CleverOleg

joined 2 years ago
[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 31 points 3 days ago

This is the answer. A big reason why some countries are (disappointingly) friendly with Israel and the US? Military tech. If you’ve got good military products to sell then it’s very easy to make friends.

In fact, my understanding is that this is a way in which the US ties other countries to Israel on purpose. Say there’s some American military tech you want but the US won’t sell to you? If the US wants you closer to Israel then it turns out you can buy it from Israel and the US will conveniently look the other way. I think this is the case for Vietnam and to a certain extent China.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 24 points 4 days ago

Well, right, I mean I think it DOES happen at times in the US too, just that it’s not the primary method of control.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 20 points 4 days ago

Yes. Thanks to Cheney and Rumsfeld in particular, the MIC has privatized and outsourced so much that while I wouldn’t say it’s all a grift or that profit hasn’t always been the point anyway, it’s a situation of a quantitative change leading to a qualitative change. The pursuit of profit via military industry has become so desperate they are willing to sacrifice their ability to wage war for it.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 37 points 4 days ago

That’s it, I’m out. I’m no longer opining or speculating if China isn’t doing enough or if there’s some ways they are doing a lot but we just don’t know or. Nope, I’m just gonna Trust the Plan and assuming the My President (xigma-male ) is doing the right thing.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 58 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Western media just takes dictation.

If our comrades here learn nothing of media literacy other than this, they will still be doing OK. When we talk about the US government or bourgeoisie “controlling” the newsmedia, it’s not done by someone at the CIA calling up a newsroom producer and telling them to talk about how Iran is only 0.001 seconds away from having a nuke. It’s how an entire ecosystem of “experts” has been cultivated (just to pick one person as an example, look at Sam Vinograd) over the decades. These experts are the only people who are ever brought on, or the only people who are spoken to off-camera. These experts often have some sort of access or just air of authority that the media needs. So they just unquestioningly repeat what is said. If you question the narrative that’s being put out there, your connections get frozen and now when it comes time to get an inside scoop or have some former admiral on who looks like he knows what he’s talking about, there’s no one who will return your calls.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 16 points 5 days ago

Yeah put me on the side of “this will never happen” too. For the reasons you mentioned above, but also the tremendous leverage/power this would give labor in the US.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

For which side?

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago

The neat thing, they’re both! It is at the same time the ultimate tool of power projection AND entirely obsolete. One of these getting sunk is just a matter of time.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 16 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

and not wanting to get into a mess he knows will kill his isolationist rhetoric and everything his political career stands on.

You know, I have to wonder if Trump watched that Tucker Carlson / Ted Cruz interview? Tucker absolutely curb stomped Cruz and really made him look like a devious little asshole. Tucker laid out the case for not getting involved pretty well. It honestly may have altered Trump’s perceptions of this situation. We know Trump loves his TV and will base decisions on what he sees.

If Tucker fucking Carlson is the person who ended up saving the lives of countless Iranians, that’s an all time “extremely critical support” moment.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 12 points 5 days ago

Feels like its up to the DMs dice rolls.

This is really a great encapsulation of it all.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 17 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

ngl after seeing that Ted Cruz interview + other data points, I think Tucker’s anti-intervention streak may be somewhat sincere, even if he’s shit on everything else.

 

Of course it was that gusano Maria Salazar who introduced this bill.

Interesting to note that the text of the bill seems to focus on China and mentions Xinjiang in particular. Also how 1.5 billion people currently “suffer” under communism.

This actually seems like a bit of an own goal to me. Sure, tell a bunch of high school kids how China is an undemocratic totalitarian nightmare and that the Uighurs are currently having their organs harvested. Then those students can do literally 10 minutes of research to see that none of that is actually happening and that the people of China are pretty happy with the state of things (at least relative to US Americans).

I should point out for non-US Americans here, education in the US is decentralized. The federal government doesn’t actually have much authority. This bill just tells the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund (snicker) to create materials and make them available.

Death to America.

 

I think it’s remarkable just how comfortable white folks were to vote for an outright white supremacist. It’s important to note that while Duke did give some throwaway lines about how he became a born-again Christian and wasn’t racist anymore… I don’t think anyone believed him because everything else he promoted and advocated for was outright racist. Duke was nothing like Nick Fuentes or even Richard Spencer today - racists who trying and hide just how racist they are. Duke was literally a former KKK grand wizard and even though he was in his early 40s, he had a long track record of openly white supremacist comments. His campaign platform was still racist af and to the surprise of no one here, he got a solid majority of the white vote and only lost because of solid turnout of black voters who voted against him.

I was reading some comments on Reddit about this race and of course white people there try and justify it. A whole lot of “well most white folks didn’t agree with Duke but the other guy was just too corrupt”. Of course, white people are never just racists. As if people really care so much about corruption that they’re willing to vote for literally the worst person in the country. I honestly hate this attitude among white folks - this idea that you must NEVER assume someone’s just racist, and that you can make any excuse for their racist actions or comments by finding some other reason - any reason at all - for their racism.

Literally AmeriKKKa.

(Thanks to Gerald Horne and Tony on the Actually Existing Socialism podcast for making me aware of this)

 

Did a large procession wave their torches As my head fell in the basket? And was everybody dancing on the casket?

 
 

…and for that, she has been heavily slandered for months now for being “anti-semitic”. To the point that the US ambassador to the UN is pulling this sort of stunt. It’s worth remembering this woman is a democrat and she was selected by the Biden-Harris admin to represent the US. I honestly cannot imagine that Trump’s ambassador would say even one word different.

Link

The replies, at least, are encouraging. That’s a solid ratio, too.

 

baseball-crank

Probably not the right time to post this (when most Americans are asleep) but w/e

 

I don’t have any cash app or Venmo accounts, but I can give you like 5 Order of Lenin emojis.

(fyi this is the new badass logo for the Al-Qassam Brigades)

 

Interesting story about this artwork here

 
 

im-vegan

 

Of course, I knew Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism (really, those two concepts are inseparable and feed each other) were very prevalent in American society going back a long time, with it really ratcheting up after 9/11. But ever since the Zionist entity’s terrorist pager attack last month, the sheer depth, pervasiveness, and how it’s just out there in the open and considered perfectly acceptable has genuinely surprised me. It seems to have started with that attack and subsequent events have only reinforced it.

White Americans just seem to delight whenever they think the Arab/Islamic “terrorists” are attacked. They do not care about who the “terrorists” actually are or how many people suffer. It’s not worth interrogating what the “terrorists” are fighting for or who was harmed because to the white folks, the Muslim/Arab people don’t matter. They’ve been dehumanized to the point where their lives are considered worthless.

To give an example, there is a person in my life who I’m about to cut out (should have a long time ago) who texted me something to the effect of “that pager thing was crazy, but looks like they got a lot of terrorists”. I tried to keep my cool and explain how normal people like doctors and ambulance drivers were hurt and killed too, because lots of people use those pagers. Dude literally just used a shrug emoji in response, because I guess those people aren’t worth giving a care about.

Everything I’ve seen especially in recent weeks really shows how bad it is. Brown people in Western Asia don’t matter because they have a different religion and they are “prone to violence” and they aren’t as “developed” as us. I feel like this is really where the support for Israel comes from. Not from ideas of Israel fulfilling apocalyptic prophesy, but just because white Americans can turn on the TV and see people in Israel who look like them, who have a religion that is semi-compatible with theirs, and who live in a society that seems to be very “Western” fighting off the “savage Islamists”. It plays into their already primed-for-racism-and-chauvinism” brains.

While I don’t think American media is the source of racism and Islamophobia, I do think the last 20+ years of movies, shows, and games has really fueled the fire. I think (hope?) in the future people will look back on this period of “corn-fed white bearded operators killing all the Muslim terrorists” media in the way we look at minstrel shows now.

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