#;obligatory support ukraine !

[qqueenofhades]

Hi! This question has been noodling in my head for a few weeks, and I’ve been really curious to hear your opinion. I’ve appreciated your very thoughtful commentary on the ways the online left in particular have hurt the real and concerted efforts that have been made to navigate through the Gaza war in support of Palestine. I’ve seen a lot of outrage online about Biden bypassing congress in order to make another emergency weapons sale to Israel, which does indeed read as counter to helping to the Palestinians facing endless and indiscriminate violence. I understand that you might not want to answer this ask, because the work that you already do in your life offline and the work that you do here on tumblr to respond to and explain these issues is exhausting enough. Thanks so much for your time and your thoughtful contributions! It’s always really helped me remember to slow down and think critically about the media I consume.

Because you have asked this thoughtfully and in good faith, I will return the favor and give you a careful and extensive answer to the best of my ability. However, obligatory top-of-post disclaimer that I will disable reblogs at the first hint of any wankery in the notes and I will not answer any follow-ups or secondary asks at this time (unless I decide to do so, but I engage with this topic sparingly, judiciously, and only in small doses, so don't count on it).

First, let me say that the moment, I disagree with substantial portions of how Biden is handling the two main foreign-policy crises (Ukraine and Gaza). In regard to Ukraine, I think he's backed off, taken his foot off the gas, and otherwise given Republicans ammunition to keep delaying or watering down a new aid bill, is refusing to disburse military aid packages from the $4 billion of funding remaining that was previously approved by Congress, hasn't sent long-range ATACMS and other critical military hardware that might bring the war to an end sooner, and is not (as of the moment, though recent reporting suggests this might change) pushing hard enough for frozen Russian assets to be transferred to Ukraine for military and/or humanitarian financial assistance. However, I am also aware (unlike, it seems, much of the left-leaning internet) that I am basing these judgments only on my personal impressions, on what is reported (or not reported) in the media (which has plenty of its own problems) and otherwise what is formed in my role as an ordinary American citizen without any kind of special, classified, high-level, or government access. I know nothing more than any of you, and I also know that a lot of what goes on behind closed doors does not appear on Political Twitter and/or the Washington Post or the Guardian or Daily Kos or whatever other aggregate sources of information I or any left-leaning person typically consumes. So it's highly possible (and this is my cautious academic instinct speaking) that I do not, in fact, have a full picture of events. There are also contributing factors that Biden cannot simply handwave aside, even if he did, say, dip back into the $4 billion pot in the meantime. Congress will need to pass a new funding bill for Ukraine aid and the MAGA Republicans have been enthusiastically blocking it to the point where Putin's cronies on Russian state TV praise them effusively for it. We all know about the Republicans and Russia's mutual love affair. So.

The same goes for Gaza, and even more because we have already had reporting about how the Biden administration is walking a behind-the-scenes tightrope in a number of seemingly impossible tasks: keeping the war from spreading to a larger theater, pressuring Netanyahu to dial down, y'know, the rampant genocide (when Netanyahu notoriously doesn't like Biden, was very close with Trump, and would be happy to keep the war going in order to boost Trump's chances of being re-elected and save Netanyahu himself from his own criminal prosecutions), and pursuing a complex policy toward the state of Israel that does not follow the antisemitic Western Online Left's fever dream of "Israel suddenly disappears overnight and falls into the ocean and all Jews die or disappear." We have had multiple credibly sourced reports about this. Blinken is back in the Middle East right now trying to keep the war from spreading. The US under Biden has criticized Israel's essentially empty policy document for post-war Gaza as not being remotely feasible (because it's so vague) and gone so far as to voice support for a two-state solution with Palestinian self-determination (which is itself quite radically different from previous administrations). However, they have also vetoed UN ceasefire resolutions and other essentially meaningless political theater (the UN as a whole has been ruthlessly exposed in the last few years for being completely useless) that are easy to gin up outrage about, and that's what the internet focuses on, rather than any of the other complicated actions taking place.

All of this is to say that no, in fact, I don't blindly support everything the Biden administration is doing in regard to either Ukraine or Israel right now, but I actually have a sense of real-world perspective about it and understand that there are certain immutable realities that we are working with and which will not be erased by some absolute jackasses yelling at Biden in a historically black church at the commemoration of an anti-black terrorist attack. Likewise, as I've said it before and I'll say it again, and as plenty of other people have noticed and pointed out, the Western left is using this as an orgy of pseudo-revolutionary fervor that focuses on using Hamas as a proxy for their own fantasies of violent uprising against their own governments. Because while yes, anti-zionism and antisemitism are two distinct things and represent different aims and goals, it's become more or less irrelevant in allegedly pro-Palestine Western leftist spaces. It's just increasingly rabid, accelerationist, and nihilistic antisemitism all the time, or the obvious usage of "Zionist" to mean "Jew." It's not good. There is no concept of actual restorative justice for Palestinians or other people, such as Ukrainians, Syrians, Uyghurs, Taiwanese, etc, either undergoing genocide or facing the threat of it, because Western leftists have latched onto this cause solely as a stick to beat the Democratic Party with and have no actual moral interest or concern in stopping genocide elsewhere in the world or repudiating it as a method overall. They just want the state of Israel (which they characterize as a "proxy state for white western colonialism" despite the many, many things historically, religiously, and politically wrong with that statement, because it means it now Contains the Right Buzzwords to Oppose It) to be destroyed altogether in the name of "opposing colonialism," but it really seems to be all about opposing Jews. Hmm.

Simply put, Biden is not ever going to pursue a policy of "let's totally abandon Israel tomorrow, never sell it any weapons or allow it to defend its own civilians, and agree that Hamas is actually a good representation or advocate for the Palestinian people" in the way a number of Western Online Leftists seem to think he should do. There is still the fact that Israeli civilians do exist and that Hamas has continued to launch missiles at them daily, inconvenient as that fact might be for the Hamas fanboys (and fangirls) who now populate much of what passes for Western leftist discourse spaces. (Either that or they don't care, because in their view, Israeli civilians are fully acceptable collateral damage by virtue of simply living in Israel in the first place, which -- yikes. Fucking yikes. That is all.) The number of people professing to be lifelong leftists who are Just Shocked at all the antisemitism, or thinking that any and all antisemitism is just artificially introduced into leftist spaces by bad-faith right-wing/Nazi psyops either has not spent any actual time around leftists, or (more likely) simply does not listen to what they openly say. The antisemitism is virulent, constant, and only getting worse. On the most basic level, regardless of the other difficulties around the founding of Israel as a state in 1948 and the fact that doing so on some of the most bitterly religiously, politically, ethnically, and culturally contested territory in the world for over two thousand years was always going to be a massive clusterfuck, the fact of its immediate post-Holocaust creation simply cannot be ignored the way many Online Leftists do. Israel exists because of the worst antisemitic mass murder in recorded history (and that's a high bar). That fact must be incorporated into any actual discussions about its right either to exist or to protect its own civilians. But this gets turned into "Israel exists only as a puppet state of white western colonialists" which is just bad on so, so many levels.

The collective Western Online Leftist feeling seems to be that Hamas are innocent and wronged freedom fighters who are begging for a ceasefire and the cruel Israelis aren't granting them one. This is not true. Hamas has rejected multiple ceasefire opportunities, and continued to launch missiles and retaliatory attacks, because they are terrorists and they do not want or represent any serious opportunity to negotiate in the framework of western liberal democracy. They are treated as helpless woobified blorbos by much of the Western leftist-leaning internet. They are not. In that case, Biden bypassing Congress to sell Israel weapons (which was just something like 100 million of artillery shells, which is not nothing but still not a huge systematic thing like, say, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal) is not great. I do not support anything Israel is doing to Gaza. It is abhorrent. However, there are reasons for Biden to provide some limited amount of weapons to Israel without congressional approval that do not automatically and mindlessly equate to BIDEN SUPPORTS TOTAL GENOCIDE IN GAZA!!!!!!1 Especially when as I've said, the Online Leftists only care about stopping genocide when it fits their political self-righteousness, and absolutely not at all the rest of the time.

This is representative of the fact that Western Online Leftism has now completed its all-out descent into blind Noam Chomskyism. Chomsky has never met a "leftist" or "anti-Western" genocide he couldn't deny, excuse, or openly cheerlead (going all the way back to the 1970s and Pol Pot/the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and going up to the minute with Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine). Noam Chomsky is the leftist Henry Kissinger. His ethics and morals are equally abhorrent, he's just as willing to justify total genocide in the name of advancing his preferred political ideology, and while there were (justifiably) celebrations and gloating memes across Tumblr when Kissinger finally bit the dust, Chomsky's beliefs are replicated with slavish adoration in many other Tumblr spaces and spread in some form or another to the rest of the website, which now takes them as leftist gospel (and let's not even talk about Twitter). This represents my absolute frustration with the fact that Western Online Leftism has devolved to such a degraded, mindless, useless, and malevolent level that "cheerlead for any anti-western/Leftist TM terrorist group or state" is taken to be the be-all and end-all of their moral philosophy. Someone remarked that ISIS peaked too early; if they were still at the height of their powers today, they would have a legion of devoted white so-called progressive Twitter users shilling earnestly and angrily for them, and Christ, isn't that the fucking truth.

I know we live in a hard, frightening, complex, and difficult world, and it's hard to sort out what our moral responsibility and action should be at any given time, especially since the answer is always so frustratingly partial and incomplete. Nobody of basic good sense and decency wants to see Gaza leveled while the Israeli state continues to apply a number of violently cruel collective punishments even outside the actual daily bombing of civilians. But for the love of god, let's get rid of the idea that the continued mindless violence doesn't benefit Hamas (because it does; unsurprisingly, sympathy for their cause has soared in Gaza) as much as it does Israel, or that Hamas is some kind of benevolent peacemaker that is being thwarted by the cruel imperialist US/West. And going back to the incident that prompted you to send me this ask: white leftists have often and repeatedly demonstrated their withering disdain for black people, Democratic voters, "mainstream" Americans, and anyone else doesn't buy into the twisted tankie fantasy land where getting rid of Biden would somehow be a massive coup for social justice (by getting Trump, now openly announcing at every turn that he will be a dictator, back into office! Very praxis, much justice. Wow.)

In short: if you, a white person, stand up in Mother Emanuel AME -- one of the most sacred sites for Black churchgoers, who are indeed often heavily Democratic voters -- in the middle of a remembrance service for victims of white supremacist terrorism, after the Black pastor has asked you not to protest inside the church out of respect for the Black community coming together to relive its trauma -- just so you can heckle Biden and feel good about yourself, then Jesus Christ. You don't care about restorative justice for people of color, or literally any justice at all, much less "stopping genocide." You just want to use them as props for your Chomsky cosplay revolutionary fantasies and your sense of self-righteous superiority over literally everyone else, regardless of the real-world consequences. So I have no hesitation whatsoever in telling those people to get fucked. Often and repeatedly.

[talesofliia]

Can we please stop downplaying the struggle of one suffering people to show support for another?

My heart breaks at the atrocious news of Israel demolishing Palestine and the suffering of its people. And as a Ukrainian from Kharkiv, which Russia is desperately trying to wipe off the face of the earth, it also breaks my heart to see people claim that what’s happening in Ukraine isn’t enough to call it what it is – a genocide. How many more Ukrainians need to die for these people to acknowledge the reality of Russia’s actions? Are the destroyed Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages not enough? Must our entire country be in flames before they recognize Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide?

We, Ukrainians, are often perceived as either too “privileged” because we receive some humanitarian and military support, or not significant enough to garner widespread concern. If the same thing were happening in a Western European country, immediate action would be taken. Yet, we’re just Ukrainians, and it seems we matter less. Additionally, our struggle is constantly compared to that of Palestinians, and we’re criticized for seeking continued support.

Claiming that Ukrainians suffer “less” does nothing to help Palestinians. How is accusing us of trying to live our lives while missiles and drones are headed our way considered activism? There must be a better way to support one oppressed nation without minimizing the struggles of another.

People call out others for going to Starbucks but purchase from companies still operating in Russia. They hold Israelis accountable but welcome Russians, claiming they aren’t responsible for their government’s actions. They shout “Free Palestine” but ask Ukrainians to lay down arms and “make peace with Russia”. They boycott movies and series where actors condemned the Hamas attack on Israel but celebrate Russian filmmakers. They condemn the Israeli army for burning Palestinian books but continue to read Russian literature, claiming it’s beyond politics.

This world’s hypocrisy and attempts to blame victims and justify aggressors are disheartening. Supporting one oppressed nation should not mean diminishing the struggles of another. It’s not obligatory to show support for every oppressed nation in the world, but using one’s suffering to undermine the significance of another’s is harmful.

Keep supporting Palestine, keep donating, and raising your voices for them because their lives matter and they need all the help they can get. But do NOT drag Ukrainians down, deny the genocide we experience daily, or question our right to fight for our existence as a free nation. Do not let Russia destroy us completely. There’s still time, and the least you can do is not give our aggressor any advantage. Stand with justice. Stand with Ukraine. Do better.

[nerdylittleguy]

are spidersonas still a thing? yes? cool cool...

Okay, he's not my spidersona per se, he's based on a favourite character from a forgotten 80s show (robin of sherwood, and the character's name is Nasir, if you're interested) but I wanted to make a spiderman based on him since watching atsv, but because of how well Pavitr was designed (culture and representation wise) I wanted to make him also more representative, but had no idea where to start where to even find designs or inspiration. So I wrote down in one of my many diaries that he's Palestinian, and left it at that for months.

And, if you're somehow not yet aware, Palestine has actually been noticed by the west for the past month, though it should have been for more. People should not have to die, civilians should not have to die, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, bakeries and people should not be targeted by a powerful military, blamed for the conditions of their suffering and resistance under an apartheid state. I'm Polish, fun fact, and when Russia started its invasion of Ukraine we were all crapping ourselves, supporting the Ukrainian fight back against people who had already oppressed them in the past. Of course, every story of oppression is different, but the moral is this: the world supported Ukrainian resistance against oppression, and suddenly when it's in the oh-so dreaded middle east, it's apparently a threat to everyone, and apparently it's completely justifiable to murder innocent civilians, but not justifiable for them to fight back. Ideally, I'd like to say "violence is never the answer, it's not correct to fight fire with fire" but realistically, after 75 years of oppression, of western ignorance, what other options are there? You cannot debate for peace with a government that calls you "children of darkness" or "human animals" or whatever other dehumanising things the Israeli government and military have been saying. Now is the obligatory time I feel I need to clarify, no, I do not support acts of terror (from either side!! Israel deserves as much criticism as Hamas, if not more, seeing as they are a powerful military) and no, I am not antisemitic. I have not been studying World War 2 for almost 4 years as an autistic hobby to be called antisemitic, but also neither to ignore a genocide unfolding before our eyes on social media. My issue is not with Jewish people, who have suffered for years, centuries, especially in Europe, my issue is with the weaponisation of the Holocaust and the misleading Israeli/ Zionist idea that they, the children of the Holocaust, cannot cause the same atrocities. Especially when many, many Jews, also children of Holocaust survivors have spoken out again Israel and its actions towards Palestinians. Trauma is a cycle, one that the state of Israel has clearly not dealt with and is now willing to cause in another population.

So. Autism and activism (another fun fact, I'm a former climate activist who quit due to burn out) combined in my brain to make this artwork. I have a few more drawings of Nasir as spiderman, I'm still mulling over if I want to post them, but if people want to take my design and run with it, redraw it, make it more accurate or interesting (I literally just took the patterns on the keffiyeh and threw them on a spiderman suit, not very creative, or not as much as it could have been) absolutely do so. I would ask for a little credit, but if you feel you make the design entirely your own, it's yours. I'm just some Polish idiot living in the UK, what do I know about accurate middle eastern representation? (Also feel free to use this as pfps and what not, I don't care, I'll be happy with the knowledge I drew it, and if it makes you happy, I've achieved more than I hoped.)

Obviously activism has more to offer than just drawing spiderman, so if you can, write to your MPs or representatives or what have you, share information (I will do my best to share information on tumblr as I have been very inactive on here recently), maybe even attend protests if you can, but first and foremost, stay thinking!! Stay learning and educating yourself as having information keeps you one step ahead of propaganda. If you have the energy to, compare and criticise different news outlets, find yourself some Gazan news sources and journalists (a lot of people have been following Motaz, Bisan and Plestia on Instagram, I don't have that but it's easy to find reposts of their videos on tiktok or twitter) and stay informed!! Boycott those companies suggested by BDS, MacDonalds, Starbucks and Disney as the main ones (or just ignore capitalism all together and shop local!! That's what I've been trying to do, but obviously it's not an option for everyone, it's better to have focused efforts on those big three than smaller, scattered attempts at boycotting). We all have something we can do to help and show out support.

However, from my burnt out activist's perspective I have to highlight that you MUST take time for yourself, your hobbies, your wellbeing. Yes, you are privileged to be able to turn it off, but from my privilege of experience, I tell you that you will burn out and loose your spark. You need to be able to support those who need us (and not just in Palestine, but in the DR of Congo and many other places where crises and genocides are occuring) but you can't do that if you've burnt yourself out. You, your comfort and safety is important, your ability to sustainably fight for these important causes is more valuable than you know. Important causes like these require a lot of energy, but we as activists cannot let ourselves become completely burnt out as there will be no one left to fight. Just pace yourself. Do as much as you are comfortable with. Everyone has different styles of activism, different abilities, and that's the beauty of us. We can do so much if we don't start with too much and end up burnt out.

In conclusion, Free Palestine <3

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

The Ukrainian Fencer Olga Kharkan got unfairly disqualified from the World Championship today because she refused to shake the Russian Fencer's hand after winning

Here is what happened:

She got later disqualified.

And a bit more context (I used to fence and have been following fencing for years): True, in fencing it is good manners and rules that after the fight the two opponents shake hands. It is a symbolic gesture of friendliness, sportsmanship and respect for the opponent. Normally, the winner offers his hand to the loser. Refusal of this sporting gesture can be punished by the judges, in the most extreme case with disqualification.

Now comes the big but.

The handshake is not obligatory. Alternatively, the weapons can be crossed (exactly what the Ukrainian fencer offered after the fight, as you can clearly see). The Russian fencer did not want this and insisted on the handshake.

For understandable reasons, the Ukrainian fencer refused (especially since she had offered a gesture of respect shortly before).

And what does the Russian do? Playing the poor, poor victim and staging a childish sit-down strike.

(By the way, after the Ukrainian had defeated her clearly and by a large margin. The fights lasted max. 3 rounds. Already after round 1 the Ukrainian was leading 8:6 and in round 2 she was the first to score 15 points (15:7)).

In the end she even pushes through that the Ukrainian fencer is actually disqualified.

And a bit more context:

The FIE (the international fencing federation) refused to exclude Russian athletes from competitions.

This could be due to the fact that the FIE has a long, friendly financial relationship with Russia. The money comes from Alisher Usmanov - a Russian oligarch and one of the 100 richest people in the world. He is actually the president of the FIE. Because of the sanctions he has to pause since March 2022. Yes, pause. De facto he is still president. Interim because of sanctions makes the job just someone else.

After massive pressure from the public and various countries (e.g. Poland), the FIE then announced that the Russian athletes must start under a white flag.

With the white flag they should start basically neutrally, so detached from the war against Ukraine. And the Russian athletes are ooof cooourse all toootaaal neutral. Nooothing is about politics.

Well ... works only half-good (not at all) in a country (Russia), where the sport is politicized and the connection to the military is very close.

Small example with said Russian fencer: She supports the Russian war of aggression, her brother fights in the Russian military in Ukraine.

Totally neutral. Not.

By the way, the Ukrainian fencer was disqualified from the entire world championship.

[mariacallous]

Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Security Council on Friday that urged a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza.

The text, which was supported by 10 other members of the 15-member Security Council, called on all parties in the conflict to abide by international humanitarian law and rejected any efforts to reduce the territory of Gaza through the creation of a security buffer zone, an idea that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put forward in his plan for Gaza’s postwar future.

The resolution is the latest sign of a subtle shift in the Biden administration’s stance on the war as it seeks to curb the spiraling humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged Palestinian territory. However, experts say it does not represent a meaningful departure from Washington’s long-standing support for Israel at the United Nations. 

“The U.S. was not attempting to make a fundamental shift in its policy at the U.N. over the war,” said Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s U.N. director. 

Washington has historically used its position as a permanent member of the Security Council to defend Israel, including by exercising the U.S. veto. Friday was the fourth time the council held a vote on a cease-fire resolution since the start of the war. The previous three efforts were vetoed by the United States for failing to include language referring to Israel’s right to self-defense and for calling for an unconditional cease-fire that was not linked to the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas. 

U.S. sponsorship of this latest resolution was likely intended to send a message to the Netanyahu government. “The mere fact that the U.S. was willing to do anything in the Security Council at all was a small signal to the Israelis to be cautious,” Gowan said. 

The Biden administration has stood by Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which saw 1,200 people killed and 240 people taken hostage, and has continued to provide the country with military aid in the face of mounting domestic and international criticism. 

At the same time, U.S. President Joe Biden has become increasingly frustrated by what he has described as the “indiscriminate” nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza and the throttling of humanitarian aid into the territory.

Even if the resolution had passed, it would likely have had little “operational impact,” said Louis Charbonneau, Human Rights Watch’s U.N. director, who noted that the text refrained from using some of the more forceful language seen in other similar Security Council resolutions. “If you wanted to have strong obligatory language, it would say ‘demands’ an ‘immediate and sustained cease-fire.’ It doesn’t say that,” Charbonneau said. 

Language used in Security Council resolutions is carefully calibrated, as even slight shifts in tone and word choice can carry significant diplomatic meaning. The 2,000-word U.S. resolution tabled on Friday, which refers to Israel by name only once, said the Security Council “determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained cease-fire.”

Russia and China cited that watered-down wording as a reason for their veto. Ahead of the vote, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said Moscow supported a cease-fire, but he described the U.S. resolution as an “empty rhetorical exercise.” China’s U.N. ambassador, Zhang Jun, made similar comments. “If the U.S. was serious about a cease-fire, it wouldn’t have vetoed time and again multiple council resolutions,” he said. “It wouldn’t have taken such a detour and played a game of words while being ambiguous and evasive on critical issues.”

Russia has faced increased scrutiny at the U.N. over the past two years for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “The Russians, in particular, from the get-go used the war [in Gaza] as an opportunity to distract from their own behavior in Ukraine and put the U.S. on the back foot,” Gowan said.

Permanent council members have long wielded their vetoes to protect their interests and those of their allies, but they were often able to work effectively on other fronts. Now, tensions between Russia and the West are increasingly seeping into all areas of the council’s work, diplomats say.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, including some 13,000 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas but whose casualty figures are regarded as broadly accurate. Israel has severely limited humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has left much of the population on the brink of a catastrophic famine, the World Bank warned this week. 

Friday’s vote at the Security Council came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the Middle East on his sixth trip to the region since the war began. After a meeting in Cairo to discuss ongoing efforts to broker a cease-fire, Blinken said it would be a “mistake” for Israel to launch a planned ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge from the conflict. 

A defiant Netanyahu said the operation would go ahead, with or without U.S. support. “I hope we will do it with the support of the U.S., but if we have to, we will do it alone,” he said.

[theculturedmarxist]

With the USSR, it was even easier to find a pretext for belligerence. Here was an empire of self-evident evil, and an atheist one at that. Its collapse created a gaping void for US grand strategists, who couldn’t help displaying a certain blasphemous nostalgia for their communist adversary. Just look at the names affixed to American military operations overseas. During the Cold War these were banal and arbitrary: the terrorist campaign against Castro’s Cuba was called Operation Mongoose; the mission to torture and assassinate members of the Vietcong was known as Program Phoenix; the bombardment of Cambodia, Operation Menu; Nickel Grass denoted the airborne delivery of arms to Israel during the Yom Kippur War; Praying Mantis the attack on Iran in 1988. Yet the register changed after the fall of the Wall. The 1989 invasion of Panama, Operation Just Cause, marked a new grandiloquence. In 1991, as the USSR crumbled, the US embarked on mission Restore Hope in Somalia, while Haiti saw the pinnacle of this Orwellian newspeak with operation Uphold Democracy in 1994. There followed Joint Endeavour in Bosnia (1995), Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan (2001), Iraqi Freedom (2003), and the classicizing Odyssey Dawn in Libya (2011).

If warfare in the communist era had a religious valence, in the post-communist world it became a question of morality – of humanity. We no longer speak of an Evil Empire but of ‘rogue states’. The enemy is to us what the criminal and gunslinger is to the sheriff. When we talk of ‘outlaw’ nations we embark, à la Carl Schmitt, on a ‘conceptual construction of penal-criminalistic nature proper to international law’: ‘the discriminatory concept of the enemy as a criminal and the attendant implication of justa causa run parallel to the intensification of the means of destruction and the disorientation of the theaters of war’.

Elsewhere, Schmitt notes that ‘to confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity’. As we edge, like sleepwalkers, closer to the abyss of nuclear war, one can’t help recalling the words of the Nazi jurist (who didn’t seem to realise he was also talking about his own regime): ‘weapons of absolute annihilation . . . require an absolute enemy, lest they should be absolutely inhuman’.

The contemporary period, then, is marked by a yearning for the Crusades. But in European public opinion one can sense a certain apathy, a lukewarm resignation if not thinly-veiled scepticism: the kind one feels when watching a film one’s seen too many times. The media still denounces Putin’s atrocities and makes obligatory comparisons with the Hitlers and Stalins of the past, yet it does so with the enthusiasm of a bored schoolchild, almost as if le coeur n’y était pas. How many times have we woken up to the news that our former allies have suddenly become reprobates and criminals? How can we forget that Saddam Hussein was furnished with chemical weapons to use against Iran before he was designated a war criminal himself? Or that Bashar al-Assad was deemed reliable enough to torture prisoners at the behest of the CIA before he became a so-called international pariah?

It also strains credulity that the US wants to see alleged war criminals tried in an international tribunal which it does not even recognise; that it supports Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime but refuses to tolerate Russia’s presence in Crimea and the Donbas; that it recognises the ethno-territorial grievances of Kosovar minorities in Serbia but not those of the Russophone minority in Ukraine, and so on. How can we take seriously the West’s invectives against authoritarian regimes, and calls to defend democracy, when our democratic leaders lay out the red carpet for a Saudi Prince who butchers critical journalists and an Egyptian General who executes political prisoners by the tens of thousands?

[coldcowboysoul]

Four South American nations to jointly bid for 2030 World Cup

The Argentine Football Association announced on the 7th that it will jointly bid with Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay to host the 2030 World Cup. Uruguay hosted the first World Cup in 1930. South American Football Confederation President Alejandro Dominguez said: "The 2030 World Cup is not only a football event, but also a commemoration of the century-old World Cup. FIFA has It is obligatory to remember the predecessors who hosted the first World Cup."

Dominguez proposed last year that FIFA should award South American football stars Pele and Maradona with the 2030 World Cup Centennial Trophy to commemorate their outstanding contributions. According to the BBC, Chile and Argentina hosted the World Cup in 1962 and 1978 respectively. Argentine Football Federation President Tapia said: "Hosting the World Cup is the dream of all South Americans-not only to commemorate the centennial World Cup, but also because our lives are full of passion for football." Argentine President Alberto Fernandez also on social media It called on Bolivia to join in the bid.

The results of the 2030 World Cup bid will be announced at the 74th FIFA Congress in 2024. The main competitors of the four South American countries are from Europe. Spain, Portugal and Ukraine also bid jointly, and this combination is also supported by UEFA. The US "Sports News" website stated that Spain is the subject of the joint bid and will provide 11 competition venues, while Portugal will provide 3 stadiums. The number of venues that Ukraine can provide is still unclear. cab사이트 predicts that there may be only one stadium for a small number of games.

Spain hosted the World Cup in 1982. Portugal has never been the host of the World Cup. It only hosted the European Championship in 2004. Ukraine also co-hosted the European Championship in 2012 with Poland. In addition, Morocco is also interested in the 2030 World Cup, and Egypt, Greece and Saudi Arabia are also interested in a joint bid.

The 2026 World Cup will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. The World Cup will be restructured, and the number of participating teams in the final stage will increase from 32 to 48. With the expansion of the scale of the competition, a joint bid to host the World Cup may become a trend. After all, the joint bid can allow relevant countries to share resources while reducing investment risks in finance and infrastructure.

The US media said that co-hosting the World Cup can effectively allocate resources and minimize the waste of facilities after the event. "The most important thing is that the World Cup is a symbol of sports that crosses traditional boundaries to unite people's hearts, so why can't it be a shining example of cooperation between the hosts? "But there is also the view that co-hosting will damage the pride of the host country.

[fierytakeferdinand]

UK’s Political Landscape is not unlike a zombie apocalypse story.

What it says on the tin.

Let’s do a brief recap:

Tories have shit the bed, like all conservatives before them and how all of them after, they have stolen from the people and given to their corporate donors/handlers, protected their landlord/theft businesses and

Environmentalists are the only ones who seem to be doing anything but they’re basically single-issue grass simps so it’s hard to get excited about anything they do and most people still shit on them relentlessly massively missing the entire point of all the paint throwing and parliament occupying. Although at least they’re doing something so even if we disagree they have my undying respect.

GreenAndPleasant types are in a superposition of being stalin-apologist anti-Ukraine red-fascist tankie morons while also simultaneously rushing to defense of fucking landlords as long as there’s a sob story. I would say something witty here but the word “Gallery of Morons” is all I can think of so let’s leave it at that.

DemSocs/SuccDems don’t exist here, Labour party liberals are sizeable and had a chance to become a real opposition under Corbyn, but post-massacre by the media, the liberal leadership of Keir still feels like it’ll lose simply because of a boomer monolith voting tories despite the country being now the poorest in Western Europe thanks to Tories, but what can you or I do against them, they are somehow a completely different species, a horror truly beyond my understanding on every level, the kind of “people” who complain about Starbucks baristas not smiling(?) and being “gormless”(??) on Google Maps(???).

Pictured: Anti-Trans hate group. One foot in the grave, the other in other people’s business where it doesn’t belong. Probably the same kind of people who leave the kinds of reviews I posted above.

The Greens basically don’t do anything of note and lost their one exciting candidate for leadership (or rather a duo — Amelia Womack and Tamsin Omond), but at least not to the openly TERF candidate — Shahrar Ali. I’ll drink to that, he can die in a fire, but the fact he was anywhere near a progressive party is already incredibly concerning.

Anarchists are non-existent. LAF pretty much already existed only on Facebook with occasional events and meetups but haven’t done anything since August and their posts get no interactions other than a few random boomers talking about the biker gang sons of anarchy (fucking lol) or making nonsensical comments appended by obligatory elipses, so I doubt they got all that much attendance.

Most users on /r/unitedkingdom are either fence-sitters or pro-labour but they don’t matter compared to the tory monolith that made this country poorer than Poland. And these are the fucking internet using young progressives railing against the system??? What the fuck. Even those who support socialism seem to have this “oh it’ll happen eventually” attitude and just sit on their hands.

In a country known as TERF Island, most trans rights activists are sitting writing essays (and yes I realize the irony), and arranging piss bottles outside headquarters instead of breaking windows with them.

Why is it like this?

Well, because I think we’re past the saving-the-world stage and into the all-we-can-do-is-critique-it stage.

This feels like cyberpunk genuinely. Or a Zombie Apocalypse story. The two are alike in that they share a similar distinction of being set in a static, usually unmoving world, portrayed as a sort of endpoint of history and societal evolution rather than as an age of turmoil and transformation.

This is what separates cyberpunk fiction (and I’m using just a general average of cyberpunk worlds, of course there are outliers) — from other political fiction.

Star Trek is kind of anti-establishment in some ways because it’s effectively a different establishment critiquing our time, in episodes such as The Drumhead, witch hunts and well, “drumhead trials” are critiqued through a story taking place in a society that’s not invulnerable to it’s occasional reappearance, but has learned to spot it, and has learned to fight it. It critiques our society, which has not yet done so. The positive ending is a foregone conclusion because the portrayal is ultimately a utopia, but it’s moral lessons come from defeating challenges.

Cyberpunk fiction’s moral lessons then come from the exact opposite, the world is a dystopia, the bad conclusion to the story is a foregone one, but seeing it transpire allows us to critique it.

Similarly, zombie apocalypse stories allow us to examine human morality in close critique under extreme pressure, it does not provide solutions to complex moral dilemmas nearly as often as simply letting them play out.

The zombie apocalypse is often beyond comprehension, beyond resistance, it is simply an unstoppable force of nature, a world of “is” and that’s that, and all one can do is survive, a constant, like death.

Sure there’s some exceptions, like The Last Of Us or Children of Men (which isn’t a zombie story but basically is), but those stories rarely end with the apocalypse being un-done or fixed or the state of the world made better because that’s just a plot device more than not, something to get characters moving from situation to situation.

In Cyberpunk, similarly most characters either don’t resist the world order at all, or do so out of selfish, malformed reasons, being the products of the very world they resist, and even when they do resist the world, and do so for the right reasons, they very rarely succeed making even a dent in the monolithic power structures that govern their world with the power equal to that of the new natural laws of The Walking Dead.

There is dystopian fiction that does provide solutions of sorts, like idk, Total Recall for (not a great) example: is pretty anti-capitalist typical Paul Veerhoven action film that gives solutions, namely, get Arnold Schwarznegger to shoot the bad guy and at the end of the story like this, characters either solve the problems, or make the world better in some way, they make a difference towards a brighter future.

But it’s harder and harder to think we live in the latter type of dystopia than the former. Remember that monolith of boomer voters that feel like a static, unmoving thing seemingly unaffected by the actual reality of the country, behaving in ways incomprehensible to normal human beings? It’s kinda like that. Like zombies, that just keep coming and coming, with no end. All one can do is delay the inevitable end on a personal level.

It’s not about saving the world in those types of stories, it’s about saving yourself, and the world exists as an endpoint of social evolution, and it exists solely to take you from yourself, and when even holding onto that is a struggle, saving the world feels akin to curing death — an incomprehensibly complex task.

Still, at the very least I hope to make a positive difference somehow, do something more than just saving myself, preserving my mind only to comprehend fresh horrors of late stage capitalism.

Even if it’s just to know I tried, even if I don’t believe it will actually do something. Political morons might be endless, and fighting them feels hopeless, but helping someone get a meal, that’s at least one day they won’t starve as much for.

[sounmashnews]

[ad_1] Press play to hearken to this text BIRMINGHAM, England — Liz Truss named her priorities as “growth, growth, growth” in a Conservative Party convention speech interrupted by environmental protesters. In her first handle to Tory convention as prime minister — which got here after a bruising week marked by a high-profile tax U-turn and occasion infighting — a combative Truss hit out at opposition events, commerce unions, “vested interests dressed up as think tanks,” pundits, Brexit “deniers” and marketing campaign group Extinction Rebellion as obstacles to progress. During the Birmingham speech, two Greenpeace activists raised an indication studying “Who voted for this?”, a problem to the federal government’s determination to elevate a ban on fracking for shale fuel. It prompted the prime minister, who was cheered by supporters within the room amid the disruption, to dismiss the pair as a part of “the anti-growth coalition” shortly after they had been bundled out by safety. Truss, who has confronted sharp criticism of a latest tax-cutting funds, used her half-hour handle to vow to interrupt Britain out of a “high-tax, low-growth cycle,” arguing it's “wrong to invest only in places which are thriving, as economic models often have it.” “For too long the political debate has been dominated by the argument about how we distribute a limited economic pie,” she stated, reprising a well-known theme. “Instead, we need to grow the pie so that everyone gets a bigger slice.” Britain’s new premier sought to cement her financial message — specifically that progress will comply with her initially controversial insurance policies — after being knocked off track earlier this week with an abrupt reversal of plans to chop the highest fee of tax. The tax climbdown got here after open dissent in Tory ranks, however will not be sufficient to convey the occasion again collectively. Even her Cabinet seems divided as a choice looms on whether or not to extend social safety funds consistent with inflation. Truss poured scorn on “the voices of decline” and vowed to take the laborious selections obligatory to make sure “Britain’s best days lie ahead.” Strikingly absent from the speech was any point out of her journey to the highest job, opposed by greater than half of her parliamentary colleagues, or efforts to convey the Conservatives again collectively after weeks of bitter rows. While Truss pledged to “get us through the tempest,” she didn't dwell on the challenges confronted by the U.Ok. this winter as voters depend the price of rising inflation. With the speech held within the smaller of two auditoriums on the convention’s Birmingham venue, Truss spoke to a packed corridor. However, many attendees had disappeared early to keep away from rail strikes. The prime minister obtained a standing ovation for her phrases on Ukraine, as she argued that the West didn't stand as much as Russia early sufficient and vowed this “won’t happen again.” Labour dismissed the convention handle, with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves saying: “Liz Truss has been a government minister for the last 10 years. She has been at the heart of building a Conservative economy that has led to the flat wages and low growth she highlighted today.” In the wake of the speech, Truss’ press secretary defended its lack of coverage bulletins, promising a lot within the weeks to return and saying the speech was brief “because she wants to get on with delivering stuff.” pl_facebook_pixel_args = []; pl_facebook_pixel_args.userAgent = navigator.userAgent; pl_facebook_pixel_args.language = navigator.language; if ( document.referrer.indexOf( document.domain ) < 0 ) pl_facebook_pixel_args.referrer = document.referrer; !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';

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[amaryllisblackthorn]

so like, contrary to what seems to be the common/popular belief, I don’t think Meister and Mr. Chidouin are actually the literal same person?

i think one is a doll of the other, with Mr. Chidouin *probably* being the doll,

for one i just don’t believe everything we see about and hear from him in the Kai flashback & emails were lies? they portray him as someone who is aware of the Death Game and trying to keep Sara *out* of it, even putting his own life on the line –

...If it comes to it, I’m trusting you with Sara.

That girl’s destiny has so much potential for change that I’ve put my own life on the line…

Hello hellooooo! (^^)/ Feelin kinda in danger lately.... Well ok, its Sara they're after. She's been targeted. I'm attached to this house, but I guess I gotta discard it and run. ...Will you come with, Kai?

i mean, yeah, he doesn’t specifically name the Death Game iirc. and it’s also  possible that Mr. Chidouin’s just completely lying to Kai, but like. I guess I don’t see any real reason to doubt it other than his apparent connection to Meister

also like why would Mr. Chidouin be wearing a different suit&hat/outfit (the flashforward at the end of 2-2) than Meister? i guess anything’s possible but like, i don’t see why he’d be wearing a completely different outfit idk

generally what i think is going on is:

Meister is the man from the Memorandum, the survivor of the Death Game from the ‘Hades Incident’

all of the candidates in the current Death Game are his biological children, and the purpose of this Death Game is to determine a successor

this means all the candidates are related

this also includes Sou ‘Midori’ Hiyori

Shin and Kanna probably have the same biological mother, too; 

Shin is prob also adopted, which makes more sense with him not knowing if his sibling was older or younger than the alternative tbh

Alice and Reko’s situation is admittedly ??, but it’s still  possible 

 I wonder if AI Reko’s comments about her dad are relevant at all ? maybe not but hm

i also wonder if the ‘something’ Megumi was looking for, when Keiji seems to ask about her reason for joining the police, was her father, which led to Asu-Naro? maybe? i’m not like committed to this thought, but I do think she was aware of the relation with her and Keiji but idk

the cult-like aspects of Asu-Naru are interesting and curious, too; it goes beyond just like, a yakuza organization/organized crime syndicate, so i wonder what that’s all about

the reason why Kai was sent to the Chidouins was at least in part bc the organization began to suspect Mr Chidouin’s loyalty [maybe]

Mr Chidouin talked about and acknowledged Kai’s guard work even though Kai was hired to help around the house and with Mr Chidouin’s work, with Kai’s guarding of Sara being originally on the behalf of Asu-Naro

Mr Chidouin says the the apron he gave Kai belonged to his own mother, so there is the question of would a (self aware) doll consider her his/their own mother, which is possible but admittedly something to thing about. the alternative situation, with Mr Chidouin being the human from the Hades Incident and Meister being his doll carries the question of if (male) dolls can reproduce -- which I guess is possible but also pretty weird but I am acknowledging the possibility to cover my bases

there is the question as to why Meister’s doll counterpart would be raising Sara out of all the participants -- there’s no real way they could have known her parallels to the girl from the Memorandum when she was just a baby. I imagine Sara’s mother is her biological one since they share similar hair color based on what we’ve seen. I wonder if maybe she has any connection to the original Memorandum girl? I also wonder if she knows anything at all -- we know she considers Kai family but not if she knows everything. 

I have a lot more thoughts that I’ll probably use another post for instead of going on here. but basically I just wanted to express that I do not think Mr Chidouin and Meister are the same person -- or rather that I do think Mr Chidouin and Meister are separate people, with one being the doll of the other. also that all the candidates are related through Meister and the Death Game’s purpose is one of succession -- which is super messed up ?? but i’ll guess we’ll see how everything plays out

i could be wrong of course but i just wanted to put my thoughts out there

also obligatory 🟦🟨  Слава Україні / Slava Ukraini ! 💙💛

[thephilosopherspupil]

Serious advice for those who are overwhelmed and upset by recent news (Texas, Ukraine, etc):

1. Log off. Stop doomscrolling. Reading the news will not make things better. Past a certain point, you are not getting more informed. Go outside for a walk to clear your head, eat a nice snack, whatever works for you.

2. Research actual concrete ways you can help. What are reputable groups (ETA: Please, please, PLEASE do your research on this) you can donate to? Especially if things are happening far away, giving money is more directly effective than symbolic support - feeling shitty about the world is a normal human response but won’t actually improve things, and you do not have a positive duty to feel as bad as possible. What political action can you take - calling your MP, signing petitions, going to protests? You don’t have to do all of these, but picking something which actually has a connection to the levers of power (i.e. “I am going to call my MP and tell them to support opening the borders to refugees”; “I am going to call my local congressman and tell them that their anti-trans bill is wrong and they are losing votes”; “I am going to make it costly and embarrassing for politicians to be public bigots”) matters. It’s easy to get caught up in the trap of “oh god the world is giant and horrible and cruel and I can do nothing about it” - but there are some things you can do.

3. Effective political activism isn’t an individual thing. Look for existing organizations and see what work you can do within them, even if it’s something small. You won’t be able to do this for all — or even most — of the issues you come across, but picking one thing and being like, “OK, I am regularly contributing to the lessening of injustice in the world in this one way” is a way that you can make a difference. You do not need to be a hero or a martyr to positively contribute to a better world. 

Obligatory disclaimer: I am just a random person on the internet, these are things that have helped me feel less despair and political anomie, ymmv. 

[beardedmrbean]

Germany's Bundestag rejected a proposal to impose a vaccine mandate on those older than 60, which was supported by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach.

The vote was expected to be close, as demonstrated by Scholz calling Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock out of a major NATO meeting on Ukraine to return to Berlin and cast her vote.

However, if the government had expected the vote to sit on a knife's edge, they were mistaken, meaning Baerbock's presence was not necessary. Of 674 Bundestag MPs, 378 voted against the vaccine mandate, while 296 supported it.

Baerbock's departure drew political criticism at home. CDU veteran and foreign affairs expert Norbert Röttgen wrote on Twitter: "The vote on obligatory vaccination is very important. But the war in Europe is more important now."

Green Party politician Omid Nouripour meanwhile defended his party colleague, saying "everyone in NATO" understands how domestic parliamentary issues can sometimes intervene.

Big political defeat for Scholz

The measure's rejection was a major blow to Scholz and his governing coalition, consisting of the chancellor's Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Schloz opted to let lawmakers propose the vaccine mandate measures and vote on them freely, as opposed to letting his cabinet bring its own proposal forward.

But this allowed members to vote their conscience and several senior FDP members came out against mandating vaccines, joining instead the conservative opposition CDU/CSU in rejecting the measure.

After the vote, politicians traded blame, with SPD and Greens members furious with the FDP for not committing to the goals of their coalition and also with the CDU, for not allowing its members to vote their conscience, which they said could have delivered more votes for the measure.

Lauterbach: 'We move on'

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach reacted to the failure of his preferred policy choice with concern.

"It is a very important important decision, because now the fight against corona in Autumn become much more difficult. Laying political blame does not help. We move on," Lauterbach wrote on his twitter account.

The German Hospitals' Association (DKG) reacted to the vote with disappointment. "At the end of the day we're now standing in front of a pile of rubble, for which every party shares responsibility," DKG chief Gerald Gaß said.

He added that the effort was doomed to fail, when Chancellor Scholz left it up to the legislature to sort out the question of mandates, as opposed to his cabinet offering up a plan.

Proponents sought to prepare for fall

Social Democratic Party MP Dagmar Schmidt introduced the legislative proposal, encouraging members to vote for the measure, saying "today is not about what's happening now, but what will very likely happen in the fall."

She added that it was important to have a foundation of large-scale immunization to face a larger outbreak later in the year.

Greens MP Janosch Dahmen urged the Bundestag consider the science showing that those over 60 years old were very vulnerable to severe disease from COVID-19 infection.

Dahmen said the Bundestag also had a responsibility to listen to the majority of Germans who have come out in support of the vaccine mandate.

Opposition: vaccine mandate 'not necessary'

But the opposition center-right CDU argued that a vaccine mandate was not necessary, given the fact that cases were going down across the country.

CDU MP Tino Sorge told the legislative body that since the current situation did not show an overwhelmed health care system, nor an emergency situation in the intensive care units, it was not necessary to impose vaccine requirements.

Sorge added that a vaccine mandate would not help in the fall if a new variant of the various, likely resistant to vaccines, takes hold.

Senior member of the FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki also spoke against the mandate echoing Sorge's point about variants but also adding that vaccines "would not help us reach heard immunity" and saying it was unconstitutional to force adults to have the jab. "It is not the job of this house to protect adults against their own will," Kubicki said.

Far-right leader Alice Weidel said the vaccine mandate was "not just radically hostile to the constitution, but a totalitarian measure." Weidel told the Bundestag that a compromise on the vaccine mandate for those over 60 was a "trojan horse," framing the policy as a measure to give the federal government more power over citizens' freedom.

Roughly 3 in 4 Germans vaccinated

Already, vaccination is obligatory for health care workers. But further expansion has sparked a wider debate in German society.

Some 76% of Germans have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, while roughly 59% have received a booster.

A recent opinion poll revealed that 60% of Germans support a vaccine mandate; although fewer believe this can actually be achieved.

The vote in the Bundestag came as Germany has now lifted most of its major coronavirus restrictions, after the legislature voted to end them and allow states to make their own decisions on the matter.

[canchewread]

Editor’s Note: actually for once I don’t have very much to add here so please check out the most recent articles on my completely free to read Patreon Blog: “Warren's Technocratic Incrementalism, Liberalism, Foreign Policy & the Gaetz Gang's Dangerous Gambit” as well as “On Bernie Sanders, Polling and Perception.”

If I’m being entirely honest with you here, I must admit at this point that I’m so tired of writing about the “Russia” part of Russiagate that I could literally go the rest of my life without typing the words “Putin,” “treason,” or “Kremlin” again.

Despite being one of the earliest independent writers to identify the strong odor of bullsh*t in all of the most salacious claims of the scandal, I didn’t even bother to write the obligatory “declaration of victory” article when the Mueller report finally put two bullets into the back of this mad conspiracy theory’s head. Why? Well, because by that point I was just too f*cking exhausted to bother after literally two full years and change of refuting the same comically poor “evidence” that swine emperor Trump was a “Russian asset” each time the mainstream media repackaged it into a new variation on the still completely unhinged theme.

Unfortunately regardless of my general loathing of the subject, it remains utterly impossible to explain the severity of swine emperor Trump’s tinpot dictator turn in the Ukraine call scandal without being forced to discuss why this situation is in fact not “exactly like Russiagate” - an effort that is certainly not aided by the Democratic Party and “liberal” corporate media’s inexplicable insistence on bringing the matter up repeatedly; both to try and pile more damage onto Trump, and to attack heterodox candidates in the 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest.

As I wrote in the graphic above, there is literally no question whatsoever of whether or not Trump is guilty here - to quote Robert Reich in the October 5th online edition of the Guardian: “There are only two questions at stake, and the answers to both are becoming more obvious to more Americans every day.

The first is whether asking a foreign power to dig up dirt on a political opponent is an impeachable offense. The answer is indubitably yes.

When the framers of the constitution gave Congress the power to impeach a president, one of the high crimes they had in mind was acceding to what Alexander Hamilton called “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”. James Madison argued for impeachment lest a president “might betray his trust to foreign powers”.

The second question is whether Trump did this. The answer is also an unqualified yes. In the published version of his phone conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump asks for the “favor” of digging up dirt on Joe Biden.“

This is of course without even mentioning the fact that the Klepto Kaiser literally went on f*cking TV and did precisely the same damn thing he’d just denied doing, when he asked China and Ukraine to dig up dirt on 2020 Democratic Party nomination candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Frankly it doesn’t even matter that Biden’s son almost certainly did trade on his father’s name to get a position on a Ukrainian energy company’s board for which he was obviously wholly unqualified; if Trump wanted to go after Joe Biden’s possible corruption he has an entire Department of Justice for that - this was political persecution against a potential 2020 opponent; Herr Donald is absolutely guilty here regardless.

This case should be a slam dunk sell for Democrats, and yet it’s not - not even among the many millions of people who legitimately hate Donald Trump and know that he’s a literal fascist.

Sure part of that is mistrust of establishment power and the humiliation of having been tricked, however briefly, by the shittiest Austin Powers script known to humankind, but part of it is almost certainly also raw and fully earned animosity to the established neoliberal order. Mainstream Democrats and elite liberal influencers clearly have no idea the degree of damage they’ve done to relationships with their own voter coalitions by repeatedly gaslighting the American public and smearing anyone who opposed them politically as pawns of Vladdy Putin and the “KGB.” I’m not just talking about Republicans here, but even left wing activists have fallen under the assault of ruling class liberal McCarthyism; including Black Lives Matter protestors, Bernie Sanders supporters and Green Party voters.

Understandably, spending two years censoring left wing voices online and calling anyone who poses a threat to your control over the Democratic Party power structure a Russian troll bot, a “useful idiot��� or “basically the same as a fascist Trump supporter” has not endeared the elite liberal establishment to labor class Democratic Party voters - even among those who know Trump is guilty of something in the Ukraine call scandal, there is little desire to help the rich abusive maggots running the Democratic Party wash all their crooked straight in the blood of a Trump impeachment battle.

Of course a responsible adult would suggest that for the good of the country, the party and the future of American democracy, it might be a good idea for Democrats to apologize or at least stop f*cking bringing the subject up every time the opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot appears again - but what the hell would I know, I’m not “the most qualified presidential candidate in American history” after all.

- nina illingworth   Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog. Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!    

[followmyutopia]

Difficulties of being a Russian

I don’t want to stay in the country I was born in. I feel like an alien here.

The only good friends I have in my life and communicate with are mostly from the Netherlands. I found them while playing World of Warcraft, the best ever guild I ever played with, it’s called Oasis. We do not play at the moment but we are still communicating in Discord. I would like to thank them for being the most lovely community I’ve ever seen. Thanks Yetaa, Minxe, Ebons, Xeike, Skriem, Wall, Larvact, Dioda, Quvix, Beethoven, Crob, Mokhei, Saniig and all the others who had fun with me, you are my only real friends, my real family.

However, I don’t understand Russian mentality. I can’t make friends here. People call me a traitor for making friends with the EU guys and for wanting to relocate to the EU one day. People say I should be a patriot of the country where I was born.

People are not the only issue. I don’t understand Russian politics. None of the Russians wanted a conflict with the Ukraine. But our countries are officially at war for some politic reasons I don’t even want to know. This all makes it harder to travel to see the Ukraine, they just don’t let you pass the border. They make it obligatory to go to the army and fight for what you don’t support. And yes, you pay taxes and see nothing in return, police do not want to help people, you get poor quality medicine, the roads are in bad condition and dirt is everywhere; I can say a lot but I won’t.

Next comes the main reason I want to relocate to the EU. Russia makes it harder to travel. You need a visa to go almost everywhere, as far as I know, you could go with just a Russian passport only to go to the Ukraine and to Belarus, but now it’s limited to Belarus only. To make a visa you need to spend a lot of time and money and just to be allowed to go abroad for a week. To get a permit to work abroad you need to spend really a lot of money and more than a year and still, get no result.

But what helps me to live is hope. I hope that one day I will make it. One day I will break the chains and relocate to one of the EU countries and will be free to travel anywhere and make more colorful posts with pictures here. I will just put some more effort and see what will happen.

[mukiyedo-blog]

What Is So Fascinating About Singapore Evisa?

http://pl.ivisa.com/singapore-e-visa

The island nation is famous for its natural beauty, offering a myriad of sightseeing choices. There is an easy procedure following which you may make an application for the Singapore Visa for Indians online. Or in case you have applied and would love to share your experience with other travellers!

You may apply visa on the internet or at Myanmar Embassy near where you are. If you're planning a holiday to Singapore then we'll advise you to explore the Bali Islands too. If you're looking for a European destination that has not already been saturated by tourism, Ukraine is where to go.

Why Almost Everything You've Learned About Singapore Evisa Is Wrong Documents necessary for the Indian Conference Visa needs to be verified before the purchase of Flight tickets. Your Passport has become the most crucial thing you ought to be extremely careful with before your visa application. In the event the eVisa holder wants to leave the nation and later return it is essential to apply for one more eVisa.

There are different kinds of Kuwaiti visas for Singaporeans that are available from Kuwaiti embassies and consulates. The visa can't be extended or changed to some other type. Australia ETA visa isn't difficult to apply.

What You Can Do About Singapore Evisa Beginning in the Next Six Minutes When you stop by the Visa application center, make sure that you carry all of the necessary documents along with you. The Oman visa application form is going to take a couple of minutes to complete online. Please click on the Apply for Visa to start your application and create the selection for the kind of services that you require.

The internet application procedure will be quick and easy to finish. So it is recommended to complete a single evisa application at once. The application is completed online and just requires a couple of minutes.

You will be asked to carry the document beside you at all times during your stay in the nation. Am furnishing the full story here so it will be helpful to thousands of users that are planning to go to Malaysia through the new Visa regulations. If you have opted to go to Cambodia you have made a superb alternative.

The tourist visa permits you to go to Singapore for non-employment factors. Before applying, please check our supported countries where you are able to learn if the nation you are applying accepts on-line applications. Several other nations require vaccination only as long as the passenger is coming from an infected place.

The Hidden Secret of Singapore Evisa Certain guidelines are given by the Singapore Embassy in respect of documents that need to be presented. Visa on Arrival (VOA) is among the most frequently encountered sort of visa offered by the majority of the nations, and Malaysia also provides a chance to get VOA for the foreign nationals.

The Saudi Arabia eVisa application is only going to take a couple of minutes to complete online, there'll not be a need to attend an embassy or consulate. The Saudi eVisa is going to be available soon. All countries need a passport with a validity of over 6 months.

All About Singapore Evisa Applicants below age 18 might be accompanied by one parent. If you would rather have a non-guided company, you can see the Indian Government site. Government fee is how much the applicant have to cover the Kenya Immigration Department to process eVisa.

As someone with a weak Indian passport, it's always a headache to find out in advance if a visa is obligatory for that specific country. By showing enough proof that you mean to return is another essential aspect in the event of a Schengen visa. You always need to have proof of sufficient funds or you need to have a sponsor who's ready to cover your expenses One of the primary things they check is should you experience an intent to go settle in one of the Schengen nations.

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[ad_1] “Russia is doing partial mobilization. They go to full war mobilization if Crimea is at risk. Death on both sides will be devastating,” Musk tweeted hours later. “Russia has >3 times population of Ukraine, so victory for Ukraine is unlikely in total war. If you care about the people of Ukraine, seek peace.” Responses from Ukrainian officers and supporters have been swift and unsparing. “Which @elonmusk do you like more?” Zelenskyy tweeted, together with a ballot that had choices for “One who supports Ukraine” and “One who supports Russia.” As of Monday afternoon, 89.5 p.c of the almost 400,000 individuals who responded to the ballot chosen the previous. Zelenskyy wasn’t the one one to name Musk out on-line. Ukrainian diplomat Andriy Melnyk was quick to reply, tweeting, “Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk.” Melnyk served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, however left the publish in September after being dismissed by Zelenskyy for remarks he made a couple of Ukrainian nationalist chief who labored with the Nazis. One of Zelenskyy’s advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, responded with a revised version of Musk’s poll: .@elonmusk there's a higher peace plan.1. 🇺🇦 liberates its territories. Including the annexed Crimea.2. 🇷🇺 undergoes demilitarization and obligatory denuclearization so it might now not threaten others.3. War criminals undergo worldwide tribunal.Let’s vote?— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) October 3, 2022 President Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania additionally got here to the protection of his nation’s ally. “Dear @elonmusk, when someone tries to steal the wheels of your Tesla, it doesn’t make them legal owner of the car or of the wheels. Even though they claim both voted in favor of it. Just saying,” Nausėda wrote. The Baltic nation has provided sturdy assist for Ukraine, urging NATO to act quickly in Ukraine’s membership course of. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) had a lot to say in response to Musk, calling his proposed plan “Pretty much the worst idea I’ve read.” “The only way for peace is for Russia to be kicked out of Ukraine … where it doesn’t belong,” Kinzinger said in a separate tweet. “You cant satisfy a demon with a land sacrifice.” [ad_2] Source link