, Noam? How bad does the other candidate have to be before you just throw your fucking hands in the air and say that even you, the eminence grise Noam Chomsky honestly doesn't know what the fuck we can do to save this idiotic, suicidal country? [Noam Chomsky thinks your opinion doesn't matter] This is highly irritating because when I watch Noam Chomsky, I like his normally nuanced take on world affairs. But I don't really need to be treated to a 91-year--old man lecturing me that my political opinion is completely irrelevant in the United States because the two-party system has once again engineered a non-choice. I could just watch 30 minutes of CNN instead. I know simultaneously that Noam is probably right and that Trump will get re-elected even if everyone who listens to Noam and his co-signers on his letter [2] votes for Biden. It doesn't matter because there are only two parties and one has a candidate that his voters inexplicably worship and most of the people voting for the other party would do so because they hate/are terrified of that candidate (it's Trump, by the way). I know Noam's been getting kicked in the teeth for a long time, but he seems to lack vision. I guess he's thinking we're like an abused spouse: the most important thing is to get the abuser away from America. What is the end-game for the strategy he recommends? There is none. America is seriously fucked either way. Because it's purely reactive; instead, we need to strike, to be pro-active. [It's Revolution Time] Noam and co. are all just following the rules and the rules are not made by them. We can't let Trump be elected again because he'll pack the Supreme Court. Fuck it. If he packs it, throw them out. The whole point of making Supreme Court appointments lifelong was to ensure that a justice's impartiality was not impinged by having to run for office. If justices are compromised from the get-go, then they're already not impartial. They have to go. RESET SHIT. Goddamn, people. None of our opponents are following the rules that they made for us -- and they are fucking cleaning up out there -- but you're trying to fight them by adhering to those rules. Good luck with that. This is ridiculous. The game is rigged, [3]. Open your eyes. How in the name of FUCK do you ever expect to get a good candidate? Talk about controlling the narrative: the Republicans have got the entire political will of possibly progressive people talking about whether they will vote for a fucking dishrag like Biden while SARS2 rages through the world and climate change is having a cigarette out on the back stoop, but will be coming back in any fucking minute now. Instead of focusing on anything real, anything left of Phyllis Schlafley is staring into their navels or onanizing furiously on Twitter and doing literally nothing about any real problems -- because the system won't let them. Boo hoo. It is seriously time to take the system down. To set shit on fire. There's never been a better time: It's mostly dismantled right now anyway. The country has never offered less to its people relative to what it should be offering than now. It has never looked weaker in my lifetime. The cracks have never been this evident to this many people. It is time to strike. And striking does not mean voting for Joe Biden because he's a shitty candidate even when running against Trump. Think about that: he's running against Trump and he's the hold-your-nose-and-vote candidate. How fucking terrible can you even be? [Chomsky and Co. have a bad track record] He knows exactly how everything works -- and he's right about nearly everything. You won't find anyone who knows more than Chomsky. And he knows how to recommend how to fix things. But, and this is painful to say -- he's also been losing the game his entire life. He's created a tremendous amount of awareness, educated millions, and is acknowledged everywhere but his country of origin as the world's leading intellectual -- possibly of all time. But he's had zero success in fixing anything about his own country. He's only been able to document the evil, not avert it. It's gotten orders of magnitude worse. Maybe it's because no-one listens to him. The path he saw coming in the late 50s/early 60s? The nation didn't listen to a thing he had to say. They did exactly what he said they would do and learned nothing but that it worked for them. They also learned that they could make Chomsky toothless: he's never interviewed in America. His writings do not appear in American media, for the most part. So he and his friends are not really the go-to people for ideas on how to fix any of this. Well, we can listen to their ideas, but their follow-through has a lousy track record. They have no idea how to wrest power from the bad guys. Vote for Biden. Are you fucking kidding me? That's your answer? Might as well go home and get blind-drunk right now. This is two elections in a row now. The last time it was warmonger Clinton. Trump won in an unprecedented come-from-behind [4] win. Now that it's been firmly established that competence is not a requirement -- and neither is showing competence or hiring competent advisors -- we have to believe that he can be elected again. He will. Easily. Because literally everyone you listen to about issues and policies and electability is nearly always wrong about everything. That includes Noam Chomsky, who's been advising our voting choices for most of my adult life: hold your nose and vote for Gore, for Kerry, for (Hillary) Clinton. [Obama: The Golden Child Who Won] Noam also said to vote for Obama, who was a different kind of disappointment. He actually won but could see that he couldn't do anything to really change the country, so he didn't even try. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that, at least at the beginning, he really did want to change things for the better. Instead, he just made sure that his legacy would be that people think he was a great president, which was enough for him. His signature legislation, the ACA, is a nearly laughably inefficient and expensive gift to private healthcare with premiums and deductibles so high that SARS2 tore it to shreds like a Rottweiler going through toilet paper. And you know everything else he did. Extrajudicial killings, Wall Street bailouts, etc. A continuation of Bush's years. He started new wars. He was America's first black Republican president. And people are crowing about how Obama tried to prepare the country for pandemics, but Trump broke everything. Kind of, I guess. Superficially. But Obama had eight years as president and he left us with an America with an exploding prison population, a gig economy, sky-high health-care costs, a rotting infrastructure, a larger military, seven wars, no plan for economic shocks (because why build one? It's not like those ever happen). It's not like having a pandemic stockpile of masks would have helped avoid a 30% unemployment rate engendered by a fantastical economy not started by but definitely re-started and promulgated by Mr. Obama. He also had a chance to change things fundamentally because America was in deep shit then, too. Not as deep as now, but pretty deep. Instead, he punished no-one, dumped 16 trillion of cheap loans (hundreds of billions of saved interest) into the laps of the criminals who perpetrated the problem and then jetted off to go kite-surfing with Richard Branson eight years later. Also, he's publishing some books reminding us about how smart he is and also stepping in to fucking kill Bernie's campaign like a consigliere. So, no, Obama would not have "prepared" the U.S. for SARS2. But maybe no-one could, with the legislative dumpster fire that is Congress. Congress is just as shockingly inadequate and incompetent as the President. Or it would be shocking if it wasn't so familiar and humdrum by now. [Any Other Hot Ideas?] You might as well run the poop emoji for the Democrats. Chomsky et. al. would tell us to vote for it because it's better than Trump and everyone's given up hope on the Republicans seeing reason and choosing someone else. Did you ever think about that? That we've basically given up on changing the minds of 50% of the voting public? And we've effectively given up on getting the 50% of the electorate who never votes to vote? Sure, we're also doing everything we can to make voting harder, that's true. But that's also playing by their rules. They make rules that you have to vote to change things. Fine. Then they make it so only two candidates can run, neither of whose spider-graph for political opinion overlaps even 5% with yours. Then they make you vote on a workday, during working hours. Then they make it take hours and hours. Maybe you'll catch a deadly disease while you're there. Maybe you'll get fired. Roll the dice. Wanna vote by mail? 20% chance you don't get the ballot. 20% more that they lose it or don't count it. This is bullshit. Stop. Playing. By. Their. Rules. It's not worth it. I'm not saying don't vote. But man, we have to think about how we can get out of this, don't we? Like, for real? It's not even cynically funny anymore. Bernie tried to wake up the non-voting public. It didn't work. At all. He was also seriously undermined by the Democratic Party. But that's to be expected. Forget them. But then what? Another party? Another candidate? Is that even possible? Not in America, that's for sure. And don't even get started on the degree to which the elitist and managerial media control the narrative to the very last detail. Remember, up top, where we discussed how they've got you deciding whether to vote for that ass-clown Biden or throwing your vote away and getting four more years of Trump. It's time for a mutiny. Storm the gates. No weapons, please. Seriously. [SARS2: Taking Back the Shock Doctrine [5]] The time has never been riper because SARS2 has fucked up our shit pretty hard. The U.S. government is on the ground. Maybe we should focus our efforts on not letting it get back up until it says uncle. Or maybe just put it out of our misery. Because it's pretty clear that the U.S. -- uniquely among the grown-up nations -- doesn't know how to deal with something like SARS2. It doesn't have a clue. It is ideologically weaponless against it -- utterly incapable of even conceiving of the most obvious solutions. And neither Trump nor Biden nor any of the elected officials with any clout can fix it. They don't even know how to keep people afloat during the lockdowns. They're letting everyone run out of money. "Checks" will show up maybe in August. $1200 for several months. "Suspensions" of payments, but no jubilees. Who are they kidding? They're building a population that will finally be ready for revolution -- because they will finally have nothing left to lose. Because it will finally have been made crystal clear to even the truest of the true believers that the so-called American Dream is not for them. [6] We finally have leaders stupid enough to have forgotten that you have to let a crumb or two fall from the table or the natives get much too restless. America might finally be having it's "let them eat cake" moment. The only thing that can save us from Trump now, quite frankly, is SARS2. I don't think it will kill his administration, but it might kill him. He's in the risk group. I bet it won't because that's not the kind of sense of humor God has. It could kill Biden, but God's much more morbid than that. It'll probably take out Bernie and give the movement a martyr that will definitely split the anti-Trump vote and shoo Trump right in for four more years. As I've expected him to do since he was elected in 2016. Garbage in, garbage out. [7] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I wrote this rant a few nights ago and then saw the video below, where Greenwald echoes my sentiments nearly exactly. [media] [1] See "Blaming the Greens Nine Months in Advance" , where I discuss an open letter Noam wrote a few months back essentially demanding that the Green Party focus on elections other than the presidential race. [1] Obligatory plug for Dean Baker's excellent and free-to-download book "Rigged" [1] You'll pardon the imagery. [1] From Naomi Klein's excellent book on how the elite take advantage of crises or "shocks" to extend their power. [1] I just talked to some friends today -- we're not there yet. The Trump true believers are digging in. Maybe the best thing we can hope for is that Trump's homicidally dangerous advice affects enough of his voters to topple him in November. At the very least, we can hope that he gets them to incapacitate them sufficiently that they can't make it to the polling stations. [1] See "Sanders is too good for this worldcountry" , where I cite a Reddit rant as follows, "[...] the truth is that there is no system of government ever designed, nor could one ever be created, that could survive and prosper with a population as arrogant, stupid, selfish and short-sighted as the average American." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3960 2020-04-26T22:56:54+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which includes varied citations from varied experts. The site is for people who've been kicked off of the comments section of the Guardian (hence "Off-Guardian"). The formatting and... ]]>

, which includes varied citations from varied experts. The site is for people who've been kicked off of the comments section of the Guardian (hence "Off-Guardian"). The formatting and flow are terrible, but some of the information is OK (e.g. "He suggested that the real figure for the number of cases could be 10 to 20 times higher than the official figure. If he’s right, the headline death rate due to this virus will be 10 to 20 times lower than it appears to be from the published figures.") but it's mostly speculation. Until we know more, we're proceeding with the right strategy. We stay cautious in the face of a paucity of information. Once we know more, we can react less stringently, if the information bears out such a strategy. Perhaps for the next pandemic, we can be better-informed. For this one, we are where we are. [Exaggerating COVID numbers] The local Consumer Reports in Switzerland K-Tipp took it upon themselves to publish their own feelings that everyone is needlessly overreacting by pointing out that deaths where the flu is involved aren't considered flu deaths. I.e. patients that die of complications which the flu perhaps exacerbated are considered to have died of the underlying condition, not the flu. In the case of Coronavirus, the methodology is the opposite. A scandal. They have truly discovered that the Coronavirus would be only as bad as a seasonal flu if they weren't being treated differently in the statistics to ... what? What would be the reason? For Switzerland to deliberately kill its own economy as part of some mass hysteria? A global hysteria? That seems to be their theory. That were the clear-eyed and -headed editors of the K-Tipp at the tiller, we would be navigating this crisis with much more aplomb and much less fuss. What they don't explain away is the extra deaths, not only in Switzerland, but in many other countries. The morbidity numbers are way above the norm everywhere. These deaths have been attributed to COVID because it makes sense to do so. What else would you expect? What do they suggest? Should Switzerland use the methodology they use for the flu and, instead of reporting COVID numbers, they say that COVID isn't a thing, but that their heart-attack numbers in March and April are through the roof, for utterly mysterious reasons? That would be super-useful. It's an interesting thing to point out, but the magazine could have come to the conclusion I just came to above, instead of promulgating the implication that COVID isn't really a thing, that over half the world is sitting at home because of mass hysteria. They do no justice to the intelligent and well-trained medical personnel who are doing their damnedest to steer us through a crisis for which we are economically prepared, but not very socially or ideologically prepared. Hence this article: people just can't believe that the world can tell mankind what to do, instead of the other way around. But people are dying. Countries that deviate from the recommendations have much higher death-rates. The report for K-Tipp is what one can expect when things go right, when the plan works. Then they'll complain that it was a hoax because, paradoxically, not enough people died. Damned if you do; damned if you don't. K-Tipp should go back to telling me whether I should buy my Rioja from Lidl or Aldi or telling me which bicycle helmet is the safest. They should leave their Trump-like conspiracy theories to journals that deal in these topics instead of scaring their aged subscribers into thinking that nothing is going on. Their letters page is an echo chamber of people thanking them for their efforts in combatting the misinformation disseminated by the government. That would be all of the governments of the world, I guess. Unless Italy is killing people in droves -- or OMG lying about it -- just to support the Swiss government in its efforts to swindle its own people into ... what? Shit, what do they want? People to stay at home? To destroy their own economy? To what purpose? You can't just make a conspiracy theory: you have to work on motive a bit. Other readers just attributed it to incompetence through and through and thanked the consumer magazine for taking time out of their busy schedule of evaluating cooking butter vs. premium butter to set the record straight vis á vis medical statistics. They noted that the government was stupid or crooked or incompetent enough to rely on experts, which was their downfall. Because everyone know that experts don't know anything, by definition. It's really nice to see that the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of thinking. [Voices of reason] The article "Turning and Churning" by James Howard Kunstler sanely and calmly discusses the "debate" about COVID and the effects of the lockdown on the economy. "Here’s what I think about the disease just now (subject to further evidence): it’s not just another flu. It operates differently, it’s more lethal, it affects many organs and can damage them permanently, and it spreads rapidly. That seems to have been the consensus of public health officials the world round who promoted the lockdown policy ­– and it’s hard to believe that they all got snookered into that." This is the part that the haters don't seem to talk about: they're proposing a worldwide conspiracy or worldwide incompetence without a motive and without describing how it would possibly work. They lean on the statements from unimpeachable sources like consumer magazines or right-wing neoliberal politicians (see below) and discount all of the information that's inconvenient to them, while keeping the information that serves their purpose (e.g. play down number of deaths, but cling to the 2-3% figure that no country has right now and that was cited at the beginning of the year, based on China's data, which they are also now claiming is faked while at the same time citing the parts they like). Those that are worried about the economy are blaming the lockdown measures instead of the utter flakiness of an economy that couldn't even survive a love tap to say nothing of a lockdown as severe as this one. The economy has been a house of cards for decades and it's been super-fragile and even more fantastical since 2008. But it's the lockdown that's at fault, not the fragility of the stupid system that they built. Kunstler continues "The plague didn’t cause the economic crash. But the lockdown response certainly accelerated, amplified, and ramified it. The crash happened because we built up a hyper-complex, over-scaled, just-in-time economic system with all its ecological redundancy edited out for the sake of efficiency, making it hyper-fragile. The system’s basic power module (fossil fuel) was failing on a cost-basis and we tried to compensate for that with debt. The debt got out of hand in both sheer quantity and from the dishonest games that bankers and politicians were playing with it. All of this happened for the reason that most things happen in history: it seemed like a good idea at the time. (Emphasis in original.)" The article "Quarantine Day 37" by Carol Miller also urges caution with "opening back up" or "going back to normal": "For everyone dying to go back to work I ask for extreme caution. You might actually die, or someone you know and love might actually die. "Somewhere between 25% and 50% of the people infected with COVID-19 have no symptoms. The US has not tested enough people to truly understand the scope and life cycle of this virus in the US. "[...] "I was notified again on April 18th, after a 4th round of COVID-19 tests, that I am still positive for the virus. I still have no symptoms. "I am a poster child for all the unknowns of OCVID-19. How long will someone carry the virus with no symptoms? How long will someone with virus be contagious? If there are shreds of virus clinging to the nasopharynx are they actually contagious or noncontagious? Science has no answer to any of these questions yet." [Why don't we just test everybody?] But let's get back to dodgy and shady ideas and theories. The article "A Third Solution" by Paul Buchheit starts off quite well, with the following summary: "it’s not “just the flu”. It is something much more dangerous. Catching this virus is a bit like playing a round of Russian roulette. [...] For those of us less at risk, the danger is still present, but it’s as though the gun is pointed towards someone else, someone more vulnerable, because we can easily pass the virus along to them without even realizing that we have it. "There’s also the issue of long-term effects. This disease is new, so we really have no idea. It’s likely that more severe cases, those requiring hospitalization, present serious risk of permanent damage to the heart, lungs, and other organs. [...] We also don’t know how long immunity lasts or what will happen if people catch it a second time next year. We hope that it will be milder the second time, but it could be worse." The rest of the article devolves into suggesting a "third solution", which is really the first solution everyone would want: full tracking. Because Buchheit created GMail, he seems to think that he can give something a new name and the venture capital funding will come pouring in for his new venture of testing everyone all the time. He might be right. Of course, there a few technical hurdles in the way, most of them math- and physics-based. We'd all love to have every person be tested every morning non-invasively and with 100% accuracy and self-reporting, etc. but there are a lot of hurdles between where we are and that utopia. He's not telling us anything that we don't already know, but we need a plan to get there from where we are (which is at about 2% tested in most OECD countries, to say nothing of herd immunity of 60-70%). This sounds like the advice people like this love to give to the poor who can't afford to feed their families. They come up with the bright idea that those people should make more money. Not helping. [Fantasy Propaganda Numbers] The article "Can We Stop Using the 60,000 Death Projection Number?" by Dean Baker points out that the NYT, as recently as April 23rd, was still using 60,000 COVID-related deaths as a ceiling for the U.S. On that day, deaths were just a hair under 50,000 and were still increasing at a steady clip of about 2,000 per day. Or there's the article "Roaming Charges: Killing Yourself to Live" by Jeffrey St. Clair , which points out that Citigroup analysts were confident that 60% of the American public could be tested by the end of April (6 days away at time of publication) and 95% by the end of May. This, although only 1% of the population had been tested at the time and less than .05% were being tested per day. They would have to pick up testing by 140x (or 14,000%) in order to hit that target. They predict, based on their numbers, that 90% of the workforce could then safely return to work by mid-May. That a bank is this bad at math -- even CitiBank -- is frankly unbelievable, so they're clearly just lying to manipulate the stock market. Or maybe they've been talking to Paul Buchheit, cited above. [Be Sweden. Duh.] Or there's this video "Herbert Kickl zieht Bilanz "Kanzler Kurz hat Menschen bewusst in Angst und Schrecken versetzt!"" (German) that another friend sent me, commenting that this guy is finally willing to speak truth to power and to shame his fellow parliamentarians for having turned Austria into a police state as their COVID response, when Sweden is showing the world that another way is possible, that COVID can be held under control with only slight restrictions on gathering size, but otherwise stores and restaurants can stay open. All numbers in the following discussion are from "early Sunday morning, April 26th" . Despite Herr Kickl's vehemence, he's comparing against only Sweden, which he describes as a paradise of no-COVID/no-restriction/booming-economy, unlike all of the other chickenshit countries. But we can compare Sweden very nicely to Switzerland and Austria because they are all pretty much the same size, population-wise. Today's numbers show that Sweden has 20% more cases than Austria and are growing at ~600 cases per day where Austria is below 100 cases per day and is basically ready to start the "dance". Sweden danced first without using the hammer. Also, they've tested less than 1% of their population where Austria and Switzerland are at about 2.45% and 2.85%, respectively. [image]It doesn't look like dancing first is actually working for Sweden, though (just like failed for the UK, which entertained the idea only briefly). Their increase in cases is steeper, their total deaths are 4x higher than Austria and they're only at the beginning of their intensive infectious period (see the chart to the right). Without using the "hammer" that other countries have, it's unclear how they're going to keep their infections under control. It's most likely that they're not: their approach looks like they're going for herd immunity, as England did, at first. It soon spiraled out of control for England. It is likely to do so for Sweden as well. Just because it takes a few weeks longer or the pattern looks slightly different doesn't mean that Sweden has found a magical solution to COVID that escaped everyone else. But let's put a pin in that. Herr Kickl staked his career on the numbers; I've got no skin in the game, but I'm betting against him. If he "wins" and Sweden "wins", then we all win -- as long as we can figure out how they did it. Switzerland currently has more cases than Sweden overall (~29,000 vs. ~18,000) but Sweden already has about 35% more deaths than Switzerland. For closed cases, Sweden is showing a 69% mortality rate from COVID, which is about twice as high as anyone else (and is also kind of shocking). I'm hoping that's a statistical anomaly that will drop down as more of the milder cases recover. Switzerland is also at ~200 new cases per day, which is 1/3 of Sweden. Switzerland and Austria are dropping; Sweden is still increasing. Of course, it's possible that these numbers are wrong or off by a lot. We've all heard about how the tests might be too negative or too positive or improperly applied or not applied enough or applied to the wrong people or improperly reported or ... a million other things that can happen with statistics. But they're all we have -- and they're all that Klickl had too when he police-state--shamed his fellow parliamentarians. We should all be willing to acknowledge error bars instead of projecting an impossible confidence. It makes no sense to yell at parliament about their "drastic" measures a few days ago, when no-one really knows how this is all going to work out for Sweden. I would check back in two weeks and see how it went before drawing any conclusions. There's a good chance that it will follow England in a delayed and desperate lockdown -- a delay that they will likely pay for with avoidable deaths. But, hey, they got to eat in restaurants longer while we all sat at home, so that's something. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3956 2020-04-26T22:24:22+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3913 2020-04-14T22:54:54+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is a transcript of Bernie's speech when he bowed out of the presidential race. The article "Thank You, Bernie Sanders" by Ronan Burtenshaw details what he did for the movement and the article "Bernie Supporters, Don’t Give Up" by Eric Blanc discusses the way forward for progressives and socialist. I don't think there is a way forward without a revolution. It doesn't have to be a violent revolution but, if even the COVID crisis isn't enough to drop the scales from America's eyes, then I don't know if there is hope in that country without a complete reset. Nearly every other country in the West has fled back to its progressive roots. These are the countries doing the best in this crisis. In other places, the analysis has begun to determine why Bernie failed. Bernie did not fail. The system failed. The system is configured to disallow dissent. It worked beautifully. For the second election in a row, Americans have the choice between two horrific presidential candidates. There is no need to minutely examine the reasons why a certain group of voters didn't go Bernie's way. Not when the following elephants are in the room: * Mainstream Media propaganda and framing the narrative [2] * Out-of-control campaign finance * Active voter suppression [3] Against this level of brainwashing, there is no way that anyone is going to convince anyone of anything that they don't already believe. [Winning despite the electorate?] In the poorest regions of America, due to be hardest hit by Corona and unemployment and the coming economic depression (at least in America), Trump support has surged. They think he's doing a great job. You cannot fight that. You've lost before you begin. You can't get elected as president despite the electorate. I've written recently about this: * "A lucid summary of the 2016 and upcoming 2020 U.S. Presidential elections" * "Sanders is too good for this worldcountry" If you can't get an electorate to vote for their own interests, then the candidate who runs on their interests will lose. The article "Voters Won’t Risk Their Lives for Joe Biden" by Carl Beijer makes some good points, which I cite at length. "Bernie Sanders lost because our political establishment, having presided over decades of declining hopes and living standards for the poor and working class, has created an electorate that has rightly lost faith in democracy. "Bernie Sanders lost because decades of deliberate propagandizing by the Republican Party, routinely accepted by an inept and complicit Democratic opposition, has entrenched among voters the self-fulfilling conventional wisdom that America is a center-right nation that would never elect even the most moderate democratic socialist. "Bernie Sanders lost because decades of media consolidation has placed our most powerful ideological institutions in the hands of an ever-shrinking faction of oligarchs. And their control of the media, in a million overt and subtle ways, guarantees a basically insurmountable opposition campaign against any politician who steps a millimeter outside of Democratic orthodoxy. "[...] "Bernie Sanders lost because the institutions and system of neoliberal domination in the twenty-first-century United States, while showing clear signs of dysfunction and decline, have yet to collapse beneath the contradictions of capital; and until they do, no amount of activist enthusiasm or strategic savvy or socialist vision or political ambition is likely to prevail against them." Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's like dating. The woman who says she'll never date anyone under 6 feet tall is never going to do that. You can't convince her otherwise. It doesn't matter that this condition is actively hurting her. America is like the dumbest part of the dating world, with completely unreasonable demands that make no sense and don't at all line up with what it really needs. [Will Bernie capitulate entirely?] If Bernie campaigns for Joe Biden, as he did for Hillary Clinton, then he will have capitulated entirely to the Democratic machine. There is only so far that Bernie is willing to go. It's unclear why he refuses to cut ties to the Democratic Party. He's got nearly literally nothing to lose. He's already lost his whole campaign. "Another Sanders Betrayal" by Laurie Dobson "Let me put this in clear terms: Joe Biden, the Democratic Party choice for President- a man with diminished mental capacities, is going against one of the most ruthless contenders in Presidential history, Donald J. Trump. On Bernie’s watch, and with his participation by concession, the Democratic Party will be utterly destroyed in November, and will have richly deserved it." "Roaming Charges: The Condition Our Condition is in" by Jeffrey St. Clair "Leave it to Jacobin magazine to play the “hope card” after Sanders got smoked by a weaker, underfunded opponent not even his own supporters are enthused about. If there’s “hope” it’s not with the Democrats, who responded to HRC’s loss by nominating someone to her right, a rapist who “pals around” with segregationists…." I think that the U.S. will be so different by November because of COVID that perhaps only a Bernie-like person could save it. Bernie has walked away twice now, preferring to stay cozy with a clearly compromised Democratic party than to lead a revolution. How does Bernie quit now? Biden is on his last legs, health-wise. Maybe Bernie is, too. Who knows? But why shitcan a giant revolutionary movement and let it subside beneath the waters with nary a ripple? Doesn't he care what his supporters think? Did he ever? [Biden's a bit handsy, no?] He's got a rape accusation hanging around his neck that the establishment is doing its best to ignore, but that even they won't be able to stave off forever. Can you imagine if Biden makes it to the fall? Trump will be able to run to the left of Biden on sexual assault. I can see it now: "Joe, I like the ladies too, but #lookbutdonttouch". For Christ's sake, the Dems and the Woke are setting up a hypocritical loophole for Biden that's big enough for Trump to drive a truck through with this whole Tara Reade accusation that they're deliberately ignoring because she went after the wrong guy. They let Al Franken get thrown under the bus -- too progressive and mouthy -- but they've invested way too much time and effort in Biden to let some floozy ruin it for them now. The article "As The Goldbergs Flip, The Sham Is Revealed" by Scott H. Greenfield sums it us well: "But what [they've] done by [their] desperate avoidance of the only real question at hand, [...] is proven that reliance on facts, reason and due process to determine whether a rape has occurred hasn’t changed at all, and the laundry list of excuses is just that, facile nonsense to cover up the failure of facts, reason and due process. The only difference is whether the man, this time, is a guy they want to destroy or not. Nothing more." The Dems and the media think they have everything under control because they've got their kowtowing brainwashed Maddow-loving idiots on board and chanting their mantra. Trump and the Republicans will eat them alive and barely break a sweat. They do not care. They will also have the luxury of taking down an opponent that is actively helping them do so -- by being nearly unbelievably hypocritical. [Biden's racism?] Bernie just refused to attack Biden on any of his major flaws. Biden will not shut up about his friends Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond: Trump could run to the left of Biden on integration as well. In September, American TV will be plastered with pictures of Biden holding hands with a hooded Strom Thurmond and Trump will sweep the black vote, too. I wonder how they strong-armed Bernie into quitting, though. I've read that Obama wheedled him into it, but I think he threatened him, a la Breaking Bad or Ozark. He probably threatened his wife, family and (maybe) legacy to force Bernie to see the light. Or maybe Bernie was just tired. He's old, perhaps tired, perhaps understandably frustrated and not very hopeful. Ralph Nader has the right ideas and has a lot of energy, but is also too old by now. AOC? Still too young, but maybe it doesn't matter. She's got a great tweet game, but has also been tacking toward the Democrats rather than DSA when required. By November, Biden will be so irrelevant that no-one will even remember that he was ever a nominee -- much like Beto O'Rourke or Pete Buttigieg. Trump may still be around -- he's proven to be able to adapt to many situations, no matter what else you can say about him. Biden has in no way shown that he can do so. A country with 30% unemployment, in a full-blown depression with 2 million dead from a single virus will definitely be focused in a way it hasn't previously been. [Bernie endorses Biden] It's April 14th and there you have it: Bernie endorses Biden. Bernie just likes him. He promised he would endorse the Democratic candidate. It's like Bernie doesn't care what anyone thinks as long as he keeps his word to the Democrats. Those tendrils must run very, very deep. The following four-minute video sums things up very nicely. Camp makes the point that Bernie doesn't "understand what a political revolution is". [4] A revolution starts because something is wrong. Biden is more of the same. Slightly different than Trump (maybe), but wrong. Not addressing the problem the revolution wants to solve. Camp: "A revolution does not endorse the exact fucking opposite thing." [media] Bernie said all along that he would do exactly this. He literally said he would endorse the nominee. He's capitulated early. He's endorsed before the nomination. I think he's just tired of fighting. So Bernie's not the guy, I guess. Much of his platform is, though. Camp: "A revolution does not give up. "A revolution does not back down. "A revolution does not decide the math is against us. "A revolution does not concede that it's over. "A revolution does not say "the writing's on the wall". "A revolution does not get in bed with corporate America because you couldn't win. "Stay angry. "Now is not the time to endorse the status quo. Now is the time to fight for something different, something new, some large-scale change." [Trump's not a dictator] All along, progressives have been told to hold their nose and vote because nothing could be worse than Trump. Trump is going to seize power. He's going to establish a dictatorship. He's going to cancel elections. Isn't is quite obvious that Trump's ambitions don't extend that far? He seems to have found his sweet spot with his nightly COVID press conferences. He hasn't consolidated federal power in any way. He's outflanking the Democrats on the left, somehow inadvertently proposing to cover everyone's medical bills. But he's not a dictator. He's too lazy for that. He just wants attention. Now he has it. A lot of it. Also, he really likes giving people nicknames and delivering occasionally very funny zingers at his opponents. [5] But progressives will take the blame again when Trump wins against Biden. I wrote the article "Blaming the Greens Nine Months in Advance" about an open letter from February where many eminent scholars were already searching about for culprits for the inevitable loss to Trump. This was before the Coronavirus, though, which definitely is the only thing that Trump might bungle enough to not get elected. His mastery of the news media [6] and the news media's mastery of public opinion will probably combine to grant him even more control of the narrative than usual. Something else might stop Trump, but Biden won't even be a speed bump. I don't even know how to describe the shitstorm that is about to rain down on the Dems. [Vote for whom you want] Vote for a revolution. Vote for what you want. Don't settle. Go down fighting. COVID changes everything. Build something new and better from the ashes. Bernie is gone, but may his movement live on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] This course of action was recommended in the article "Bernie Sanders/Joe Biden Debate: Go Out Swinging" by Matt Taibbi "The Warren-Maddow tête-à-tête was a perfect symbol of everything Sanders spent his career renouncing. Heading into a pandemic that left the richest country in the world paralyzed for lack of hospital beds, a functioning coverage system, and testing capability, our upper classes wept over rando Twitter meanies. "Whether he wants it to be or not, the coronavirus disaster is a pitch in Bernie’s wheelhouse, highlighting the massive structural obstacles we face precisely because our electoral system is weighted against serious people and in favor of industry-backed nitwits and sellouts. "Our medical bureaucracy is choked with waste and inefficiency and stays that way by mutual consent, with Republicans entirely opposed to health care reform, and Democrats merely opposed to any change that inconveniences insurers and pharmaceutical companies. The Sanders campaign was a promise to break up this conspiracy of inaction." But Bernie didn't go hard enough. [1] The article "Blowing in the Whirlwind: As Ye Sow, Joe Shall Ye Reap" by Chris Floyd discusses this framing at length. "For it’s a fact that most Americans – who get what little political news they care to imbibe from casual glances at the media – will never have heard a single report about Sanders that wasn’t negative in some respect, or in all respects. Again, this goes double for casually liberal Democrats, who get their news and views from the NYT, MSNBC, NPR, CNN, CBS, ABC, WP, etc. There, Sanders is portrayed either as the horned spawn of Chavez and Che, come to ravage your 401k and execute millionaires in Central Park – or else as a unicorn-chasing fantasist with no sense of gritty, savvy realpolitik, which dictates that we must always hew slavishly to the centrist mean.""Overwhelmed, battered, beset, anxiety-ridden, suffering, confused, many people don’t want to hear that hard work and big changes will be necessary if we are to have a chance for things to get better. They just want to latch on to something that will let them feel – if only for a moment – that the anxiety can go away, that someone up there in the circles of power will take care of it for us. "This is not the wisest course when faced with overwhelming crises – but it is an entirely natural and understandable one. When you couple this natural reaction to extremity with the aforementioned systematic effort to undermine and thwart the Sanders’ campaign, then it’s not surprising you end up with a blank screen like Joe Biden as your candidate." [1] The following video has an excellent recap of shenanigans: [media] This was before the Democrats held a primary in a state where only 2.5% of polling stations were open and they called it a fair election. [1] The article "“Bernie Sanders Has Inspired a Mass Popular Movement”" by Noam Chomsky goes into a lot more detail about the problems Bernie's revolutionary movement wanted to address (it's not dead, but it's no longer his movement). "These are all specific problems. They’re not completely unique to the United States, of course, but they happen to be exaggerated here because of the nature of the society — that it is business-run to an unusual extent, and this business community is militant and organized. The Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations are fighting a bitter class war.""This is a class war that goes on constantly in the United States to a level far beyond other comparable societies. You can see this in many ways. If you take a look at CEO salaries relative to workers’ pay the gap, especially since the 1980s, is far higher in the United States than it is in European societies. These are all crucial issues in the United States which require a very intensive effort.""The reason why Sanders is vilified in the media pretty much across the spectrum is not so much because of his policies. It’s because he has inspired a mass popular movement which doesn’t just show up every four years to push a button but is acting constantly — pressuring — to achieve changes and having some success. That’s frightening for the business class. The role of the public is to be passive spectators and not to interfere.""Among Republicans the only ones that received even a slight majority were Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Breitbart, which is an ultraright website. Even the Wall Street Journal is considered too far left for most Republicans. You just listen to Rush Limbaugh someday. You’ll see what kind of information people are getting. For Rush Limbaugh, science, government, and the media are pillars of deceit — and you just have to listen to the ultraright instead. That’s what Republicans, almost half the population, are getting as information.""In the 1920s the labor movement had been killed — inequality was soaring, it was a capitalist paradise, and there were no popular movements. In the 1930s, it all radically changed — that can happen again." The article "To Defeat Corporate Hate, Bernie Bros Must Channel Martin Luther King" by Nick Pemberton offers more hope for how to continue post-Bernie. "Fascism is about us vs. them, as Jason Stanley points out in the latest episode of Counterpunch radio. An enemy is needed. I would never compare Bernie to Trump, or left to right. But we have to ask serious questions about how the present age of fascism has degraded our political life. We aren’t talking about style here. We are talking about a principled resistance to the weakness of hate. It takes work. Just as resisting any form of power does.""In any kind of defeat of another person, we feel that same sick feeling. That feeling that before I took down someone else, I was small. We don’t look at the system that rewards such behavior. We don’t ask in what way can I free myself from this feeling that brings both of us down? I see this temptation to become better than others through political expression. However, this mentality runs contrary to the political stance itself which is asking how can we all get to a better society. If we can accept that each of us is vulnerable, capable of both good and evil, each of us became who we are from the context we arose out of, then our only priority becomes changing the context itself to make it more enriching for all.""Imagine if a response to being called a hate-filled Bernie Bro went something like this: I choose not to profit off of other people’s suffering, I choose to oppose the system that does, I believe in love, the power of it, in both my heart and yours, I don’t hate you, in fact I love you, it is because of this that I come with my sincere message, no matter the cost to me, because I fear for our civilization and our planet. I believe in love, and despite this opportunity to present myself as someone superior to you, despite this opportunity to degrade you, I will not," [1] Who can forget what he told Jeb Bush, after Jeb had told a debate crowd that his mother was the best person in the world? Trump said "Then she should be running," Jeb was dead in the water days later. [1] Trump's even dealing nearly exclusively with a new network that seems to have been imagined out of whole cloth to replace the less-than-perfectly-reliable FOX ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3902 2020-04-14T21:28:04+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

gets to its point relatively quickly. "If Clinton got Jill Stein’s Green votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Clinton would have won the election. Thus, the Green Party’s decision to run in those states," ... ]]>

gets to its point relatively quickly. "If Clinton got Jill Stein’s Green votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Clinton would have won the election. Thus, the Green Party’s decision to run in those states, saying even that there was little or no difference between Trump and Clinton, seems to us to be a factor worthy of being removed from contested state dynamics, just like the Electoral College is a factor worthy of being removed across all states." Let's just get Trump out, then we can fix everything. Just like we fixed everything after Bush. It doesn't matter who it is. (Spoiler alert: It won't be Bernie [1]). Fix nothing. Shit on allies. Typical mainstream faux-progressivism. Defeatist horseshit, assuming a tight race because the Democrats suck so hard. But let them try to win again by asking the Greens not to run, like that's the problem. Like Hillary won. "Similarly, if these Stein voters did indeed erroneously believe that no harm could come from casting a vote for Stein in a close state in a close election, that also to some degree was surely a result of Green campaigning insisting that Green voters bore no responsibility for the 2000 election result." This is not surprising because Chomsky has actually been telling us to "hold our noses and vote" for decades. How the fuck do these éminence grises want to convince us the Green Party matters? They're still blaming Nader for the 2000 election? The last time they ran a pathetic milquetoast named Al Gore, who utterly failed to inspire a nation because he was tacking too hard to the right. Or in 2004 when it was again Nader's fault that another boring milquetoast John Kerry. I respect many of these authors, but they seem to be blinded to the reality that a real candidate who wasn't slavering to fuck over the American people for four years in place of the Republicans would sweep any idiot the Republicans could offer, regardless of how many electoral machinations they managed. "[...] dispiriting to remove themselves as a factor that might abet global catastrophe via a Trump re-election." Hahaha. Credibility is zero. Climate crisis averted if you get not-Trump? Like with Obama? We're all going to die in the climate conflagration, but at least I'll have my pride. Honestly, the whole human race can take a flying leap, but I'll have my self-respect. If it comes to a decision like that, then we can put a fork in it. We're done, anyway. You all, on the other hand, will have written a letter blaming the Democratic Party's inevitable loss across all elections on the Green Party nine months in advance this time. I'm sitting over here in the comfort of a country [2] whose Green Party just grew by leaps and bounds in the last elections because it's been allowed to do so over the years. Also, we have parliamentary representation (percentage of votes corresponds to percentage of seats). "Greens tell Democrats “to stop worrying about the Green Party and focus on getting your own base out.” We agree on the importance of Democrats getting their base out, starting with nominating Sanders, or, at worst, Warren. But how does that warrant the Green Party risking contributing to Trump winning?" Fuck you all. There is no other answer than Green or an alternative party. The Democratic Party is so catastrophically unappealing that it can't get elected without cheating and special help. So be it. The U.S. is fundamentally broken. What Chomsky et. al. are saying is that there is no hope but from revolution. And how does your advice look now? Now that a doddering Joe Biden is drooling his way to the nomination? His platform is shambolic. He can barely string two sentences together. He's got a rape accusation that the mainstream media is doing its utter best to ignore -- unlike every other rape accusation against anyone else in the last five years. They claim that they won't have to explain this one away, because it's not credible. Trump does not follow their rules. He will cudgel the Dems so hard with it that they won't even make it to September with Biden. Trump. Doesn't. Care. He doesn't play by the rules that these naive authors seem to think people still play by. There were other reactions, such as the article "Sorry Chomsky and Friends, The Green Party isn’t the Problem" by Nick Pemberton , which excused the authors generously at the very top: "This is going to be a charitable response to a condescending letter. I trust it is not the author’s finest work, as all of the authors of said letter are brave heroes in the fight against corporate rule. We applaud them for their work and stand in awe of their courageous stands against the ruling class. Becoming distracted by counter-productive leftist infighting is a small sin for such heroes and will not be judged harshly." I agree with this sentiment. Pemberton continues, though, disparaging the authors for ad hominem attacks: "Today is not the time to be dismissing anyone’s efforts to fight against the corporate rule as “feel-good”." Then he makes the point that is salient: that a reasonable person can have decided that neither party candidate is right for an American and fuck lesser-evilism. Is it an elite attitude to risk Trump? Just because one is from a class largely unaffected by Republican machinations? "[...] one were to listen to Stein, they would surely find that Clinton and Trump did not literally believe the same things, but that either candidate winning would be, in her view, an unacceptable outcome for the future of the country." We've watched lesser-evilism for forty years. The country sinks further and further down the toilet while the Democrats do nothing to stop it. Instead, they fight the Republicans for power and donors. "We should be asking the Democratic Party why they continue to endure their own base having their vote suppressed. Is it because they ultimately have no interest in challenging their own donor base and that voter restrictions in fact keep the party voting to the right, where the Democrats are most comfortable? In this spirit, we should not be turning people away from the polls, no matter who they vote for, but rather be focusing on welcoming all voting strategies." "To make this a specific Green Party problem rather than a shift in corporate consolidation of power is perplexing." Pemberton goes on to theorize that if the goal is to stop Trump, then Bernie should never have run -- because it's a distraction. [3] Therefore, "We could all be happier if we stopped with these expectations of justice and just accepted our role as peasants to the corporate class. This would be peaceful, I don’t deny it. "[...] "But even if we accept the ruling class thesis that the working class simply is too uneducated and idealistic to ever vote for its own interest, even if we accept this shockingly classist argument laid out in the letter, we would have to concede that such a pivot is impossible for the human soul." The problem is that lesser-evilism doesn't work for even rational people -- because they are, after all, people. "These are the dynamics. It’s not rational. It’s not good. It’s merely human. It’s just the natural way to respond. Capitalism has left us so commodified we are alienated from not just the political system, but our own friends, families and souls." "I would have no problem voting for Joe Biden. But that’s not a good thing. It just isn’t. I would do it, I follow the line of rationale. However, most people are just better than that. Most people are. For most people they got their bills to pay on that Tuesday, their kids to take care of because daycare is that expensive, their two jobs to work, their joblessness to drug themselves out of." Good point. Chomsky and Solomon are out of touch. I'm Surprised Ehrenreich is as well, but she's no spring chicken. People find Dems unappealing because they're fucking Saruman. You wanna fuck me? Fine. What am I going to do to stop you? But I'm not going to say please and thank-you and mean it. [Citations] The following is a collection of more citations from the Pemberton article, which was really quite excellent. "We can’t be telling people not to despair before we fix the conditions of despair. We cannot be telling people to get over themselves and their distrust in politics before we fix the corporate stranglehold on politics." "It is in this sense I see both Warren and Sanders as positive steps. If the corporate class was smart, they’d roll with them. They’d self-correct and go home with money. But that’s not how the corporate class is either. They are just as irrational and sad as we are. Just as desperate. Not for survival. Not for dignity. Not for peace of mind from humiliation. Not for freedom from abuse. But just desperate for more bullshit. Can’t we see these two sides aren’t coming to the table?" Pemberton offers an alternative: Have the Democrats be less shitty. (But we all know that's not going to happen.) "Life under the Democrats is better. Trump is a unique danger. The Green Party has no path to victory. Want to have people vote Democrat? Make the party accountable to their electorate. When we do this in reverse we forego democracy. It’s a harder and longer road. It may mean more Trump victories. It may mean the end of the species before we fix it." Money quote. "We are dealing with half the country that doesn’t vote. A few more leftists won’t move the needle. I wish we were that important." "The Stephen Hawking quote being thrown around that humans die from greed and stupidity isn’t all true. We die from idealism and hope too. We die from our recognition that we have rights and that we should fight for them. We die from our sense of dignity. We die from stubbornness and independence. We die from our desire to be free, to be somebody in this cruel world, to make it a better place. And we all do die. One day. But let it be fighting for the collective good. Let this sacrifice be one that makes our world better. This is the Bernie Sanders gamble. I’m sorry, it is. It’s one that says enough is enough. We won’t take it anymore. And we’ll see where the chips fall." "I sometimes share that desire for us to be less human. To be able to be realistic, to not feel. Wouldn’t that be easier? But no, our leaders are irrational. Our billionaires aim to kill us all and don’t care. Who are we to be lectured? Let us try, at least." "No, people just want their material rights taken care of. This despair is universal. It’s the personalized neoliberalism. We’re talking about politics here. Politics. Get people homes, jobs, water, food, leisure time, air, schools, health care, roads, etc. That’s what it is. No one needs their wildest dreams here. The rich do, and that’s why they destroy stuff." "Now is the time to love every single person in the room, tell them they are beautiful and tell them the ruling class is trying its very best to kill us all for an extra buck. We must join hands in an organized force against said power and assert that the power of love is stronger than the power of capital. There is a concrete structure here. Love, when multiplied, defies this cynical logic that you are a spoiled brat with dreams." "The job is hope. The work is hope. The mission is hope. If we can’t believe, who are we?" Money quote again. The open letter strips away too much, obviating the reason we don't just vote Republican. "That if we continue the fight, whatever and however we see that fight, the ruling class will have to answer, at least for a moment, to their profiteering ways at the expense of public health." "It’s about supporting all of us crazies day in and day out. What is it to exist? Have we gone mad? We must do the hard work of political hope and organization every day. Elections don’t change anything. People do. The madness of people to believe that they can and will make a difference in this brief journey from womb to tomb. The elections will come, and they will go. The people must hold their own organizations throughout the year to challenge whoever is in power to accurately reflect the will of the people." "Rather than blame the few people who have enough hope to form a political party that they believe in, we should be asking critical questions about why the majority of Americans have lost hope, and what we can do to inspire them into further action. In this spirit, I find any letter telling the Green Party not to run to be unproductive. Rather than blame and shame each other, we should be supporting each other’s fights against corporate rule and Mr. Trump. Just as Mr. Trump is a product of corporate rule, corporate power has been strengthened under Mr. Trump." "It is true that if the Stein votes in these states went to Clinton she would have won. Where in the letter does it say if the Gary Johnson votes went to Trump, he might have even won a plurality? Of course that’s not included as it would be too much of a balanced argument to make." Who says these were Democrats voting Green? Weren't some disgusted Republicans who couldn't bring themselves to vote for either Clinton or Trump? "If the nomination goes to Biden because of the Democrats’ repeated treachery against their own progressive voters, then it begs the questions, ‘Is this even a democracy worth fighting for?’ Trump will win in a landslide, but of course, it will be the Green Party to blame. It always is." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I wrote this article at the beginning of February, but never published it. I'm publishing it now because it's become increasingly relevant. [1] Switzerland is one country that has moved more to the left in response to the climate crisis. [1] From Pemberton's article: "This is evident in Jill Stein’s proposal to have Bernie Sanders run in her place on the Green Party line.""But Sanders, like the writers of this letter, like[s] to have it both ways. They like to say they want to stop Trump, but they also want to radically change the course of the Democratic Party with an agenda completely in opposition to most of their Washington based politicians and corporate donors.""If we are being honest about our goal of stopping Trump, we would nominate Joe Biden right now. We would stop this costly primary that only furthers the real divisions between the Democrat’s base and donor class. We would adopt the lovely communist mantra of “Blue No Matter Who” and abstain from all criticism of Mr. Biden, who is the clear frontrunner for not only corporations but many low-information voters.""Had he shut up and stayed home the differences between Clinton and Trump would have appeared wider, given we weren’t so focused on the differences between Sanders and the establishment.""One could argue that we need the specific left language of a Sanders or Stein. Without this all the dissatisfied people would have had no ideological or material grounding for their distrust and more would have joined the fascist Donald Trump, who echoed the same dissatisfaction but with far different specific solutions.""The reasons being that there are more important rights than the right to vote or the right to self-expression, or even political organization. I would argue that the rights to air, water, food, shelter, reproductive rights, safety, freedom from concentration camps, etc. that Trump is dismantling are far more important than our right to self-expression.""Now if you get corporate money, you’re corrupt. True enough. But to make this a litmus test obviously exposes the Democrats. I’m sorry. Bernie must know what he’s doing here. Still, he’s right, of course. We need a radical transformation of society. You just can’t have both goals at once. I don’t buy the argument that Chomsky often has which is if you just get your leaders to be a little more liberal you have a greater chance to protest for something better, and so on. No! Once again, this is ignoring real data here. The politics go back and forth between the parties. There’s no ever-greater leftism here that happens naturally as soon as we get centrism in office." This sounds almost literally like Žižek. "I am convinced [Bernie's] success is that he talks very little about specific policy. He is constantly addressing the corporate power in the room and calling them out. This gives people great joy. Our lives are captive to this corporate greed and corruption. We feel helpless as they build and pollute through our lands, lock us up, bomb us, and cut our wages and health care. We hate these people. You have someone come in and say I’ll tinker here and there it doesn’t work. We’re tired of it. Maybe that makes us too full of hope or whatever. Maybe that makes the Green Party too much fun, or whatever. But sorry. Maybe we need some hope. Maybe we need some fun. And maybe we don’t trust anything else about politics. Life isn’t that much fun with the corporate stranglehold around our necks. For many people, life under both political parties just keeps getting worse. Whose fault is that?" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3949 2020-04-13T15:50:14+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, which has very nice charts showing a gaping inequality chasm in the United States. It's really nicely done and drives the point home in a way not often discussed so openly in the mainstream media. [image]I... ]]>

, which has very nice charts showing a gaping inequality chasm in the United States. It's really nicely done and drives the point home in a way not often discussed so openly in the mainstream media. [image]I was honestly wondering what to make of it, simply because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the NY Times to blame Trump and/or Russia for the whole debacle, even though their charts stretch back to the late 70s/early 80s. The U.S. mainstream media are the world champions of "discovering" a real problem but then blaming the wrong suspects, so that anyone who tries to do anything about it ends up fighting windmills rather than the actual giants. [1] I was helped along by the article "Thank You, Bernie; Screw You, New York Times" by Laura Flanders , which captured the problem I had with the NYT article perfectly: "It is the essence of American liberalism to trash radical dreams and then dance on them. And that’s just what the New York Times did the day after Bernie Sanders bowed out of the Democratic race for the nomination. On that day, in a special editorial, the editors of the very same paper that disparaged his every move opined that America is divided and our democracy corrupt and launched a series promising to report on just the sort of transformative policies Sanders advocated. "[...] "In the Times’s world, it’s apparently ok to bemoan a society and an economy that privileges the rich over the poor, but it’s unacceptable to run for the presidency on a promise to reverse those priorities. (Emphasis added.)" That's it in a nutshell: the progressive pose in the United States can never be anything more than that, because the only ones privileged enough to be able to consider anything other than mere survival necessarily suckle at the teat of the same system that keeps the 99.9% submerged and gasping for breath. Anyone in that mindset wants to be able to think of themselves as one of the good ones without thinking about how their own lifestyle is predicated on standing on a hill of skulls. How without the giant inequality gap, none of their lives would look anything like they do, that their own talents and skills in no way explain how they consider themselves to be worth $200,000 per year while others struggle on $25,000. For the typical Times reader, this does not bear thinking about because it's the house of cards on which not only their net worth, but their self-worth, is built. Laura Flanders is absolutely right to call out the Times for their bullshit in suddenly discovering inequality mere days after they'd just accomplished a year-long task of squashing the only presidential candidate who'd recognized it 50 years ago and had spent every waking moment trying to do something about it. Only once they'd helped make sure that good ol' boy Joe Biden was going to be the nominee -- and that there was no longer a danger of upsetting the status quo that finances not only the Times, but most of its readers -- was it safe to go back to pretending to be progressive in earnest. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Which do exist, unlike in Don Quixote, to which I metaphorically allude. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3939 2020-04-13T11:10:17+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, "I can’t be the only American whose response to the pandemic is to think seriously about moving to a country with a functioning government," ... ]]>

, "I can’t be the only American whose response to the pandemic is to think seriously about moving to a country with a functioning government, good healthcare for everyone, and a real social safety net." No, thank you. The world neither wants nor needs American refugees. [1] They would almost certainly be the most entitled refugees the world has ever seen. And talk about integration! Learning the local language? Forget about it. Even the ones I've met who've moved without an impetus of desperation mostly just keep speaking English "because everybody just speaks it anyway". Please, think again. Try to see your choice through the lens of the rest of the world. You live in a country that has arrogated more power and wealth to itself than any other in history. And you've done nothing with it but piss it away on bombs and billionaires. What makes you think things would go any better anywhere else? What makes you think you're not fundamentally broken and you won't just bring your problematic lifestyle to wherever you are? Don't underestimate how much a part of the U.S. you are, despite you likely thinking that you're opposed to everything that is the American way. America is quite different from most other OECD countries -- which is why things have fallen apart there so much worse than anywhere else. You are part of a populace that is woefully and -- let's not kid ourselves, willfully -- brainwashed. Just moving your ass to a different, better country will not make you happy. You will be miserable because that country will fail to live up to the lunatic expectations engendered in you by America (why can't I go shopping at 3AM?) and you'll make everyone around you miserable with your complaints. You'll nearly inevitably end up in an enclave of English-speaking refugees, complaining about the locals and reminiscing about an America that never was, where Slurpees were giant-sized and gasoline was cheap and everything was sunshine and rainbows. You'll have forgotten why you left -- because that's how memory works. If you want to leave only now, then it likely wasn't the reprehensible ethics and utterly amoral behavior that's been evident since at least post-WWII that finally put you off of America. No, it was when America's behavior finally affected you personally. You let your leaders run roughshod over most of their population -- to say nothing of the rest of the world -- as long as you got your slice of the "American way of life." It's only once they finally broke their end of the agreement to you (like they'd already broken it to 99% of the unwashed masses) that your wandering eye started roving to greener pastures. So just sit tight. Perhaps soon, and assuming their own plans for handling this pandemic go reasonably well, Europe or China may execute a reverse Marshall Plan to get the U.S. back on its feet. And don't worry too much... ...we all need you to redeem those T-Bills somehow. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I use the term refugee to distinguish between fleeing a tire-fire of a country and honestly just wanting to live somewhere else. That is, quite frankly, what I did when I moved to Switzerland almost 171/2 years ago. I've always been a Swiss citizen, though, so it's not like I chose a country at random. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3927 2020-03-25T21:51:22+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

on /r/bestof -- and it truly is one of the best things I've read on Reddit. The entire comment is well-worth reading, but I've liberally selected the bits I liked the most. A democracy cannot function without actual citizens. "I think most people would be very" ... ]]>

on /r/bestof -- and it truly is one of the best things I've read on Reddit. The entire comment is well-worth reading, but I've liberally selected the bits I liked the most. A democracy cannot function without actual citizens. "I think most people would be very unhappy if Sanders supporters put the blame where it truly belonged. Because the real problem with America is, and always has been, the quality of its people. "[...] the truth is that there is no system of government ever designed, nor could one ever be created, that could survive and prosper with a population as arrogant, stupid, selfish and short-sighted as the average American." His take on Trump is something I've been saying since Trump took over the Republican race: "Donald Trump is not an anomaly. He didn't appear suddenly, he was born here, and lived here his entire life. He made a fortune selling tacky, overpriced, gaudy junk -- and Americans bought it, and elevated it to a status symbol. He grifted, lied, swindled and stole -- and the American justice system enabled him and empowered him. He said shocking, disgusting, horrifying things -- and our media gave him a megaphone. And he did everything possible to demonstrate that he was a stupid, petty, arrogant and cruel man unfit in every way possible for any office in existence -- and a nation of stupid, petty, arrogant and cruel Americans turned out in droves to propel him to the highest office in the land. Trump is the real American. (Emphasis added.)" On Democrats: "Democrats [...] blame the Russians for fanning the flames of hatred and division, but they never ask why those fires were alight in the first place. They talk about "what's practical" while propping up an economic system that crashes every seven years and has failed the vast majority of those under its dominion and sneer at anyone who points out these obvious facts while advocating for alternatives. They answer questions of morality with words like "pragmatism" and rage against anyone unwilling to compromise their ethics." And, finally, on why Sanders stands alone, without endorsements from pretty much anyone already in power: "The truth is that Sanders didn't compromise enough to build a coalition -- because in order to build a coalition in America the compromises you have to make are moral ones." Go read the original comment and throw the guy an upvote if you have an account. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3918 2020-03-20T23:55:04+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

addresses the global inequality -- not just that between classes/strata in first-world societies -- that will doom many to the worst effects of COVID. "when we speak of epidemics, and even pandemics" ... ]]>

addresses the global inequality -- not just that between classes/strata in first-world societies -- that will doom many to the worst effects of COVID. "when we speak of epidemics, and even pandemics like the Coronavirus (COVID-19), we must understand that medical care is unequal in our world today. We must understand that “power structures” control who gets medical care and who does not. We must understand that so-called “first world nations” will be treated for the Coronavirus and in all likelihood the “developing world” will be left behind. "[...] "What I am talking about here is “structural violence”, that is those structures which keep in place the inequalities which exist in our world today. Such inequalities are power structures by keeping the developing world, impoverished, and by disallowing equal access to health care [...]" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3917 2020-03-20T23:54:55+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

expresses strong suspicions that the co-called peace deal with Afghanistan that should see the removal of US troops is instead chock-full of the standard caveats and conditions that US loads upon its vassal states. The only real fix for... ]]>

expresses strong suspicions that the co-called peace deal with Afghanistan that should see the removal of US troops is instead chock-full of the standard caveats and conditions that US loads upon its vassal states. The only real fix for America's hyper-militarism begins at home, with its people no longer supporting it. "Look, dearest motherfuckers, I don’t like to be the killjoy here, I really don’t. But when you cut deals with an empire that runs on perpetual violence, you’re really doing little more than shaking hands with the devil, and that fucker can give you way worse woes than the coronavirus. The only deal you can make with a bully state as colossal as the one I exist in that can possibly lead to anything remotely resembling peace is the kind that says get the fuck off my lawn or your Yankee ass is grass. This kind of peace only happens when American anti-imperialists assist their comrades overseas by putting our knee on Uncle Sam’s throat like we did to get out of Nam. Anything else is just an inevitable imperial shakedown. (Emphasis added.)" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3916 2020-03-19T23:24:38+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

noted: "There should only be two responses to a bailout request: "If it's a vital industry, nationalize it and keep the workers on the job. "If it's not a vital industry, guarantee income for workers and let the investors eat the loss." This is a good start, but it should go further. Workers in obviated industries will need time and money to retrain. With so many jobs just gone in a shrunken economy, an at-least temporary UBI will be nearly inevitable. It may be that in all but name, but that's what it will be. That's what people are talking about when they say that "no-one should fall through the cracks". But it will have to be something substantial and realistic and it will have to be ongoing until the endgame of this crisis is clearer. In his book "Rigged" [5], Dean Baker discusses many better ways of "bailing out" failing but essential private industries. One way is to offer a tax refund in exchange for non-voting shares. if the company makes money, the government makes money. It's a straight-up investment. That's another way of semi-nationalizing more-recalcitrant industries. But we should be very clear that the government -- the one with all of the money -- sets the terms. We can control how the money is used -- instead of just pumping it into stock buybacks and CEO pay, like the previous tax cut. Boards and management that did exactly this with their last round of government largesse should stand at the back of the line for handouts and should perhaps be forced to re-invest in their own companies before they get any bailout money. If they refuse, then they get nationalized, their workers get saved and they can take a long walk off of a short pier. Dean has been publishing a lot of good ideas on his site: "When It Comes to Bailouts, Nancy Pelosi Is in the Drivers Seat" by Dean Baker and "Andrew Sorkin Gets the Bailout Basics Right, but Debt Is Not a Problem" by Dean Baker . "Anyhow, we can debate the relative merits of these proposals, but the basic point is right. We don’t know how long we will effectively have the economy in a freeze mode, but we need to make sure that workers can survive this period, and then companies are set to pick up and run again once it is over. That is why it is so important to have a plan that keeps workers on their companies payroll even if they are not actually working." Of course, there will be sacrifices to make, but it shouldn't be the same ones that we've been taught to accept in past crises. The government should strongly consider which businesses can handle the impact (i.e. did they just lose profits or did they actually lose money?), to what degree the industry is worth saving in the form it had (looking at you, airlines) or whether some parts should just be nationalized (possibly, healthcare ... the Swiss insurers are all going to have their hands out). The government will have to plan where they get the most bang for their buck, where they can impact the most lives, save the most families and incomes and put the most stuff back on track with our tax money. Something like an airline will bleed a ton of money out of the coffers. Saving small businesses will be a drop in the bucket compared to that. [Remembering solidarity, overnight] And how do you effect such a plan for a population that has been trained to live in a completely different situation? The notion of solidarity hasn't been completely eradicated, but it has been superseded by austerity, by individualism, by identitarianism, by so many other things. People will have to re-learn what it means to rely on each other. In order to do that, they'll need to really see each other. Because we are literally all in this together. If enough of us diverge from the common plan, it will all be for naught. It won't be easy. Especially if the "old" dog-eat-dog, everyone-on-their-own society is still in place, with no safety net. Many countries already have an adequate safety net -- or can dust off and re-inflate the one they've been starving with austerity for the last 12 years. The U.S., though, will have to rethink nearly everything it believes about how to run a society. They have done a spectacularly poor job of preparing for a post-COVID world. As Naomi Klein said on "Coronavirus, The Election, And Solidarity In The Midst Of A Pandemic" by Jeremy Scahill , "And so it is all the more important to put in that safety net, put in that floor so that people feel a degree of safety and clarity that the basics are taken care of. You will have health care. You will have housing. There’s a jobs guarantee in it, all of this. It takes aim at the rampant feeling of insecurity of everybody just having to look out for themselves because nobody is looking out for them that makes these crises so much harder to handle. "One of the things that is causing so much stress right now is hoarding. It is the fact that people are so convinced that nobody will look after them that there’s no functional state that they’ve stripped supermarkets, right? And they’re hurting their neighbors, and they’re not doing it because they’re terrible people. They’re doing it because they’ve internalized a lesson that is not wrong, that they have to look after themselves." I would also add that people have also been taught to forget anything they've ever learned about morality or ethics -- anything that they may have incidentally heard in a church. All of that pablum falls by the wayside once one's personal existence -- or that of one's close family or, even more strongly, one's children -- is under threat. So people are acting as they've been trained to act. We've been trained to be egoistic hyper-consumers in a bottomless market of infinite resources and opportunity -- for those not too lazy to go get it. We are not at all mentally prepared for a world like this. [Focusing on what matters] This doesn't just go for the neoliberal quasi-free-marketers, it also goes for those who wallowed so deep in their comfort that they imagined that the froth of their mundane and quotidian problems were real problems. They were not real problems. They were just the only left to focus on once everything else was humming along just fine for these people. They were fed, clothed, housed, and entertained. So they made up shit to do. They found causes that suddenly no longer matter when the basics are gone, when the chips were down. The article "The Check's in the Mail" by Scott H. Greenfield describes it like this, "But just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no oppressed in a pandemic. For the time being, the primary function of government is to keep the most people possible alive and kicking, both physically and economically, and we can argue about how bad a job it did later, when we no longer have to worry about whether people will die of COVID-19 this month, starve this month, and can get back to the really important issues of what words are most traumatic to young people." COVID-19 drew the world back into a very tight focus. It's a lot harder to jump on a brigade to cancel someone on Twitter for having failed to properly appreciate Caitlin Jenner's courage when you're trying to figure out how to keep your job or your apartment or your life. [The Old World is not gone] Just to be clear: the old world didn't die overnight. The current way of doing things is still on cruise control, so there are, for example, still cruelties being visited upon the official enemies, subverting a true solidarity in the face of this global crisis. The article "Stop Tightening the Thumb Screws, A Humanitarian Message" by Kathy Kelly discusses that the crippling export and banking sanctions against Iran have not been lifted. The sanctions affect medical supplies as well, which is a war crime at any time, but even more damaging now, when Iran is struggling with the outbreak, just like the rest of us. The article "IMF Refuses Aid to Venezuela in the Midst of the Coronavirus Crisis" by Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada, Ana Maldonado, And Zoe Pc notes that the IMF has refused any aid to Venezuela, out of hand, concluding that "the IMF denial of the $5 billion request from Venezuela [...] is a violation of the spirit of international cooperation that is at the heart of the UN Charter." Hopefully, the U.S. death grip on global foreign policy will relax when its health-care chickens come home to roost. Obviously, I hope that the U.S. gets it together enough to protect its citizens -- those citizens include most of my family -- but it does not look good right now. At any rate, perhaps COVID will distract America enough that it can no longer browbeat the world into allowing it to put its boot on the next of Iran, Russian, and Venezuela. Maybe the Saudis will even stop killing all the Yemenis, who've been dealing with a 10x COVID-style disaster to their health and economy for over five years. [Depression or recession? Neither.] Economically, there is no point of talking about a depression vs. a recession. The face of the world will have changed when we all creep back out of our cubbyholes. At least, I hope it will have. I hope that people will perhaps have realized that the things they'd been taught to chase and want didn't matter that much, in the end. They made do for months without them. Are some habits broken? I think they might be. A revolutionary moment -- and opportunity -- is coming. We must be brave enough to seize it, to not squander it with petty squabbling over material goods engendered by the exact same class that got us all to fight in the prior world, the world before COVID. People will have become accustomed to what were intended as emergency measures. They will not understand why it was possible to provide such measures temporarily, but not permanently. Politicians will be stuck trying to come up with a convincing answer -- because there is none. The former world was a Ponzi scheme designed to given them as much as possible from most of the people while giving them as little as possible while still avoiding outright revolt. It was a complex construction. It is gone. Perhaps something very similar will replace it. God knows that our lords and masters will do their damnedest to put us back in our cages, to get us back to work producting excess value that they will hoover up and hoard for themselves, like beady-eyed, unthinking Smaugs. But COVID will have taught many that the "minimum" that they can expect to be provided to them is much higher than they'd previously thought. For a brief moment in time, COVID, in role of Toto from The Wizard of Oz, has pulled back the curtain, to reveal the mean, penny-pinching and avarice-filled people behind it. [6] The genie is out of the bottle and the world of "acceptable" politics will (hopefully) have drastically shifted. At the very least, we can hope that austerity in Europe will have been consigned to the dustbin of history. The myths we'd all been taught to believe that there wasn't enough money for certain things will have turned out to have been false. What was always missing was political will. When the chips were down, some governments responding correctly and others will be judged harshly for their failure to respond -- first and foremost, with many, many more victims than need have been. [A Long Weekend] Norway and Denmark have announced plans with which they will keep businesses and people from being unduly impacted by this. That is, if there is pain to dole out, then everyone should get impacted equally. But no-one should lose their job or income or apartment for what is, after all, a temporary stop of the economy. Think of it as a very long weekend. You wouldn't fire someone for not showing up on Good Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Easter Monday, would you? Of course not; that makes no sense. Do you not pay them? Of course you do. It's the weekend; it's a holiday. They'll be back on Monday. Your business was closed anyway. So why would you have to fire anyone when the entire economy is taking a very long weekend? It will be back, in one form or another. There will be the metaphorical Monday at some point. At that point, those businesses will pick back up where they left off. Those people will be able to do their jobs again. You can't just ask people to stay home for the common good and then let them lose everything. The Swiss government has also said that they will make sure no-one is unduly harmed. They will announce their plan soon for how they will handle it. I suspect it will look a lot like the Danish and Norwegian plans. [A People's Shock Doctrine] I'm hoping fervently that this time we the people can take advantage of a shock to force through a change that benefits all. I hope that we can use the facts on the ground of global crisis to once-and-for-all prove that the world we had, the economy we had, the inequality we had was not only never necessary but was utterly inadequate for anything but the so-called happy path. The perfectly humming machine working exactly as the architects intended -- as unfair as it was for the 99.9%, it worked spectacularly well for the 0.1% -- shattered catastrophically at COVID, dumping everyone off. Maybe we can grab the reins and tell the former masters of the universe to sit down and shut up while the grownups do stuff. Scientists and statisticians and medical staff should rule the day. Tomorrow, in Switzerland, at 12:30, we're all supposed to go outside, on our terraces, and applaud for the medical staff of the country for one full minute. It sounds silly if you're still part of the jaded, old world but it's a small sign that there's a chance that the new world that is emerging may have its priorities much straighter than before. As Chuck Mertz said on "Only accumulating: We are trapped in the imperial infrastructure of coal." on March 18th, "Let's be honest with ourselves: we all might have [COVID]. But it is in this time that something wonderful might happen. As we tear ourselves away from each other and self-quarantine, now, with so much time on our hands and so little work to do, let's pull together while separated. Let's get together communally, virtually and start imagining what the world will be like when we'll finally be able to reenter it. What is the next world we want after this one? Because this one is done. "You know the wealthy and their fascist friends are already considering their new future for us and it will not be pretty." [So what's the strategy?] Predicting an endgame is useless at this stage. We don't know when or even if there will be a vaccine. We're in completely uncharted territory. No-one alive has ever seen anything like this. The confluence of so many people, in such an advanced civilization -- one capable not only of spreading a virus very efficiently with global links, but also one capable of keeping an economy going via remote-learning and remote work, and also potentially capable of designing and producing a vaccine within a reasonable time frame -- is new. I agree with the article "Coronalinks 3/19/20" by Scott Alexander , "[...] this might look like titrating quarantine levels – locking everything down, then trying to unlock it just enough to use available medical capacity, then locking things down more again if it looked like the number of cases was starting to get out of hand. This would eventually develop herd immunity without overwhelming the medical system. A paper yesterday out of Imperial College London (discussed here) said the same thing, arguing for alternating periods of higher and lower quarantine levels based on how the medical system was doing." This is also what I've heard discussed by the excellent podcast series, "Coronavirus-Update" by Christian Drosten , which is in German and has a podcast for every day since the beginning of March 2020. However, there are so many people that it would take nearly forever to apply this strategy. The thing is: we may not have a choice. As long as there's no vaccine, we can only build up immunity naturally -- by getting the disease and hoping we recover from it. Some of us will not. A number of us that was heretofore considered unacceptably high. But there's nothing for it. Mother Nature is in the driver's seat for the first time in a long time. And she don't give a fuck if you have to pee. So, we're just buying time, flattening the curve (as discussed above), until we get a vaccine. What if we never do? The shape of humanity changes considerably. But it was going to do that anyway -- and relatively soon -- because of climate change. COVID is just much more sudden and brings our precariousness into much sharper focus. The changes we saw coming due to climate change are here, now, upending our economy and our society, much sooner than some of us expected. [7] We're going to be living with COVID for a long time, There are some who say that the recurring strains of flu -- and the accompanying millions of illnesses and tens of thousands of deaths -- are all descended from the 1918 strain that killed 40--50 million people. COVID may simply become a recurring thing for us as well. We can hope for a vaccine, but it won't come quickly enough that we won't need an interim plan right now. Keeping the economy on a simmer and basically using our medical services to "titrate" the population through the illness to immunity is maybe the best chance we have until we think of something better. There is no other way that isn't even more disastrous. Just "ripping the bandaid off" (as the UK suggested) would generate a pile of corpses like the world has never seen. So, we're stuck with it, regardless. There is no quick and easy way to "grow" our way out of this. I'm personally holding out hope that COVID will force us to structure our societies -- and their economies -- in more sensible, resilient and robust ways. The practice will certainly come in handy when we finally feel like dealing with climate change like adults. [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] SRF is Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (Swiss Radio and Television). [1] Overheard in another SRF1 discussion; translated from German. [1] Obviously, I'm looking at you, United States of America. [1] The FDP in the Swiss Bundesrat Guy Parmelin was forced to announce hideously large sums of emergency funds to bail out all sorts of small-to-medium businesses. [1] It's free and amazing. For the love of all that is holy, just read it. It's never been a more appropriate time. You've never had more time on your hands. [1] Ok, let's be honest: it's mostly men. A handful of men who think that the world owes them something because they were born on third and think that they hit a triple. [1] I thought I'd be able to shuffle off this mortal coil before things got too hairy, but here we are. [1] The drop in worldwide, superfluous economic activity is definitely a welcome boost for the efforts to combat climate change. If nothing else, we might see a reduction in CO₂ PPM after the first six weeks of European and American lockdown. Dare to dream. The article "COVID-19 reduces economic activity, which reduces pollution, which saves lives." makes an interesting point that the reduction in economic activity (and its accompanying pollution) due to COVID means that it has actually saved 50,000 lives so far. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3909 2020-02-23T12:23:27+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is an extremely lucid and accurate summary of the 2016 and upcoming 2020 U.S. Presidential elections. Reid is an excellent and entertaining writer. [1] The overall thrust is to present what she terms "conspiracy-theory-like"... ]]>

is an extremely lucid and accurate summary of the 2016 and upcoming 2020 U.S. Presidential elections. Reid is an excellent and entertaining writer. [1] The overall thrust is to present what she terms "conspiracy-theory-like" histories of the 2016 election, extrapolating to the 2020 election, which stars many of the same characters (e.g. Bernie and Trump). She starts with a warning that history isn't fact and that entertaining so-called conspiracy theories isn't any worse than just believing conventional wisdom: one must consider all sources with healthy skepticism. As she puts it: "The reality is that history in and of itself is not black and white science. At its most accurate it is a collection of narratives, different perspectives from the ground floor that could easily be described as conspiracy theories. What appears to be a conspiracy theory from Arlington or Manhattan, looks a lot more like bad memories from Hiroshima or Tuskegee. Any true revisionist historian must become a collector of conspiracy theories, viewing all available narratives with a healthy grain of salt." The problem domain is as follows: * The U.S. has two political parties from which to choose the next president. * There is literally no chance that anyone not from either of those parties will be elected president. * Donald Trump won the election against pretty much all odds. * He will win again unless the Democrats figure out how to beat him. * That is: the Democratic Party is the only hope of not having Trump as president * The Democrats believe differ with the Republicans on relatively meaningless social issues. [2] * The Democrats care more about being the "nice" party. * How will they pretend to be the nice party without accidentally electing someone who threatens their core beliefs (which are not nice at all)? * How will they continue to serve their corporate interests while not electing someone worse than Trump? [3] As Reid puts it: "How can an insider’s insider with such impeccable credentials like Hillary Clinton fall so devastatingly short to an irate babbling imbecile from the tabloid gutter of the 1%? [The Democrats] still haven’t figured it out and they know it, and they know that victory will elude them until they do." Though Reid's version is a far-more entertaining read, I will summarize her history of 2016: Hillary used Bernie to defray a burgeoning socialism over which she would have no control, essentially using him as a sheepherder, a role he was willing to play as long as he could get his message out (knowing -- or thinking he knew -- that he had no chance at nomination or election). This tacit alliance would turn out to be much more advantageous to Clinton than Bernie, whose power only grew throughout the campaign, but who was then helpless to go back on his word because he is a man of principle (something Clinton was counting on, although she couldn't understand it at all). Hillary also used Trump to destroy the Republican opposition, thinking him far too foolish to have legs in the long run. This, too, blew up on her, as she'd vastly underestimated the frustration and foolhardiness of the general populace. Having had no real contact with anyone who isn't a millionaire in decades, this wasn't too surprising. According to Reid, these two best-laid plans of Hillary blew up: "And so Hillary found herself married to the task of sabotaging her own puppet’s primaries, while the upheaval on the right that her backers fostered with round the clock coverage became equally unruly." Enter the third conspiracy theory: Russiagate. At the same time the most ridiculous of the three theories (Reid's first two, her own, seem to be just a recounting of facts) and also the one that's now part of accepted history (e.g. canon). This would have less influence on the 2016 election and more on the history leading up to the 2020 election. It's no surprise that this one blew up as well, although it seems to live on with 9-11-conspiracy-like persistence as "accepted truth" in very powerful and influential circles. Which takes us to 2020, where we watch the Democratic party pumping the brakes on Bernie again because he's out of their control and speaks against 95% of their platform. They're deliberately sabotaging the only candidate who would wipe the floor with Trump, muddling the results in Iowa and New Hampshire, but then losing all control in Nevada, where Bernie was irrepressible. At some point, they're going to have to unmask and just fuck him six ways to Sunday in a way that will be ten times more obvious than what they did to him in 2016. This will kill any remaining credibility for the Democratic party (this time, among a significantly large populace), even without considering the slim pickings amongst the rest of the candidates. They're all severely compromised as far as providing the challenge to the status quo needed to get the U.S. out of its oligarchic rut and into the coterie of countries that both cares for its citizens and also has any viability for addressing the oncoming/ongoing climate catastrophe. I'll leave the last word to Reid: "These imbeciles appear to have every intention of repeating their 2016 tricks to put Biden or, god forbid, Bloomberg in the nomination, which will only accomplish another seemingly impossible catastrophe [4] that they’ll no doubt blame on god knows who. Putin? Assad? Tulsi? Santa? Anyone but the only people who can possibly make Trump a two-term president, themselves." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Though with a weakness for mis-spelling homophones (e.g. "coarse" instead of "course"), which doesn't detract from the overall writing since the power of her essays overcomes any doubt that she might know what she's talking about engendered by the spelling and punctuation mistakes (of which there were far fewer in this essay than usual, which leads me to believe that she finally coerced a colleague into redactorial duties). [1] That is, they agree on perpetual war, a centralized capitalism with socialism for the rich and powerful, with a burgeoning inequality, low taxes, large military, American hegemony, a jingoistic belligerence. They differ on birth control and gay marriage and so on. [1] E.g. Biden and Bloomberg are policy-wise just as bad, if not as obviously personally grotesque while Warren shows all evidence of being another Obama: a token minority who will effect no change whatsoever where it matters and it's an utter mystery why anyone should even be talking about corporate shill Buttigieg at all. [1] Viz. making Donald J. Trump a two-term president. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3891 2020-01-19T22:32:02+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

is well-worth a listen [1]. Both Chuck Mertz (the host) and Daniel express themselves well. Here's one thought from Daniel about the pervasiveness of both overt and implicit racism, from about 50 minutes into the podcast: "I think it's a typical" ... ]]>

is well-worth a listen [1]. Both Chuck Mertz (the host) and Daniel express themselves well. Here's one thought from Daniel about the pervasiveness of both overt and implicit racism, from about 50 minutes into the podcast: "I think it's a typical failing of liberal analyses to define racism as bad thoughts in people's heads. This is why liberal elites in wealthy suburbs whose entire lives are organized around providing segregated, wealthy, white schools for their own children, can then look to a place like West Virginia as the actual font of racism in this country. "Even though working-class people in places like that, regardless of the racist beliefs in their heads, have limited power to enact the racism. So, what liberals miss, is that racism at its core involves systems of power and domination. And those are systems and structures, of mass incarceration, mass deportation, border militarization, that liberals -- from Bill Clinton on -- have played a profound role in constructing." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] As are, quite frankly, almost all of the interviews on this well-established and intelligent show that's been around since 1996. I've been a supporter for over a dozen years. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3848 2019-11-19T21:43:18+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

makes good points that are summarized in the title. It also cites very specific numbers for war dead on the U.S. side in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. "VA data reveals that almost two Afghan and Iraq veterans die" ... ]]>

makes good points that are summarized in the title. It also cites very specific numbers for war dead on the U.S. side in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. "VA data reveals that almost two Afghan and Iraq veterans die by suicide each day on average. That adds to an estimated 7,300 veterans who have killed themselves since just 2009, after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, a number greater than the 7,012 service members killed in those wars since 2001." This bookkeeping will age very poorly. The numbers pale in comparison to the suffering and death inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. [1] The precision is especially galling when one considers how vague and hand-wavy the number of war-dead in the invaded countries is ( "about a million" in Iraq with no accounting of the millions of lives ruined as IDPs [2]). There are other things wrong with the numbers of U.S. war dead: they're far too low, of course. The U.S. does its level best to lie about the impact of its imperial wars -- on both sides. If a soldier can be transported alive out of Afghanistan or Iraq, but then succumbs in Rammstein, then they don't count as having died in a war theater. If their lives are completely incapacitated by injury, then they don't show up in any official statistics. The heart has to stop beating to be noted. Jackson's article is about hearts that stop beating by their own hand: veteran suicides. Veterans of just the Iraq and Afghanistan wars kill themselves 20 times per day, with the suicide-prevention hotline established in 2007 preventing an average of 30 more per day. "Hoh, wisely in my view, offers a broader explanation: that veterans suffer from a moral injury — a shock to their own sense of themselves, their basic moral values from what they have done or have not done in combat: The killing of the enemy, the failure to save the life of a comrade, the mistaken shooting of the innocent. "Thou shalt not kill is a basic precept of all religions. "In war, the state gives soldiers the mandate to kill. The military has perfected ways of conditioning young men and women to be able to kill in combat. "Yet, Hoh argues, the conditioning does not prevent some from seeing themselves in the enemy, from feeling deeply the violation that comes from violence." I suppose it's somewhat reassuring that at least those directly involved in the combat -- those that confronted the so-called "enemy" dead-on -- are still capable of empathy, of feeling guilt at what they took part in. Those who sent them do not. Those who sit idly by, mouthing military and jingoistic platitudes, do not. Over 50% of discretionary [3] spending goes to these wars; the U.S. actively funds them with its taxes and never raises a stern word. Quite the opposite: raucous and nigh-unanimous support for every coup, every insurgency, every invasion, every belligerence is heard from the people, its politicians and the media. I suppose if those people can't be brought to care about the wholesale and utterly purposeless [4] slaughter of others, then perhaps Jackson can awake enough pity for U.S. veterans to get people to stop war? It seems quite roundabout, but might be the only thing that even has a prayer of working. Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of people in the U.S. even know veterans, much less are veterans -- and they have no power whatsoever. [5] Of note as well is how Jackson is forced to express himself in order to be heard at all. [6] In the passage below, he fails to even mention that the fallen soldiers of the other side -- or even the countless innocent civilians callously designated "collateral damage" by U.S. military statistics. "War is hell. It is hell for those who fall in combat — and for their families and friends suffering their loss. It is hell for those who survive it — and for their families and friends dealing with their struggles on return." He only mentions U.S. soldiers, veterans and their friends and families. I don't fault him for it: I'm sure an initial draft had a few extra lines. But he probably cut them in the hope that his essay would gain a bit of a wider reach in a hostile intellectual [7] landscape where any morality that appeals to sympathy for our murder victims is considered tantamount to sleeping with the enemy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Also, we'll retain this arbitrary starting point from the article. U.S. malevolence stretches back decades further in both countries. Also in other countries, like Vietnam or Cambodia, where the official numbers are also scandalously vague. [1] Internally Displaced Persons [1] In case it's not clear, that means that this is the money that is "available for use as needed or desired". It's like the money you use to go to the movies or on vacation. This is what America does for fun, after all the bills are paid. [1] It wouldn't be justified if there was a purpose, but it's often so diffuse. It's supposed to make some people rich, I suppose, but that's no purpose at all. The purpose is to extend the reach of an empire that's denied to exist. It's like Derrida or Kafka is Secretary of State. [1] Neither does Jackson, for that matter, who the media has routinely pigeonholed as an ineffective whiner to silence his opinions over the decades. [1] It's Jesse Jackson, so the press has been ignoring him as a wild-eyed negro radical since his run for president so many decades ago. [1] If it can be deemed that. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3849 2019-11-19T18:01:42+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

briefly outlines Jimmy Wales's new social network for sharing news, which "[...] will empower you to make your own choices about what content you are served, and to directly edit misleading headlines, or flag problem posts." The... ]]>

briefly outlines Jimmy Wales's new social network for sharing news, which "[...] will empower you to make your own choices about what content you are served, and to directly edit misleading headlines, or flag problem posts." The article doesn't contain nearly enough information to determine whether it has a hope of succeeding -- or how it differs from RSS newsfeeds -- though it mentions that it's a subscription model. At the end, they include an utterly fatuous and vacuous blurb from some twit who probably doesn't even exist, but whose name was invented to make it seem like the pablum she expressed as an opinion came from a human being rather than having likely been generated by an algorithm to enforce the groupthink required to keep people in line. She is cited as saying, "[...] people are so used to having news at their fingertips for free." They truly are used to that, yes. They are used to news being free. Just a few short decades ago, they were not. But now they are. People realized that they didn't value news for its content, but for their ability to partake in discussions about it. If you didn't read the news, you were caught flat-footed all the time. But if you were at least aware of the headlines, there was no opinion so stupid that you'd be caught out by other idiots who were also only reading headlines. Even the articles, were you to read them, were fatuous, nearly fact-free and only promulgated the myths required by the powers-that-be to keep their iron-fisted control. Hell, most of it has been corporate, government and military press releases for decades if not half a century. So the people were right in determining that, for the value they were getting -- and for the value they themselves required of it -- it didn't really matter what was in it. So, the cheaper the better. Free was the best because you just got access to everything -- everything that's allowed -- without having to really try at all and without having to pay anything. In fact, you didn't even have to seek it out or really read it: a lot of it is now read to you via podcasts and news clips, all free. Perfect. Naturally, in all of of this, the actual goal of becoming informed fell by the wayside long ago, in favor of being part of the conversation and, most importantly, being right. It's sort of as if people didn't buy a car to actually go anywhere, but just to have a car in their driveway. With those requirements, who would pay $80,000 for a nice ride? Just get the cheapest piece of shit that looks like a car and be done with it. If it's free, so much the better. But if the car actually needs to serve its real function, then, all of a sudden, you're probably gonna wanna pay some money for it. It's the same thing with news. As long as you don't care what you put in your head, the cheaper the better. If you actually care about being informed, then you are placing value on information, which, all of a sudden, costs money. If you're just going to read an advertising circular -- which, if we're being honest, is what Facebook and Google News are -- and call it a newspaper, then you're more than equipped for the water cooler the next day, but only to talk to all the other idiots with the same low standards. Lucky you for you, y'all are legion. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3827 2019-10-23T22:34:03+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

: "Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later. The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern. [1]" We don't even have to pretend that this is anything but the resurrection of the Star Chamber. [2] Assange, a journalist, is being punished for having been a journalist. The mainstream media profited from years from his work. No-one is lining up to help him now -- nor did they do so over the last seven years. He is an Australian citizen -- it is not surprising to see his home country abandon him to the wolves of American and England, two allies of his home country. Assange is being publicly punished to keep everyone else's mouth shut. I only hope it doesn't work. I only wish he could get away, escape like Edward Snowden did. It may be too late anyway, with his mind perhaps irreparably gone. [3] It's a fucking tragedy. Do not forget that this is how the purportedly enlightened west runs things. It's a valuable lesson, if nothing else. They are a mafia. They have always been a mafia. The rule of the jungle is the only rule. The strongest wins. Everyone else toes the line and pays fealty. We are in a giant prison and the only way to win is to avoid being anyone's bitch. You have no chance at real freedom in a system like this. Something fundamental has to change before we can be truly free. The system is broken. With all the talk of nonviolent protest to change the power balance, to unseat the elites, it raises the question if it's really possible to change anything without revolution. Physical violence will not win the day -- the west has made sure to corner the market on that. But its stranglehold can only be broken with violence -- perhaps of another kind, perhaps more like the kind they exert on us every day as they guide every second of our lives to ensure they generate maximum profits and don't upset the apple cart. You can't negotiate with terrorists like that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The full article is quite informative. It details how "The US government was dictating its instructions to Lewis, who was relaying those instructions to Baraitser, who was ruling them as her legal decision." England has absolutely no backbone. It also notes that extradition does not apply between the UK and US when the "offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense." "Assange’s defense team objected strenuously to the move to Belmarsh, in particular on the grounds that there are no conference rooms available there to consult their client and they have very inadequate access to him in the jail. Baraitser dismissed their objection offhand and with a very definite smirk." [1] He was only allowed to make one statement and, other than some "confused and incoherent" statements, he was able to pull himself together to say: "I do not understand how this process is equitable. This superpower had 10 years to prepare for this case and I can’t even access my writings. It is very difficult, where I am, to do anything. These people have unlimited resources." Murray went on to describe the courtroom: "What we had was a naked demonstration of the power of the state, and a naked dictation of proceedings by the Americans. Julian was in a box behind bulletproof glass, and I and the thirty odd other members of the public who had squeezed in were in a different box behind more bulletproof glass. I do not know if he could see me or his other friends in the court, or if he was capable of recognizing anybody. He gave no indication that he did." ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3741 2019-05-19T17:18:20+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

"We defend anyone accused of a crime. We do not refuse representation because the defendant is too wealthy, his crime too awful, his skin color too pale or his genitals too stiff. We couldn’t care less that the woke have deemed him too guilty to be worthy. We do" ... ]]>

"We defend anyone accused of a crime. We do not refuse representation because the defendant is too wealthy, his crime too awful, his skin color too pale or his genitals too stiff. We couldn’t care less that the woke have deemed him too guilty to be worthy. We do not judge. That’s for the jury to do. We defend. "The notion that criminal defense lawyers should become the advanced guard of morality and justice is one that appeals to those for whom such vagaries protect their feelings from dispute. They can afford to take refuge in their preconceived outcomes, as it allows them to pretend their feelings are always justified. That’s fine, if that’s the way you want to live your life. Criminal defense lawyers, however, have chosen to live their lives in a way the puts the Constitution first, puts a duty to challenge the government and its complainants to prove their case first." A person is free to judge someone without a trial of evidence. It may not be morally tenable, but it's neither illegal nor does it go against any oaths they've taken to upload the law. A criminal-defense lawyer, on the other hand, has an obligation to provide a defense for a client. Their job is not to judge whether that person is guilty or innocent, but to make sure that their case is processed according to the law, that they get a fair trial during which it is determined whether they actually did what it is that they are accused of having done. A lawyer is free to choose not to take a case because they feel the subject matter or the defendant is too odious. However, the system requires that someone take those cases. And it will not do to judge that person as "evil" for even trying to "defend" such a "criminal". The accused's criminality hasn't even been established. How can it be bad to provide a defense for someone? Society cannot work this way, not in the long term. I think the reason people feel that they can feel this way is that they no longer believe that the justice system is necessary to adjudicate cases. They already know who's innocent and guilty and they already know the crimes. They are working with a fantasy world, a notion of society and law that runs parallel to the real-world one. Evidence is no longer a necessary component to conviction. Neither are trials. Media trial and hearsay from trusted sources -- fellow travelers -- are sufficient. "I believe survivors". Greenfield's article was written in response to recent news that Harvard had capitulated to student demands that a professor of 30 years have his duties rescinded or drastically reduced because he was part of the legal-defense team for Harvey Weinstein. Given Weinstein's obvious guilt and him being literally Hitler, such an association is inexcusable and does incalculable harm to psyches everywhere. These students are the next generation of lawyers, God help us. Greenfield followed up with a little story about life on campus, called "Seaton: Woke Teachers Wonder Where Things Went Wrong" by Scott H. Greenfield . A sampling of a discussion between professors of the near future: Another [professor] looked nervously out a window before adding, “It would’ve been nice if we didn’t have to write a statement each year affirming diversity and inclusion in our classrooms. What the hell does diversity and inclusion have to do with physics?” “How in the world is teaching Plato racist?” a worried voice cried from another corner of the room. “I try teaching the Allegory of the Cave, and I get shouted down because it doesn’t adequately depict the lived experiences of people of color? What the hell does that even mean?” “And the pronoun nonsense!” exclaimed another academic. “We try to be nice and call them what they want, but one of those little shits has me calling him ‘Your Highness’ when I call on him in class.” I particularly like the last one: what is to prevent someone -- a young, cynical whippersnapper -- from choosing a word as his/her/its/zer/their personal pronoun that doesn't come from the previously used set? If gender no longer limits pronouns, then are there any limits? Zer is a new word and that's used. What about "schlong"? Or "Trump"? If all gloves are off, then all gloves are off, nö? If you can't interfere with someone's lived experience and interpretations of certain phonemes, then you can't impose your own interpretation of those sounds, either. Sure, the entire rest of the English-speaking world thinks that "schlong" and "Trump" are not personal pronouns, but that isn't allowed to matter, is it? Or is this not about equality of expression, after all? ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3729 2019-04-14T22:32:44+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. Or you can check out the video below for a purportedly satirical but actually totally accurate, 2-minute summary of the situation. [media] [Mindless Kowtowing to Power] It's a testament to western brainwashing that "killing Assange", possibly "with drones" was chirpily bandied about in the press. Hillary as a candidate thought it was a grand idea. So did John McCain. No-one suffered any reprisal for making threats against a journalist/publisher's life. Australia's lack of effort on behalf of its own citizen is not unexpected for a criminal, racist and kowtowing state. Britain's role is the same as Australia's, licking its own spittle from America's shit-stained boots. It is utterly unsurprising that they both assist the U.S. in prosecuting a publisher for publishing. Especially in the U.S., where the media is desperately searching for a way to keep up its completely parallel and fantastical narrative called "Russiagate". Assange and Wikileaks are on the hook, of course, for helping Russia and Trump steal the presidency. Getting "justice" against Assange will go a long way in cementing this storyline as the main timeline in America, forever. The rulers of the world are slavering to establish a precedent and cow other journalists and publishers. The freedom-of-the-press train left the station a long time ago in those major English-speaking countries. They are all a media and journalism wasteland. [3] It is utterly unsurprising that they want to help "disappear" someone who's not only showing how criminal the major world governments are, but also how inept and gutless the major media are, as well. The press has been telling the western world for years that Wikileaks is borderline, if not outright, criminal. They couldn't care less about the truth. They just don't like to be upstaged. It loses them money. They've put considerable effort into getting public opinion squarely against Assange and Wikileaks -- just as their ruling class would have it. The media is composed not of journalists, but elites whose interests are just as threatened by a world made more open and equal by Wikileaks truth-telling. [image]Instead, the media celebrate their own immolation with stories trumpeting utter falsehoods -- or they celebrate billionaires and giant corporations or anti-Russian propaganda, drumming up support for the next military action/war against a bunch of hapless people, or drumming up hatred against the refugees generated by the last umpteen such wars. The article "The Next Woodward and Bernstein Could Go to Jail" by Branko Marcetic comes to the same conclusion: "The issue here is that, once he is extradited, the Trump administration may well end up achieving one of the national security state’s most cherished, long-held goals: restricting the publication of classified information by using a widely hated figure to set a precedent." The article "After 7 Years of Deceptions About Assange, the US Readies for its First Media Rendition" by Jonathan Cook concurs, "For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and “experts” telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a “mainstream” voice was raised in his defense in all that time. "From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of WikiLeaks– a digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record." [Assange's Supporters are Legion] It's not just my opinion, either. Luminaries who've never been on the wrong side of history, such as Edward Snowden, Yanis Varoufakis, Glenn Greenwald, Srecko Horvat (of DiEM25) and Noam Chomsky in the video below (22m). [media] John Pilger, a fellow Australian write poignantly in the article "The Assange Arrest is a Warning from History" by John Pilger , "The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years. "That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention." Of what is Assange guilty? He spoke truth to power and he did it in a way that could not be stopped. He leveraged the power of the Internet to fight against the masters of the world. He did this secretly and diligently and cleanly and correctly. He and his organization don't profit from the news -- unlike the major news organizations who cross-publish their material and then stab Wikileaks in the back at every opportunity. No-one is saying that what Wikileaks has published is untrue -- just that they shouldn't be allowed to publish it. The dirty secrets about how the world works should remain secret. States like the U.S. and Britain consider Wikileaks and its ilk to be their gravest threat, outshining Isis or even Russia, believe it or not. [4] "These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the expose of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It all available on the WikiLeaks site." This why they are after him. This is why he must pay. This is why he must suffer. This is why he must be stopped. This is why of him must be made an example, a warning to others. Keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. Do not tell the subjugated about their chains. Do not pull back that curtain. To hell with the lot of them. We should rise up and tell them that this must end, now. But they'll probably get away with it. Again. Like they always do. Poor Assange. He'd hoped to launch a revolution and ends as so many others, in a slow-motion immolation, crushed by the slow gears of the state. His whitened, wizened head will be a fading memory within a few weeks. And no-one will know where he is or what became of him. And it will, somehow, all be legal. And no-one will be made to stand trial. And there will continue to be no justice. I hope I'm proven wrong. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The article "Cascading Cat Litter" by James Howard Kunstler muses that the U.S. may end up "disappearing" a Nobel-prize winner, ending with a lovely summary (emphasized below). "The US supposedly reserves the authority to lob additional charges at Mr. Assange, though they may face a lengthy extradition battle with his attorneys to lever him out of the UK and into US custody. In the meantime, Mr. Assange may receive a Nobel Prize as a symbol of a lone conscience standing up against the despotic deceits of the world’s deep states. Wouldn’t that gum up the works nicely? I’d like to see The New York Times’s front page headline on that story: Russian Colluder Wins Nobel Prize, Put on Trial in Federal Court. By then, the United States of America will be so completely gaslighted that it will pulsate in the darkness like a death star about to explode." [1] According to "Useful Idiots on Parade" by James Howard Kunstler , "Ecuador was promised debt relief from the US-controlled International Monetary Fund within hours of expelling Mr. Assange." [1] Surprisingly enough, people like Tucker Carlson of Fox News are somehow getting the story straight on Assange. See the video "Tucker Carlson Defends Assange. Huh?" by Jimmy Dore [1] Pilger writes, " A decade ago, the Ministry of Defence in London produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat. "The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it. “We had no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.” (Emphasis added.)" Contrast this with how the rest of the media functions, in the main, as detailed in the article "The Next Woodward and Bernstein Could Go to Jail" by Branko Marcetic , "Mother Jones‘s David Corn, who was earlier revealed to have given the now discredited Steele Dossier to the FBI in an effort to take down Trump, spent yesterday helpfully delineating between what is officially acceptable journalism and what isn’t. “Do not help sources break the law to obtain information,” he advised. “However, you can publish info that is brought to you.” Remember, journalism is simply publishing whatever secret information the government deems fit to reveal to you. (Emphasis added.)" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3718 2019-04-07T23:09:08+02:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

includes a link to a body-cam video of the shooting of Willie McCoy. McCoy was found asleep in the driver's seat of his car in the drive-thru lane of a Taco Bell. The police could clearly see a gun in his lap. [media] The first three minutes are largely uneventful. The... ]]>

includes a link to a body-cam video of the shooting of Willie McCoy. McCoy was found asleep in the driver's seat of his car in the drive-thru lane of a Taco Bell. The police could clearly see a gun in his lap. [media] The first three minutes are largely uneventful. The officer notes that the magazine is not in the pistol, so the driver has at most one shot. When he moves, McCoy's first scratches his left arm with his right hand, as he seems to be waking up. The officer notes that he's not awake yet. Seconds later, McCoy begins to sit up, the officers yell and shoot dozens of times, nearly immediately. The article by Greenfield is quite weak, as compared to other he's written. He's extremely defensive about the point that it's unlikely to be a case that ends in criminal investigation of the officers involved. He's almost certainly right. He's a lawyer, and a well-informed and experienced one, at that. He probably knows. But he jumps down the throat of anyone in his comments section who mentions anything other than what he'd already posted. [1] That aside, though, it's probably true that these officers will not even get an official reprimand for their behavior. It was all above-board. They followed procedure. It was an odd situation. There was the danger that the man would wake, grab his gun and shoot. The officers knew that he would be able to shoot at most once, should he choose to do so. By shining a light into his car, and standing with guns drawn as close as they could get to the vehicle, they didn't seem to try to avoid the confrontation. It's unclear what they were thinking. The whole situation seems to have been handled incompetently. They seemed to have all the time in the world. McCoy only awoke because of their noise and the bright flashlights shining into his vehicle. If they were afraid that he was going to drive away, they could have immobilized his vehicle (a boot?), then awakened him from a distance -- perhaps with a megaphone. instead, the officers used their weapons recklessly, putting themselves into a dangerous situation of their own creation. They were obviously terrified of this rapacious creature in the form of a "sleeping black man". The dude was clearly asleep. His head was all lolled back on the seat. He posed no danger to anyone. Until, of course, he awakened, startled, disoriented, with lights pointing at his face, blinding him and several completely hidden men shouting at him at the top of their lungs. He had at most a couple of seconds to process the situation, coming directly from sleep and into an adrenalin spurt. Did he know that these men were police officers? How could he? Is it likely he thought his life was in danger? Of course. It was. He had no idea what was going on and was never given a chance to find out. The officers performed their perfunctory duty of informing him of their presence. Whether he had a chance of understanding them isn't salient. When he failed to sit stock-still -- not that that would have helped, they were on a hair trigger and terrified -- they shot him with what sounded like dozens of bullets. The article and commentary treats this situation as a sad outcome of perfectly normal policing. But it's not normal. It's grossly incompetent. They provoked the killing with their utter lack of training for defusing a situation. Everything they did escalated the situation, funneling it to the inevitable death of the "suspect". Greenfield says as much, as well. He just follows up with his well-informed opinion that what happened is not punishable in the States. I don't see a lot of difference between this shooting and the police kicking the door down in a 4AM, no-knock raid, only to shoot anyone in the domicile who responds in a perfectly normal manner when their home is invaded: to defend it, possibly with a weapon they have every right to use to defend their home. It didn't have to go down that way. It's not premeditated and I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know which charge would stick. As I was reading the description and watching the video, I thought to myself that, while pretty much accepted as an "it happens" kind of thing in the States, this isn't an acceptable outcome in most other civilized countries that are not currently war zones. In Switzerland, this would never have happened. It's inconceivable. It would never have gotten this far. The police are far better-trained and don't provoke violence so blatantly. It it were to happen, it would be a national scandal and these officers would be fired for gross negligence and incompetence, at the very least. It's unlikely that most people would think that nothing could be done to punish the cops (from desk duty to leave of absence to dismissal to prosecution). Greenfield writes "but stupid isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) a capital offense", which is exactly the right point. I mean, falling asleep in a Taco Bell Drive-in with a gun in your lap while black in America is stupid. Who the hell knows though? Maybe the guy was narcoleptic? Maybe someone drugged his drink? Or his food? Maybe someone set him up and then called the cops in a new take on swatting? It's a bit roundabout, but kind-of reliable way of taking care of a rival, no? And maybe this wasn't even the intention -- maybe someone was just fucking with McCoy and playing a prank on him. Maybe he took an antihistamine that didn't agree with him. Maybe he was super-high or drunk when he got a craving for Taco Bell. In another comment, though, Greenfield writes very belligerently and impatiently, "There are two “real life” issues coming out of this. First, should the cops be criminally charged for the killing? Second, should the cops (or, in real life, the municipality that employs or insures them) be liable in damages for the wrongful death? Sad feelz aside, if neither of these fits the bill, then what is the point?" There are no sad feelz, you dumbass. It's just that this seems quite flagrant and people are trying to think of ways of preventing it from happening again. Flagrant seems kind of tame to describe "the police shot someone in his sleep". Maybe the answer is "make Americans stop being so fucking hateful and stressed and hair-trigger and innately afraid of people who don't look like them and also stop making the worst people in society cops and then not training them barely at all". Maybe America is too broken to fix, because police can do this kind of thing and have their own conscience to deal with, but no desk duty or restriction in pay or loss of job or jail time. I have no reason to think that the cops killed McCoy on purpose. It's definitely not murder, and almost certainly not premeditated. Rather, a combination of terror, indoctrination, incompetence, self-preservation at all costs (as if that was the point of the job, as if it were a war zone), lack of empathy and just plain low intelligence and meanness made McCoy's death a foregone conclusion. This is not an isolated incident, but yet another example of how policing works in America. Yet another example of how America works. There are a million reasons this happened and none of them is individually insurmountable -- but taken together? Maybe America just needs a giant fucking mulligan. That country is a menace not only to the whole world, but increasingly to its citizens. Knowing how America works, the search for a solution would escalate dramatically, were McCoy to belong to a cohort that anyone gives a damn about. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] I wasn't the only one who noticed, either. His follow-up post was a defensive diatribe about how it's his site and he'll be as nasty as he wants to be. I've been following him for years, so I figure that, once he settles down a bit, he'll see that maybe he was just a bit too harsh. He makes a good point that he has to see hundreds of stupid comments that we never see -- but in this article's case, he seemed to be publishing certain comments just in order to shit on them. While he is adding to the post by indicating his answers to common questions, some of his answers were so curt as to be inscrutable -- there can be no learning effect from inscrutability. His site, his rules, but he seemed to be more frustrated than usual. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3714 2019-03-16T13:38:35+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

coma? The article "On Our Knees" by Missy Comley Beattie poses the same question as she considers the 2020 candidates. "Dear God, I shake my head with" ... ]]>

coma? The article "On Our Knees" by Missy Comley Beattie poses the same question as she considers the 2020 candidates. "Dear God, I shake my head with no, no, no, no, and at the risk of being accused of ageism, I say, “Biden is too old.” So is Sanders, so is Trump, and so is Hillary Clinton—and yes, she has threatened to enter the field if the Democrats move too far to the left. "Too far to the left? Following even a few of Jesus Christ’s tenets is Leftist anarchy according to Republican Congressmen and women and most Dem Congressmen and women. (Emphasis added.)" In the video below, Madigan makes a similar point: that older people have different concerns and different ideas about how the world should work -- mostly rooted in decades-old indoctrination. Some of it is helpful; some is outdated; some is horrific; some is counterproductive. It's a mixed bag. [media] I like the expression "No, Paw-paw". It's very appropriate to many of the lunatic ideas running our society that we're encouraged to consider normal and, more importantly, eternal and unchanging. [Adapting is too much work] With age, most people's already-limited ability to express themselves wanes. So, too, does their ability to evaluate and integrate change. This inability is not limited to older people -- most people think they know everything they're ever going to need to know by the time they're thirty years old, at the latest. Being able to honestly consider new concepts and either reject them, incorporate them or modify them based on rational reasoning without bias is a skill that needs daily -- or, at least, weekly -- honing to stay sharp. Once it dulls, it may never take an edge again. [The 2020 Elections, of course] Just under 20 months out from the next presidential election -- that's over a year and a half, by the way -- and the field is getting crowded by buffoons and buffoonettes. We're supposed to be pleased that just as many female fools are pretenders to the throne this year. This is called progress. The most progressive and interesting, Tulsi Gabbard, will be mercilessly bullied and smeared until she'll soon quit, until only the malleable milquetoasts remain. That the field is crowded just over halfway through the current 4-year term is the best indicator that the U.S. and its first-through-fourth columns haven't learned a good, god-damned thing from the last election. They've been unable to talk about anything but all of the lessons that they learned, though. The trick is that they talk about lessons that they didn't learn whereas the lesson they did learn is that they have complete control of our minds and will guide our somnambulism toward their candidate of choice, as they've been doing for decades. And their candidate of choice will be chosen by those already in power. [Subverting the Revolution] They are not wrong. We have never tried to prove them wrong. Not really. Every movement we have loses power in the face of attack. Or it is co-opted by the corporate powers-that-be. Movements are rarely squashed anymore. Although direct confrontation -- shooting Fred Hampton in bed, for example -- doesn't bring down the reprobation one would expect, it still engenders far more blowback than it's worth, especially when other methods have proven far more effective. Why use force when you can brainwash more effectively instead? Converting or subverting ardent would-be revolutionaries to ardent foot soldiers is much more effective. There ain't no proponent like a born-again proponent. It's dry alcoholics, new vegans, the nouveau riche and born-again Christians who are the most convinced and most evangelical about their newly chosen lifestyles. Comley Beattie continues: "If Clinton were Madam President, we wouldn’t see nearly as much outrage—the necessary degree required to move us from the immorality of capitalism to the morality of socialism. It’s shameful though that Trump’s naked racism and oozing disdain for anyone but the ultra-privileged are the requisites for an authentic resistance to inequality. "You go with what you have, not with what you might wish you have or want. Go with the knowledge that often you have to be brought to your knees before you are motivated to stand. At this moment in our history, we are on our knees." [Europe's Lenin?] It's becoming increasingly obvious -- with each new indignity -- that America is ripe for a new revolution. For that, we need new leaders, revolutionary and inspiring leaders. That's what's always worked in the past. We need a Lenin. Lee Camp's probably not Lenin, but he's damned good at what he does on his show, "Redacted Tonight" . Every week, he has a thoughtful and insightful and often dryly funny diatribe on the state of the world. But he's probably not a Lenin. When I read the article "Let’s Change Europe From the Ground Up" by Yanis Varoufakis , I was wondering whether I'd found him. Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and he's brilliant. He's heading up a new party in Europe called DiEM25 -- Democracy in Europe Movement 2015 -- for the next elections. Their platform is interesting and bold and ... revolutionary. This party proposes not to dismantle Europe, but to seize the reins of power from the elites through elections and to use the powerful existing European institutions to benefit the many instead. "If I am right, it does not matter whether the EU is or isn’t reformable, but it does matter that we put forward concrete proposals on what we would do with EU institutions. Not utopian proposals but complete descriptions of what we would do this week, next month, in the next year, under the existing rules and with the existing instruments — how we would reassign the role of the awful European Stability Mechanism, reorient the ECB’s quantitative easing, and finance immediately, and without new taxes, a green transition and campaign against poverty. "[...] "Everyone talks about the importance of the green transition. What they do not say is where the money will come from and who will plan it. Our answer is clear: Europe needs to invest €2 trillion between 2019 and 2023 in green technologies, energy etc. We propose that the EIB issues an additional volume of its bonds, €500bn annually for four years, and that the ECB announces that, if their value drops, it will purchase these on the secondary bond market. With that announcement, and the glut of savings around the world, the ECB will not have to spend a single euro, as the EIB bonds will sell out. [...] "This proposal requires no new taxes, builds on an existing European bond and is fully legal under existing rules." I may have missed them, but I'm not hearing such comprehensive proposals for sweeping change from anyone in the U.S. There are proposals, but they're already channeled into well-worn and establishes courses -- health-care, green new deal, etc. We have to distinguish between something like the Green New Deal -- which is not policy or any law that can actually be enacted, but aspirational -- and concrete plans for reallocation of resources, as outlined by diEM25 above. Varoufakis concludes: "Our message to Europe’s authoritarian establishment: we will resist you through a radical programme that is technically more sophisticated than yours. Our message to the fascistic xenophobes: we will fight you everywhere. Our message to our comrades of the European left: you can expect unlimited solidarity from us, and one day our paths will converge in the service of a radical, transnational humanism." If America is to get out of the hole it's in -- or even to survive in any meaningful form that makes the majority of lives worth living -- it needs to find its own Lenin. We've had them in the past, but they've had a nasty habit of getting assassinated -- MLK and Malcolm X come to mind. [On the question of age] Bernie Sanders isn't bad -- he's pretty good. He's quite sharp right now. He's just a touch old and I'm wondering how long he's going to be able to keep it up. There are two gentlemen who give me hope: Noam Chomsky (90) and Ralph Nader (85). Nader still hosts his own radio show, "Ralph Nader's Radio Hour" that is interesting nearly every week. In particular, his "recent interview with Noam Chomsky" was a very good conversation about global and U.S. politics, strategy and morality. [1] In the chatter after the interview, Nader and his co-hosts discussed a recent Trump speech. Nader said (and I'm quoting from memory, but this was the gist of it): "Did you hear [Trump's] speech the other day? Off the rails. He even mentioned during it that he was going off the rails. 2 hours long! He spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the crowd size at his own inauguration two years ago. He's an absolute lunatic! [2]" This is the right way to bash Trump -- for ridiculous things he's done, not for things we'd like to have done so that we can hate him more. People think we missed the boat when we didn't elect Bernie. At that point, we'd already missed the boat on Ralph 3 times. I voted for him twice. I'd fervently like to see that timeline. I bet it's not the darkest one. I bet it's brighter than this one. [Where is America's Lenin?] Nader gives props to the young people that are coming out of the woodwork to fight for their planet. This is a fantastic development, but they can't be the leaders. Ten-year--olds being led by 16-year--olds is a good start, but they don't know anything. They're too easy to ignore. They are fervent, they are passionate, but they don't know anything yet. You don't have to be much older -- you just need more experience and to be a bit better-read so that you don't get wrong-footed in every single debate you're in. You need a bit of gravitas, a bit of worldliness. You need charisma. Yelling over other people isn't charisma. The world is not going to change because of fervency -- at least not for the better. There are good examples of young revolutionaries who were well-educated, well-read and very capable in debate. Stokley Carmichael and Che Guevara in the 20th century come to mind. A lisping 10-year--old yelling that we're "destwoying the pwanet" might be endearing, but it's not the start of a movement. A Swedish 16-year--old invited to speak at WEF is already well on her way to being co-opted. She doesn't know enough to refuse their invitation, probably convinced by others that she can defeat them from within. That has almost never worked and is highly unlikely to work in the well-oiled machine (not pun intended) of western capitalism and media today. The recent, much-publicized "confrontation" between Dianne Feinstein and the schoolchildren is a manufactured moment. It was designed to make her look bad, but did so only for certain groups. It was a moment designed not to win anyone over but to get exposure and to harden the two fronts. At least as many people thought Feinstein gave the class a good talking-to as thought that she looked like an ancient talking-box spouting senseless catechisms. Was there a chance that she would see the error of her ways? Absolutely not. Either you get the confrontation you had hoped for -- and Feinstein would "look bad" -- or she would have lied and accepted their gifts with a cadaverous grimace and all would have been quickly forgotten. The woman was just re-elected to a six-year term last year and she's 85 years old. Where the actual fuck was any candidate between 25 and 60? What the actual hell? Of course she's confident in her opinions and her position; there's obviously absolutely nothing threatening them. You can't engage someone that powerful face-to-face because they will almost certainly be able to play the moment at least as much to their favor as to yours. They're not in that position because they're a doddering fool. They may not have the planet's best interests at heart, but they're a fucking ninth-level, black-belt grand-master at promoting and defending their own. Do not underestimate them. If people are too young, we always suspect manipulation. If people are too old, we suspect senility. We need the interim generations to do something. We need inspirational people from the middle who will not be turned away. We need a revolution that doesn't take no for an answer. It should be non-violent. We need our Lenins. We need our Trotskys. When we get them, we need to stay awake and pay attention. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Nader's next interview was "The End of Ice" , with Dahr Jamail, in which he and Dahr discussed the climate crisis. This was another very good interview, in which Jamail said: "I quote Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident writer and statesman. And he reminds us that as he said, "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out." And that’s where I get into this moral obligation that no matter how dire things look, that we are absolutely morally obliged to do everything we can in our power to try to make this better." [1] Just because Nader kept calling Trump "Captain Qeequeg" doesn't mean he's senile. It's a natural mistake, if you read the book 60 years ago. Queeqeg was the harpooner on the Pequod with Captain Ahab. He wasn't even first mate, though. That was Starbuck. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3695 2019-02-09T14:52:26+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. Others were ousted without being killed, like Ortega from Nicaragua or Maduro's own predecessor, Hugo Chavez. The list of "Foreign interventions by the United States" is long. For a more comprehensive list, read "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" by William Blum. [3] But, sure, I bet it's different this time. I bet the story in Venezuela is exactly as it's made to seem by the world media. Socialism and corruption working hand-in-hand to starve the poor. Chavez's advancements never happened. The agitation on the streets is not the middle and upper classes, but the poor demanding...illiteracy? Less food? We hear the same thing again and again about official enemies. We hear again and again about a paucity of democracy. But then we support, again and again, coups in those countries when a more pliable candidate rears his head. The West does not care about democracy, other than as a talking point. Strangely enough, we don't hear that we must do something in countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Israel/Palestine. Those countries are allowed to continue ruling themselves -- the logic that we must step in to help their people somehow doesn't apply there. Is it perhaps because their leaders are already in our iron grip? But the U.S. is largely responsible for the suffering of those people. It applies devastating sanctions on a country, then blame its leaders for not being able to feed their people. The U.S. does this with regularity. It fills Iraq with depleted uranium, blocks all medical devices from that country, then shakes its head at how those poor, backward people can't even help themselves. But back to Venezuela. I hear: why are the Chinese there or the Russians? Is it possible that they're trying to help, within the confines of international law? Is it possible that they are actually on the right side of history? You know, allowing a country to be sovereign, with its own elected leaders being allowed to work on their country's problems? Why are we asked to believe that a coup is the only way forward? It's said that the U.N. thinks that the Venezuelan elections were not above-board -- but the solution to an undemocratic election is ... a putsch? And the only guy who can be trusted is an unelected guy, trained at the IMF and in U.S. universities, who didn't get a single vote? He declared himself president and we're all just OK with that? Whereas some nations immediately threw their support behind the U.S. -- Canada, Britain among the usual suspects -- others, like France and Germany, demanded elections within 8 days. 8 days! So Europe thinks the elections were unfair, but also thinks that the way to have fair elections is to unconstitutionally demand new ones, all planned in just over a week. What spectacular bullshit. Repeat after me: the West doesn't care about democracy at all, especially as compared to promoting its own interests. Those interests? They are, in a nutshell: colonialism. resource-domination and empire. Let's call it economic colonialism, defined by a desire to steal things rather than pay for them in order to enrich one's own elites. [4] The U.S. loves to exert influence to create or exacerbate a situation that only it can solve. It engenders fear in Europeans nations in order to increase its military influence -- witness the dozen new members of NATO. Watching how quickly key European allies have fallen in line with the U.S. by recognizing the new "president" of Venezuela, I wouldn't be surprised to see the first official NATO incursion into South America. We're still listening to these criminals -- Netanyahu has the world's ear and suffers little to no official recrimination, to say nothing of action against him. Why don't we replace the leader of Israel for causing such suffering among his citizens in Palestine? And the U.S.: it doesn't seem to matter which criminal heads that nation, the behavior is consistently evil. [5] Far from listening to anything any one of them has to say, we should we working to end them -- consign their evildoing to the pages of history. It's a farce. It always is. There is only naked greed and national interest at work. To even engage their arguments is to concede that the playing field is at-all even. It's like arguing whether the charges of "Jewiness" against a Jewish family in 1939 Germany were "legitimate". This is not to say that the Venezuelans are not responsible for themselves -- but we cannot ignore the outside influences. Communism in Vietnam didn't fail "on its own". I'd be delighted to discover that the current and forthcoming, intensified international interventions will bring a better world for all Venezuelans. It would be a first, though. Venezuela is likely to join Libya, Iraq and others as quasi-states with most of its citizens much worse off than they were before. Meanwhile, Stephen Pinker and Bill Gates will continue to entertain us with tales of how, on average, we're all much better and much better off than we used to be. They even have charts to prove it, so you know it must be true. I spent years believing that, if so many parties seem to agree on something, then there must be some truth to it. I've been disappointed enough. I mistrust because I've been taught to do so by history. The U.S. is almost never to be trusted. Do you know how you can tell when the U.S. is lying? It's lips are moving. Nowadays, I'd rather be wrong than complicit. [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] As I wrote in "SOTU 2019: President Camacho holds forth" , Venezuela is the recipient of crippling U.S. sanctions. The U.S. cripples the economy of a country until everyone suffers—then points out that their government has failed them. The next step is to suggest that the U.S. might be better at running that country and then the CIA installs its own puppet to run the place, in U.S. interests. After that, the suffering of the people continues, but is no longer a concern. [1] Venezuela is considered to have some of the fairest elections in the world. The UN did not declare the elections of last May unfair. The Carter Center declared them some of the best and fairest elections ever. Just because the opposition parties refused to take part doesn't mean that the elections were unfair. [1] Blum died at the end of 2018 at the age of 85. He was a legendary historian and unrelenting critic of empire. I'd read his monthly "Anti-Empire Report" , issued right up until September 2018. May he rest in peace. He earned it. [1] The article "Avoiding Regime Change in Venezuela: Palast on The Scott Horton Show" by Greg Palast includes a 30-minute interview, with Palast concluding with the question: "Are we liberating Venezuela? Or are we liberating Venezuela's Oil?" The following 10-minute video is an excellent overview of the situation in Venezuela. [media] Of particular interest is the quote by National Security Advisor John Bolton, "Venezuela is one of the three countries I call the "Troika of Tyranny". It'll make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities of Venezuela." [1] It was Obama and Hillary who immediately recognized and supported the right-wing coup in Honduras in 2009. The same administration worked hard to torpedo first Lula, then Dilma Rousseff in Brazil -- actions that led to right-wing demagogue Bolsonaro taking power there. [1] Unfortunately for Venezuela, it doesn't look like I'll be proven wrong this time, either. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3697 2019-02-09T14:16:48+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, one of Trump's giant applause points was when he said, "Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." The best parts of America are the socialist bits. Even the worst parts are socialist: members of the military... ]]>

, one of Trump's giant applause points was when he said, "Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." The best parts of America are the socialist bits. Even the worst parts are socialist: members of the military live in a socialist paradise, with every part of their lives -- room, board, insurance, etc. -- paid for by the government. The strongest opponents of socialism are the ones who live the most socialist of lives. The Congress is another example: they have lifelong insurance and pensions once elected to office. That sounds like the government is making sure that soldiers and senators have less existential angst since they never need to worry about anything ever again. For the rest of us, though, it's back to the coal mines. Their system isn't going to pay for itself. One way to predispose people against socialism is to create examples where it doesn't work. Since it does tend to work, opponents are forced to cripple it first, then point out that it failed to provide the required services. This is a common tactic. As pointed out in the post "Stop Socialism Act aims to reduce local government competition with private businesses" , "Ironically, many of the things people love to bitch about with government are caused by trying to be too efficient. Take the DMV - if each worker costs $60,000 a year, then adding 2 people per location would vastly speed up their operations, and your taxes would go up maybe a penny a year. But because we're terrified of BIG GUBERMINT we make a lot of programs operate on a shoe-string budget and then get frustrated because they aren't convenient." We spend a tremendous amount of money on the military, don't acknowledge its generally socialist nature and absolve it from "breaking even". That is, the value provided by the military is presumed to be beyond the profit motive. You can't put a price on security. You can, apparently, put a price on education, health and well-being. Any of the bureaus charged with those tasks must show how they not only provide a social good, but also how they can turn a profit. If they don't, then there is talk of privatization and outsourcing. Granted, the U.S. military is also heavily outsourced and privatized now, but the budget is still 100% public. The private companies suckle at the teat of government largesse. Involvement of private industry in the military has -- in no way -- led to more efficiency and reduced cost. In fact, unlike schools or hospitals, the military is completely free from accounting for what it does with its money at all. It is currently undergoing an audit of sorts -- it's clear that the outcome won't affect future budgeting, in any way -- during which it's been discovered that the Pentagon can't account for 21 billion dollars over the last decade or so. America's problem isn't socialism -- it's imperialism. Its problem is that the imperialist arm is heavily socialist, while everything else is veering ever harder toward libertarianism. The military is crumbling at a slower rate than the rest of the infrastructure and society -- thanks to its inherently socialist and non-accountable nature. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3696 2019-02-09T14:15:01+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

(video and transcript). I read the transcript and did not watch the speech. [U.S.A! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!] President Camacho's [1] speech sparked Olympics-style jingoistic and enthusiastic chanting from the august, legislative body of the U.S. at three points. The 30-second video below points them out; I include full quotes below. [media] First up was women: "[...] we also have more women serving in the Congress than ever before." At this point, all of the women, dressed in white, many of them Democrats, stood up and cheered, then started chanting U.S.A. repeatedly. You can even see Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez kind-of dancing in the front. Next up was socialism: "We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom -- and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair. [2] Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence -- not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country." Chants of U.S.A filled the chamber. Trump's broadside against Venezuela is based nearly in its entirety on a pile of fabrication. Of course, it has broad bipartisan support in America, which has never seen a regime-change it couldn't wholeheartedly get behind. Regardless of party affiliation -- including, unfortunately, Bernie Sanders -- they will almost all support economic warfare and empire. "We have unleashed a revolution in American energy -- the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy. After 24 months of rapid progress, our economy is the envy of the world, our military is the most powerful on earth, and America is winning each and every day." Chants of U.S.A. filled the chamber. As with empire, the legislature knows that fossil fuels power the American economy. An increase in those means short-term gains at the expense of future generations. America's politicians are stupid and mean, but they understand that the votes of future generations don't mean anything to them today. When re-election is paramount, the opinions of large and financially gargantuan industrial lobbies override everything. [On the Campaign Trail] Trump spent plenty of time -- about half of the speech -- talking about immigration. Unfortunately, he was clever (devious?) -- he couched his "concern" in non-racist, security-conscious language that is going to speak clearly to over half of the country. An overwhelming hatred of Trump would lead most detractors to miss this point, but Trump used a "classist" justification, not a racist one. "We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens. "This includes our obligation to the millions of immigrants living here today, who followed the rules and respected our laws. Legal immigrants enrich our Nation and strengthen our society in countless ways. I want people to come into our country, but they have to come in legally. "Tonight, I am asking you to defend our very dangerous southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and to our country. No issue better illustrates the divide between America's working class and America's political class than illegal immigration. Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.Meanwhile, working class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal migration - reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools and hospitals, increased crime, and a depleted social safety net. (Emphasis added.)" It's incredible the swipes that Trump is allowed to take against the rich -- his donors understand that this is the way to get him back into office. This is pure lip service, but it's almost certainly going to work again. Because "Baaaaa" -- we're sheep, made all the more ignorant and manipulable by our increasingly soporific media landscape. [Budgeting and Propaganda] He went on, "Meanwhile, working class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal migration - reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools and hospitals, increased crime, and a depleted social safety net." How is it that the police are heroes and get more and more budget, but crime keeps getting worse? Answer: crime is going down every year -- but we have to keep fear high in order to justify pumping more money in that direction anyway. Why is the social-safety net depleted? It's not because of immigrants or moochers -- it's because we pour money without concern into empire, but starve social programs. The same goes for why school and hospitals are overburdened -- these programs are in shambles because that's how they are designed. Their inability to provide proper services is a logical outcome of how they are funded. There is no mystery; it's deliberate policy. It is only mysterious if you believe the espoused guiding principles of America rather than those inferred from its actions. Many of Trump's facts and figures are technically true but are used in a way to suggest things that are not true. For example, mentioning that "More people are working now than at any time in our history -- 157 million" makes no sense outside the context of how many people are in the country. There are economic indicators for this -- but they're probably not favorable for Trump. The unemployment numbers in most Western countries -- the U.S. included -- are heavily manipulated to deliver the desired message. A single number -- be it unemployment percentage nationwide or minimum wage nationwide -- doesn't indicate the number of hours worked, percentage of living wage earned, local cost of living, or any of myriad other factors that are actually relevant in determining how people actually live or how secure they feel financially. That a large majority of American households can't handle an unexpected $500 cost without immediately going into debt is a far stronger indication that things suck for most people. [Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children!] These two proposals came in between the long tirade against immigration and a broadside against abortion rights. "To help support working parents, the time has come to pass school choice for America's children. I am also proud to be the first President to include in my budget a plan for nationwide paid family leave - so that every new parent has the chance to bond with their newborn child." As usual, Trump's all over the place. With "school choice", he means "put more money into charter schools, starving the public-school system in favor of privatized schools that only benefit the rich". I don't know what he actually means by "paid family leave", but I suspect it's probably not as good as it sounds. [Unhinged Militarism] The foreign-policy part of Trump's speech was an unhinged ball of misrepresentation -- it sounded like Alex Jones wrote it for him. His characterization of events had little to do with reality. It's hard to accuse him of prevarication because he probably believes every word wholeheartedly -- and probably no major media source in the U.S. would fact-check him on it because they're "all aboard" for the American mythos train, as well. This is a heedless, reckless vehicle for the most powerful nation to be on. U.S. behavior can be likened to that of an insanely jealous husband who goes on the warpath basely purely on his own paranoid ravings and fantasies. Trump is channeling a nationwide mental illness directly through a ludicrously overpowered military. In this, he is no different than any other president, in my lifetime...since WWII...ever. Every few paragraphs, he says something that's at least somewhat true. Obama used to do this, too. As stated at the top, the techniques employed by Trump in this speech are not unique to him -- they come with the office. "If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed. Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one." That's kind of true. I would give far more credit to President Moon of South Korea, but it is true that the threat of war with North Korea has diminished. The threat of war in Venezuela and with Russia and Iran has escalated, but that doesn't belie the statement above -- it just makes it nearly meaningless. In real life, nobody's going to pat you on the back for washing one car while totaling several others. [3] "Above all, friend and foe alike must never doubt this Nation's power and will to defend our people." Spoken like a true "madman" . "Eighteen years ago, terrorists attacked the USS Cole - and last month American forces killed one of the leaders of the attack." This statement is officially accepted as true, but is actually false: see "How to Survive America's Kill List" by Matt Taibbi . [4] [Once more, with Feeling: Iran] The more unhinged Trump got, the less likely he was to be called out by the "liberal" media -- they heartily believe in the same talking points, as doled out by the thought leaders at AIPAC, Brookings and so on. "My Administration has acted decisively to confront the world's leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran. To ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons, I withdrew the United States from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. And last fall, we put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a country." This paragraph is a work of art: nearly every non-filler word is mendacious. Iran is not the leading terror state -- the U.S. is. Iran is not "radical" -- it's quite restrained. Iran is not a dictatorship (it has elections). Iran has never had a nuclear-weapons program. Iran has never broken any of its deals. It has submitted and conformed to the most draconian inspection regimes. The U.S. has been crippling that country with sanctions for decades, relieved only partially and temporarily for a year or so during the Obama years. Sanctions are war, clear and simple. They are a weapon of war directed at civilians, more devastating than most military weapons. In any sane world, levying such draconian sanctions on a country would be tantamount to contravening the Geneva Convention. [5] "We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to America and threatens genocide against the Jewish people." Trump is throwing meat to the lions here: Democrats and Republicans alike eat this up with a spoon. This is the kind of stuff that will get Trump elected again, in a heartbeat. It's wildly counterfactual -- i.e. deeply disingenuous and out of context -- but it fits squarely into the U.S. mythos. The segue here is masterful, though: Trump moves on to denouncing Antisemitism -- going out on quite a limb -- and then to lauding the "greatest generation" with a stemwinder about concentration camps, liberation and general WWII fluff. [Bring it on Home(land)] Trump -- or his speechwriters -- certainly knows how to take advantage of American myths and which buttons to press. He lays it on with a trowel: [6] "Everything that has come since - our triumph over communism, our giant leaps of science and discovery, our unrivaled progress toward equality and justice - all of it is possible thanks to the blood and tears and courage and vision of the Americans who came before." What person in their right mind would denounce him for supporting any of those things? It's complete bullshit and I personally can call him on it, but my ability to support myself isn't contingent on monetizing this blog. However, the American left -- and much of the media -- are so anti-Trump that they will denounce him, no matter what he says. When he says things that they actual agree with, their knee-jerk response is to fly off the handle and tweet and twit about his madness. They will disagree with him rather than just denounce him. When they're forced to walk back their words, chastened by their handlers at organizations that butter their bread for them [7], they look stupid and untrustworthy. Read the last few paragraphs in Obama's, or Clinton's voice; would it have sounded any different? No. It's pure pablum, but it's America's favorite food -- intellectually empty, mendacious and inspiring to the zombified. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Referring to President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain-Dew Herbert Camacho, played by the inestimable Terry Crews in the film "Idiocracy" . [1] Venezuela is a recipient of crippling U.S. sanctions. The U.S. cripples the economy of a country until everyone suffers -- then points out that their government has failed them. The next step is to suggest that the U.S. might be better at running that country and then the CIA installs its own puppet to run the place, in U.S. interests. After that, the suffering of the people continues, but is no longer a concern. [1] Or maybe I'm way off-base here: I wasn't raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, so my understanding of the dynamics of rich families is, admittedly, poor. The same goes for my understanding of family dynamics in the "participation generation", where encouragement, not results, is paramount. [1] According to the article, the guy to whom Trump is referring had already been killed at least twice -- once in 2010 and once in 2012: "For instance, in October 2010, news leaked that Fahd al Quso, a top Al Qaeda leader and suspect in the U.S.S. Cole bombing, had been killed by a drone strike in Waziristan. Two years later, he was reported killed again in a strike in Yemen." [1] For example, the U.S. attacked Iraq in 1993, leaving gigantic piles of depleted uranium behind. Cancer rates over the next 20 years spiked. At the same time, America's draconian sanctions blocked nearly all imports of medical supplies, dooming the Iraqis to more suffering and death from cancer. [1] I'm not kidding, either. He continues in this vein for long minutes: "we will proudly declare that we are Americans. We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown.This is the time to re-ignite the American imagination. This is the time to search for the tallest summit, and set our sights on the brightest star. This is the time to rekindle the bonds of love and loyalty and memory that link us together as citizens, as neighbors, as patriots." . Literally any President of the U.S. would happily have read those parts of the speech. Meat to the lions. [1] A good quarter of Trump's speech sounds like it had been written by Bibi Netanyahu. Disagreeing with any of those parts is the kiss of death for anyone's career in the U.S. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3693 2019-02-03T22:22:33+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

, but discovered that it's been unpublished by the Baffler. They got cold feet that this level of endorsement was contrary to their charter as a certain type of organization -- a type that is prohibited from expressing a political opinion. ... ]]>

, but discovered that it's been unpublished by the Baffler. They got cold feet that this level of endorsement was contrary to their charter as a certain type of organization -- a type that is prohibited from expressing a political opinion. Leave aside that it was clearly Lee's opinion being expressed and not the magazine's. It looks pretty gutless, on the surface. If you're interested in the back-and-forth, "Here's the Pro-Bernie Sanders 2020 Op-Ed The Baffler Decided Its Readers Should No Longer See" by Jake Johnson has a lot more detail. In the meantime, you can find the article at "It's Still Bernie" by Amber A’Lee Frost . Though I'm sure that there's some substance to this whole affair, it's indicative of a deeper sickness on the left: it can't get out of it's sanctimonious, virtue-signaling way to get anything done. Leftists used to be hardcore (think Che); now they're a bunch of pussies who'll offend themselves right out of the running for anything beyond PTA-board secretary. Frost is one of the good ones, not afraid to speak her mind and put some damn skin in the game and some hard facts on the table. I'd noted the following quotations from her excellent cri de coeur. On the continuation of an older awfulness that differs mildly from (R) to (D) and back again, she wrote, "Despite all the #Resistance hysteria, for the time being, the majority of the electorate hasn’t seen the sort of plummet in quality of life that inspires droves of voters to cast a ballot for Anyone But Trump. The Donald hasn’t actually deviated that much from the neoliberal trajectory of his predecessors (remember, Obama shot tear gas at the border too), and you can’t expect people who don’t spend all day on Twitter to feel that motivated to combat what is essentially the gradual continuation of previous administrations’ policies. (Hell, he’s already more anti-war than Obama was.) (Emphasis added.)" This is already too much of broadside against too many pussyfooting allies to survive for long. It's possible that it was less the wholehearted endorsement of Sanders and more the unflattering comparison of darling Obama to Trump, policy-wise, that earned Frost opprobrium and banishment from published pages. She went on, "And even if we could get a President Gillibrand in 2020, another lukewarm Democratic presidency will not only further impoverish and destabilize the working class and its suffering institutions, it will also all but guarantee that 2024 brings us POTUS Hamburglar in an SS uniform. No, it’s Bernie or bust. I don’t care if we have to roll him out on a hand truck and sprinkle cocaine into his coleslaw before every speech. If he dies mid-run, we’ll stuff him full of sawdust, shove a hand up his ass, and operate him like a goddamn muppet. (Again, emphasis added.)" Frost is doing her best to electrify the "resistance" with a wake-up call that they might be able to hear. Watching the parade of hopefuls trundled out so far (Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, ... ), it's clear that the lesson of Hillary in 2016 either has been forgotten or was never learned. Frost finished up with, "If you have strayed, all is forgiven, but you better come to Jesus right now because memory is long, and history judges the cowardly squish far more harshly than the honest enemy. And you can’t say that no one was there at the time to tell you that this was it—this was the pivotal moment where you had to make the right choice. (Emphasis added.)" Given the content of the article -- it's a rallying cry -- it's disheartening but all-too predictable that it was published then banned by one left-leaning magazine and then republished by a slight-more-left-wing-but-with-worrying-holes-on-South-American-foreign-policy [1] magazine. It's indicative that the left has painted itself into a corner guarded by rabid ideologues who don't care who gets hurt -- only that their virtue is signaled, that they feel justified, that they feel right, no matter the actual repercussions for anyone, including those that they purport to be defending. Just off the top of my head, there's a very easy way to torpedo Sanders. The Democrats or Republicans can start now. They both have an interest in a kill switch for Bernie. The Democrats used it last time, but expended considerable goodwill and political capital in the process. It's very possible that they not only lost the 2016 election because of those acts, but have ruined their chances at 2020. Bernie should run as an independent, but that's beside the point. I got distracted. Back to the plan. Get an agent into Bernie's inner circle. Choose an attractive girl. Relatively well-spoken. Rabidly right-wing, but capable of hiding it. In December of 2019, have her reveal relatively mild things that will sound horrific to the right ears. They talked down to her. Made unsafe spaces. Complimented her. Held the door for her. Touched her hair, however inadvertently. Maybe Bernie did them. Maybe someone who works for him. Maybe a mix. Either way, he's culpable. Bye, bye, Bernie. We have set up a world in which this could happen all too easily. No-one will ask or care whether it's true until much later, after which Sanders will have missed his chance again. By 2024, he'll be a shambolic old man, capable of muttering only conspiracy theories that are entirely true, as he wanders the ruins of an America that has endured not only 8 years of Trump rule but the 40 years of institutional neglect that preceded it. Only a true monster like Trump can survive a system that works like this. And it was those that hate him the most who built it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Jaconbin's reporting on the right-wing takeover in Brazil was uneven to scandalous. They said nothing while one left-wing government after another was unfairly smeared (Lula) and unconstitutionally dumped (Dilma). In that case, they tripped over their uncertainty until they were more or less on the same line as the U.S. government, which provoked the slow-motion/soft coup in the first place. Because what else do you call destabilizing one government after another until you get to heartily approve of a right-wing ideologue getting elected? They're doing a bit better on Venezuela, but not much. ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3579 2019-01-08T22:42:41+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

. I'm honestly not sure how anyone with an ounce of journalistic self-respect can write an article like this non-ironically. I wrote in the title, "because of course... ]]>

. I'm honestly not sure how anyone with an ounce of journalistic self-respect can write an article like this non-ironically. I wrote in the title, "because of course they do". I'm referring to the "analysts" who -- after nearly a year -- have decided that the Russians are to blame. It is here that we should all become more adept at both thought experiments and analogies. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the analysts, after one year of investigation. The clock is ticking. Shit is starting to roll downhill. Your boss, at first sympathetic to the difficulty of the chore, can no longer run interference for you and your team. He needs an answer. Historically, just "an answer" was sufficient for everyone to keep their jobs, the pressure to go way down, and for perhaps promotions to be handed out. You see, once there's an answer that everyone can get behind, it becomes the truth. It doesn't matter whether it's easily deniable. The important thing is that the entire circle manages to avoid taking the blame for it and can smoothly promote themselves upwards in whatever hierarchies they're interested in scaling. All they need is a scapegoat. And there's Russia, in the corner. In its Adidas shoes and jogging pants, smoking in a cupped palm, squatting and mumbling something incomprehensible into a knock-off Chinese iPhone. He smells a bit of cologne and cabbage and no-one in the office likes him. He's taken the fall for so many other things. You'd think people would no longer believe the lies we tell about him, but it's just the opposite. The more we blame on him, the more we can blame on him. He's like a breeder reactor for taking blame. It's a chain reaction of sorts. At the very end of the article is the expected "Update" that basically reverses everything else said in the article, "The Washington Post reports skepticism about microwaves being the source of the symptoms among doctors and scientists, including some doctors who were critical of the initial JAMA report. University of Cincinnati neurologist Alberto J. Espay told the Post, “Microwave weapons is the closest equivalent in science to fake news.”" ]]> https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=3591 2019-01-08T22:40:36+01:00 https://earthli.com/users/marco

Out-of-date and chock-full of devil's advocacy. I've listened to some coverage of the Kavanaugh hearings on The Intercept. This includes an unusually giddy and convinced Jeremy Scahill and a typically partisan Amy Goodman. What shines through is this notion that being blackout... ]]>

Out-of-date and chock-full of devil's advocacy. I've listened to some coverage of the Kavanaugh hearings on The Intercept. This includes an unusually giddy and convinced Jeremy Scahill and a typically partisan Amy Goodman. What shines through is this notion that being blackout drunk (i.e. not remembering parts of an evening) is an indication of alcoholism, or having a drinking problem. It's also the sign of a really good party. These people all sound like shrill churchgoers who can't even bear to hear of a drinking game or bear to hear of the terminology used at parties. Poor Amy Goodman has to attend a Harvard College that allowed a group like "The Rapists" to exist on its hallowed grounds. It's not a particularly funny joke, but it's pretty clearly a joke. Amy and Jeremy happily burble about how "old white guys" are likely to act and how believable it is that young guys at such a school would act that way. It sounds suspiciously like saying that someone is guilty of something because it sounds like "something a black guy would do". They even discuss how the hearing should be psychological torture (e.g. don't let him take breaks, don't let him gather his thoughts). There is the question of Kavanaugh's comportment, characterized as "white male rage". As pointed out in the article "You Mad, Bro?" by Scott H. Greenfield As with any other epithet, it's a, "[...] deliberate effort to create a stereotypical characteristic to be used as a tool to undermine any reaction by white males to attacks against them. It’s the same false shorthand that its users complain are wrongfully used, except flipped on its head for use against white guys." It saddens me to see Jeremy fall into this trap. I would have thought the open-minded could allow a bit of anger when responding to a rape accusation. Or an attempted-rape accusation. Or an attempted-harassment accusation. On the same subject, Bloomberg published an article about Chinese spy chips. I read it. It consists of several claims by unnamed officials along with a heap of denials by everybody involved. The technical explanation of the hack and its potential effects was laughable. This article is being taken as truth -- despite Apple and Amazon having denied it emphatically several times. The article is unsourced and by a single, unknown journalist -- this isn't Seymour Hersh we're talking about. This is just another example of a fake-ass shitstorm raging over America, sure to disappear without a trace as soon as it slumps in a news cycle. The Kavanaugh hearings will also fade once he's a justice, just as Clarence Thomas's did. This, despite Jeremy and Amy's fervent hopes that Thomas's seat on the bench would be in danger should Kavanaugh be denied the post -- as if that would establish some sort of retroactive precedent. I don't like Clarence Thomas or his opinions, but that's madness. [media] Greenwald makes some good points here, but he also points out the difference between Ford's credible testimony vs. Kavanaugh's explosion, saying no sane person could have come away not believing her testimony. I believe she believes it, but that's neither here nor there. All else aside, is it not reasonable for someone to lose their composure when they are many times accused of rape? Especially if you accept that it's possible that he didn't do it? Or imagine that he didn't do it, wouldn't it be reasonable to lose your cool when your entire nomination starts to hinge on exactly that accusation instead of any of your other qualifications? Is this condemnation of Kavanaugh's behavior not akin to chastising women for not being able to critique society without sounding "shrill"? In the article "Roaming Charges: Give Me Condos or Give Me Death!" by Jeffrey St. Clair , the author seems so certain as well. I didn't pay that much attention to the trial, but I can't help but notice that the strongest believers keep coming back to the believability of Ford's testimony, saying that, "For most of the people who watched her, her story didn’t need any more corroboration." And that Kavanaugh had torpedoed himself, "Kavanaugh’s petulant demeanor, lies and own writing from the time offered all the confirmation that was needed." The standard of evidence, though, is pretty low, "Here’s a partial list of the more than 40 people with corroborating evidence that the FBI failed to interview, including a former Yale seminary student named Kenneth Appold, who told the New Yorker he is “one-hundred-per-cent certain” that he was told a drunken Kavanaugh shoved his penis in Deborah Ramirez’s face during a party in a Yale dorm room." Jesus, that's rock-solid. I can't believe that the guy's not already in jail. I'm not sure how many of us from the eighties would hold up to the argus-like scrutiny of the present day. The gaze is pitiless. It understands no nuance, no mistakes. It is like the church in the days of the Inquisition. I just spent some time reading through some of my papers from grade school, high school and college. I doodled a lot, I wrote a lot of notes in the margins. I wrote a lot of letters. I received a lot of letters. Many unenlightened things were written that have nothing to do with who I am today. Of that I am certain. It wouldn't matter one bit, though, to the ravening masses. Did you use the word "gay" as a slur, no matter how slight? You are homophobic. There is no way you could have changed your attitude in 30 further years of life. You must still answer for this thought-crime from days past. I don't defend Kavanaugh. From the little I've read, I admire nothing about him. I condemn the way he is being attacked. It is an attack of certainty with no requirement for evidence. It will backfire. It always does. First they came for Kavanaugh, and I said nothing... The article "Brett Kavanaugh and the Politics of Emotion-Shaming" by Ted Rall addresses the hypocritical reaction to Kavanaugh's 45-minute--long crying jag at his nomination hearings. Rall points out, quite rightly, that, "Senator Elizabeth Warren, a progressive considering a 2020 presidential run, mirrored Trump’s description of Kavanaugh but for Dr. Ford: “brave, compelling, and credible.” Calling Kavanaugh “unhinged,” she said he “whined, ranted, raved, and spun conspiracy theories.” Praise versus contempt: the personal has never been more political. Had the roles been reversed, had Dr. Ford been the angry/weepy one, there is no world in which Warren would have described her as unhinged." Bereft of anything other than he-said/she-said (though many will imbue one or the other statement with more veracity based on "impressions" and "believability"), we're left with an unsatisfying analysis of Kavanaugh's behavior. "Were Kavanaugh’s tears the frustrated, desperate expression of an innocent man falsely accused before his friends, family and an entire nation? Or, as one of detractors alleged, did he w[h]imper “because his past finally caught up with him and deep down, he knows it”? Could it be something in between, a blend of anger because some of the accusations are false and self-pity because others are true? We’ll probably never know what really happened at those high school and college parties." With political leanings reversed, Kavanaugh's teary testimony would be lauded as the courage of a modern man trying to deal with the unfounded allegations of a steely harpy intent on taking him down, no matter what. "Crashing The Court: Kavanaugh and Consequences" by Scott H. Greenfield "Even if Kavanaugh was the perfect model of probity, he wouldn’t be my flavor of justice. Then again, neither would anyone else Trump might appoint, so I’ve long since come to grips with the fact that the newest member of the Nine wasn’t going to win my heart. "[...] "The question now is whether the Supreme Court, with Justice Kavanaugh and the “conservative” wing, can fulfill its constitutional function or has lost the trust of a nation. "[...] "You can spend your time hating Kavanaugh for being horrible. I prefer to spend my time fighting for good law. And as long as Justice Kavanaugh is on the Court, I will spend my time trying to persuade him to see the law my way rather than scream about how awful he is." On a final note, I know a lot of slang. I grew up at about the same time as Kavanaugh, went to college in America at about the same time. I have heard and spoken almost every slur and rude thing there is to say. I am nearly a human Urban Dictionary. I had never heard of a menage a trois referred to as "devil's triangle" until this hearing. And yet, I keep reading that "everyone knows" that's what it really means. Today I learned I'm not so hip, I guess. This is the first time I've heard and read journalists that I admire getting bent out of shape about what I think are all the wrong things, losing their composure, as it were. Their demeanor is one of barely suppressed outrage that this 'frat boy" could be nominated despite them knowing what a horrible person he is. He seems to hold appalling positions, but we hardly heard about those. This felt like the witch hunt of Clinton all over again -- focusing on his sexual predation rather than his systematic dismantling of the poor. Kavanaugh is a trained corporate stooge who will almost certainly smoothly fill Scalia's shoes on the court. That's the reason you don't want him, Unfortunately, you have to find reasons not to nominate him that are salient. The process doesn't really allow for anything but this ludicrous circus that ended up proving nothing, other than that the U.S. is a ludicrous and dangerous country full of utter buffoons. It is a syphilitic captain lashed to the tiller and is careening toward our shores. ]]>