So, Nick Kristoff is crying about USAid, and I agree, mostly:
I’m hearing from experts around the world about what the destruction of USAID means: “A global health massacre,” in the words of a doctor who has devoted her life to humanitarian work on the front lines. Millions of malnourished children left to starve. Pregnant women not getting micronutrients to prevent neural tube defects. Programs against schistosomiasis abandoned. HIV positive patients left without ARV’s. Water no longer purified. Surveillance against Ebola and bird flu set back. TB patients unable to get medicine. I’ve long argued that USAID should be reformed, but this Trump/Musk demolition is cruel and incompetent, and benefits China, while killing children just as wonderful as our own.
It’s worth reading the replies to this. The usual one is: “We have lots of homeless and sick people, we should take care of them first.” Trump’s budget cuts include 400 billion from Medicaid, to pay for tax cuts for rich people who have more than enough. MAGAts are delusional cultists.
USAid is skeezy in many ways: There’s lots of nasty intelligence shit hidden there, but it also does a lot of good, and the price tag is trivial. If you want to house, feed, and give healthcare to Americans, cut the defense budget, raise taxes on billionaires, and get on with it. It’ll even be good for the economy.
Americans aren’t homeless and sick because of foreign aid, they’re homeless and sick because for 45 years all the money has gone to rich people and they’ve jacked up the price of homes and healthcare, and gotten rid of millions of good jobs. That’s all.
This has been a bipartisan project. Democrats’ hands are not clean. I remember Clinton’s massive welfare cuts, and Obama helping banks literally steal people’s homes with fraudulent documents as two of thousands of possible examples. But anyone who thinks Trump wants to fix this rather than accelerate it is so delusional they should be in an asylum.
I have no patience left, none, for either Democrats or Republicans. All of you are monsters who have hurt the weak, destroyed the middle class, and made millions of Americans homeless while denying them healthcare. You’re all monsters.
America has always had enough wealth to feed and care for all Americans — and even help a lot of foreigners, but the entire project since Reagan has been to make the rich richer, and fuck everyone else. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or delusional & a piece of human garbage.
America is a shithole because that’s what both Democrats and Republicans wanted, and it’s what they’ve worked very hard to achieve.
Every time an off-ramp was offered, and there was almost always someone running in Democratic Presidential primaries who was against this, they were crushed. Usually the number of primary votes they received was so small as to be a joke. Democratic primary voters wanted what has happened. So did Republicans.
Welcome to the America you voted for, again and again.
Jefferson Hamilton
The “we should take care of our own homeless first” argument, almost universally, only comes out when spending money on some other country’s poor is on the table. Any other time, there is either conspicuous silence or a “we should bulldoze them into the sea” attitude. Americans love looking like they give a shit but don’t actually think of the American destitute as people.
bruce wilder
The American delusion is the belief that “we” are “the good guys” in world affairs combined with the utter refusal to see or remember for two seconds any of the instances when the elites in charge of America have clearly and corruptly chosen cynically unethical means and destructive ends. We are high on our own supply of ideological self-flattery.
Also, voting has been purely performative since the CIA offed Kennedy.
GrimJim
Americans have always been exceptional… exceptionally stupid, extraordinarily gullible, singularly cruel, peculiarly propagandized, freakishly selfish, and unprecedentedly delusional.
In a species that can best be described as “apes with delusions of grandeur,” Americans are a subspecies apart — Homos sapiens stultus.
There is no bottom to the coming depravity; there will be no end to the horror.
The USA a perfect example of Calhoun’s behavioral sink writ large — we have here a virtual utopia, but for whatever reason, refuse to even see the potential, and reject it all in favor of abnormal, self-destructive behaviors all to the benefit and aggrandizement of a few who do not actual labor but own everything.
And this ship is going down with all the rats, because none are smart enough to try to escape the prison of their own making.
It can’t happen fast enough.
Joan
I came of age to be able to vote during George W Bush’s reelection. In a deep red state, I registered as an Independent because, to me, the Republicans were unhinged and the Democrats watched NBC that showed Iraqi children waiving at US vehicles rolling in and heavily propagandized that we were bringing democracy to Iraq, etc.
I later switched from Independent to Dem while living in a state that had closed primaries, so I could vote for the Bernie-style Dem over the Clinton-style one.
In France, the equivalent of Clinton-style Dems and Bernie-style Independents are two competing and legitimate, completely separate parties. Sure, they might strategically ally against the right wingers sometimes but they are decidedly not the same.
Oakchair
“we have lots of homeless and sick people, we should take care of them first.”
—-
-Ply them with opioids, stimulants, SSRIs, heavy metal laced injections, and pharmaceuticals
-Pump and dump industrial waste, pesticides. plastic, hormones and chemicals into the air, water, and food
All those chronically ill and homeless are already being “taken care of” in the way that people who view them as “useless eaters” would.
Feral Finster
“America is a shithole because that’s what both Democrats and Republicans wanted, and it’s what they worked hard for.”
Of course, so what does anyone propose to do about it? Remember, there are no bad systems, if you are one of the “haves”.
And of course USAID does a lot of good things when not acting as a CIA slush fund or a jobs program for Grievance Studies graduates. The Catholic Church also does a lot of good, nuts and bolts stuff like feeding the poor, bringing medicine to the sick and schools and the like,
it just has different secrets and different sponsors.
miss jenkins
Americans love looking like they give a shit but don’t actually think of the American destitute as people
Meanwhile, back in Canada:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=montreal%27s+homeless&ia=web
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=toronto%27s+homeless&t=lm&ia=web
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vancouver%27s+homeless&t=lm&ia=web
China, too, has lots and lots of homeless in the midst of their ‘lifting everyone out of poverty’ phase that includes minting more and more billionaires (Jack Ma is even back on the scene!) and burning more and more coal.
But don’t tell the Danny Haiphongs of the world. They are sure to have a hissy fit.
We’re all in this together, right?
Ian Welsh
I have, myself written about Canadian homelessness. One my friends is homeless because of Trudeau’s policies. He comes over most days for shower and a meal.
Canadian homelessness exists for largely the same reason as America’s–a determination to make the rich richer and fuck everyone else.
It’s actually hard to tell how many homeless people China has. Even 10 years ago there were lots in the street, but visitors and residents hardly ever seen homeless people any more and apparently there have been significant policy changes. As best I can tell it’s no longer a significant problem but I’ve been unable to find recent numbers. (The 300 million number is obvious bullshit and based on using old internal migrant numbers and saying they were homeless.)
Canada, the US, Britain etc… have way more homeless and hungry when than we used to. I am old enough to remember before food banks even existed. Homelessness is a policy choice. China has had less homelessness over time, the West has had more.
Anonymous
USAID backstopped Israeli war bonds after October 7.
USAID sent tens of billions to Syrian “moderate rebels”.
USAID funded all the anti-Russian NGOs and “independent media” in Eastern Europe and Caucasus.
They’re not a pretty okay organization that occasionally did shady stuff. The occasionally not entirely shady stuff they did was the cover, the way that Lockheed Martin might occasionally donate $10,000 to the local chapter of the NAACP and then spend a million dollars promoting that charitable act.
Mark Level
Well said as always, Ian. If change is ever going to come, it won’t come from the political whores, it will come from a grassroots revolution, nothing less. I’m not hopeful, certainly not for the U$A. Unless we are real adults and don’t let “proxies” like the Elected shills of the Billionaires and Warmongers, there is no hope whatsoever.
I have little hope in the “Snopes” website, they seem deeply establishment and have lied about some things I’m aware of. However, today as I watched a very twitchy (coked-up?) Zelensky get bounced out of Trump’s Oval office (in what frankly seemed like a set-up, which he walked right into), and them jumped onto YouTube & Rumble to see Judge Napolitano with Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, then Jimmy Dore with the Duran as his guests (Wow! Talk about being on the ball!) for over 3 segments . . .
I thought of the quote evidently mis-attributed to Lenin, “There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.” Per Snopes (they proved the case to me,) this is a much later quote from the germ of an idea in a longer Lenin quote–
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lenin-decades-quote/
Evidently the real source is a Mexican poet, Homero Aridjis, who actually said “There are centuries in which nothing happens and years in which centuries pass.” Well, that’s how midday today seemed.
No more Ukraine “support” (really Life Support) for the Ukrainian Nazi regime!? The dessicated “tatters” that are EUrope left to try to prop up the futile attempt to break Russia (a regional Superpower since before the USA even existed) into 7 or 18 or 100 pieces? Well, never underestimate the power of Denial, something nearly as powerful as the River itself. . .
Much as I despise Trump (the “TrumpGaza” AI Troll was truly disgusting and horrid), I have to endorse what Keaton Weiss of Due Dissidence said to their followers last Summer: We will never support voting for Kamala or for Trump. But [for the US populace] if you’re going to pick one, the Democrats are a gun in a Game of Russian Roulette with all 6 chambers full: Trump is a gun with one empty chamber.”
The one empty chamber came up this time, unless the Mercurial Don goes back on his word. Don’t see it happening. Even Ms. Lindsay Graham, who ginned up the war with Russia in Ukraine alongside John McCain and Amy Klobuchar, meeting with the Azov Batallion a couple years after Nuland’s Maidan Coup, called Zelensky’s behavior disgraceful and said he couldn’t be worked with anymore!! Signs and wonders . . .
When you’re in a hole, you need to stop digging. The US MIC refused to learn this after losing in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Zelensky (either fueled by stimulants or having believed in his own acting performance as “the New Winston Churchill” anointed by military geniuses like Sean Penn, Joe Scarborough, etc.) didn’t learn it before the disastrous meeting today. The Ukrainians were kicked out of the building unceremoniously, and the nice meal that was waiting for the group in the hall was consumed by the White House staff and some of the press. . .
The Dems and Repugs are equally responsible for the failures, as Ian observed. (And only a few on this site deny.) Btw, “Lawyers, Guns, & Money” went CRAZY after their Noble Nazis were kicked to the Curb. 3 pants-wetting posts within 2 hours of the Z-Man’s expulsion!! The 2nd, called “Armies of God” steals Ian’s header art, The Fall of Empire, btw!!
The best line in this nervous breakdown was the admission that “We are now the baddies!” Why are we the baddies now? NOT because we support genocide in Palestine and across the Mideast in 25 years of a Great War of Terror, that has killed millions, created millions of more refugees, etc. We are “the baddies” coz we voted with evil Russia in UN, and are now allying (e.g. not attacking and killing) China, Iran, North Korea, etc. (I notice Saudi Arabia didn’t make that list!! Is Iran remotely as horrific as KSA? Actual evidence says no. Is it as horrible to its citizens as Britain is? Clearly not.
The World has (probably) changed. Too soon to say if for better but one failed path now seems shut. This incident seems a bit more than the “good TV” Trump declared it was just before it ran down.
Oh, most on this site probably know “Are We the Baddies?”, brought to us by the great Mitchell and Webb, and on the BBC of all places!! I was a M & W fan years earlier for their series “Peep Show.” I never expected relevant political commentary from them at that time, but . . . Link at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY&t=12s
mago
Electoral politics is dead.
The only ballot choices presented are Erin Schit and Evan Schittier.
I don’t vote anymore, not even locally because I know the duplicitous local clowns and their self serving agendas.
Doesn’t make me nihilistic—the universal western mind disease—but it does perhaps make me realistic.
Odd as it may seem, I think tolerance is an antidote, a personal antidote to negative emotional reactions, which serve no one, least of all oneself.
Not advocating tolerance for homelessness, social inequality or psychopathic leadership, but for an inner equanimity that helps foster peaceful relationships with self and others. Not saying I’m there or that it’s easily realized, even for those with a spiritual path.
Just saying it’s preferable to reactionary hatred, which is contrary to personal and universal peace.
Our world is lurching along with one flat tire with the other three wheels wobbling as we clunk toward the abyss.
Anyway, primaries and voting for the lesser of the evils ain’t gonna fix nothing. It’s beyond that. And I take no responsibility for the evil empire and its decline.
Karma, eh?
Goy oh Boy
We will never support voting for Kamala or for Trump. But [for the US populace] if you’re going to pick one, the Democrats are a gun in a Game of Russian Roulette with all 6 chambers full: Trump is a gun with one empty chamber.
Once again proving the utter uselessness of sloganeering.
DONALD TRUMP IS A GUN WITH ONE EMPTY CHAMBER, FOLKS!
The Due Dissidence guys said it, so it must be true. Just like Kipling’s bandarlog.
They are, after all, two tough Jewish kids from Brooklyn.
Wake me when Keaton Weiss does a deep dive into Trump’s Jewish inner circle. Then wake me again when they do a deep dive into the Jewish money behind all the allegedly WASPY white guys and groups. Start with the Claremont Institute, the Jewish money behind guys like Curtis Yarvin.
Here, I’ll help you get started: The big players behind the WASPY white Claremont Institute are Strauss-Jaffa-Klingenstein. The Klingentsteins are Werther-Salomon Smith Barney-Citibank.
All Jewish, all the time.
Mark Level
Hey, Goy Oh Boy! I have never seen you, even once, on this site over many years . . .
Yet you pontificate with self-professed authority. “All Jewish, all the time” eh? Despite the existence of genocidal Zionists, I do not (& never will) hate ALL Jews. Is Max Blumenthal, the author of Goliath, in the service of Zionists (despite his father’s background?) All available facts prove not. Nice that you know the inner workings of the “Elders of Zion” though. I’m sure Russell Dobular, who grew up in a household with a single mother, & was a petty criminal in his teens who narrowly avoided confinement at Riker’s Island, secretly has connections to “the Kligensteins” & “Werther-Salomon Smith Barney Citibank.”
I was lied to as a child and told that I was Jewish (because being Spanish and Sardinian was not nearly so respected during my mom and grandma’s era) and my maternal grandmother had a “Jewish name”. (Rosenhoover, Dutch Jewish.) Genetic testing revealed no connection. I don’t know if my Spanish and Sardinian ancestors were Christian (I’d guess that was most likely), Jewish or Muslim, nor do I care.
The Claremont Institute are scum, obviously. You connecting the Due Dissidence podcast to them Is insane. Have fun exploring the Jewish conspiracy, loser. You are not worth my time. If you appear on this site in the future, I expect to have many laughs over your spittle-flecked conspiracy theories.
Tc
Ima bout to scream if i hear another “we could have had an intelligent capable president who cared about americans” (meaning kamala, i kid you not).
Its horrific what trump is doing to civil service and our former allies, but i worked in govt for 30 years and until last month dems were much worse to govt employees than Rs. Clinton had an 8 year hiring freeze and shitty annual cost of living raises. Bush came in and did a bunch of hiring but by then the workforce was so old that the hiring could not keep up with the retiring. The amount of institutional knowledge lost under Bush was incredible, and may never recover, and it was Clinton’s and his austerity’s fault., The govt workforce is so so much less competent than 30 years ago. Obama returned to shitty COLAs and signed on to “sequestration” or whatever their name for austerity was and attrition just got worse again. Hollowing out govt has been a bipartisan consensus project for 40 years.
Even given best case scenario of trump vance musk etc getting smited by god tonight, we are still screwed cuz there is no one in DC up to doing what needs done. 95% of dems are just empty suit neolib ivy league elitist mckinsey drones like kamala and buttigeig. they despise the working class and the civil service as much as the Rs, just more polite about it. mr hope’n’change himself said americans are way overpaid and his base ate it up.
The only question now is what happens when the red state 2nd amendment types realize how screwed we are. Do they turn on the left and cement fascism in place, or turn on their own traitorous leadersand rw media to save democracy (long shot odds)? or something else?
Mark Jacob
The Due Dissidence guys said it, so it must be true. Just like Kipling’s bandarlog.
I wouldn’t put it like that. It’s not whether or not it’s true, it’s that the statement itself is devoid of anything substantive. It’s mere sloganeering, as you said.
But all manner of this type of meaninglessness does get passed around like wildfire. Planting seeds in the psyche.
The Scaife Foundation also sponsors Claremont. Scaife is a ‘parent’ to a lot of these orgs. This is old Mellon money, although more recently The Sarah Scaife arm of the enterprise has referred to itself as a ‘Christian Zionist’ organization.
——–
I put together a little satirical piece vis-a-vis Jewish power figures around Trump:
A message to my Jewish friends in and around the Trump administration: Please be careful!
Who am I speaking to specifically? For starters, Will Scharf, Trump’s brain, err, white house ‘staff secretary.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Scharf
https://jewishinsider.com/2023/02/will-scharf-andrew-bailey-missouri-attorney-general/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14360805/donald-trump-staff-secretary-scharf-orders.html
Ah, Willie boy, you do realize the Trumper is going to shiv you any time now, right? By the way, how the hell don’t you know when you were born? 1986 or 1987? Sounds like secret agent kind of stuff to me, but hey, I’m just a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
And to Steve Witkoff: Listen, I know you’re besties with Trump and have been for a long time, but please, for the love of yawheh, just get the subhuman filth known as Arabs out of your historical homeland and then get away from this madman Christian psychopath Trump. He’s just using you for his Christian base and he’s bound to turn on you at a moment’s notice, just as many gentiles eventually do to the Jews.
Please Steve, be careful around this Christian madman Trump!
I’d also like to warn Morty Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, that his best friend Steve Bannon is no friend of ‘the Jews.’ I say this despite the fact that he was also good friends with Andrew Breitbart, he of the wantonly Jewish Supremacist and Israel-can-do-no-wrong Breitbart media outlet.
Bannon has never uttered a negative word against Jews and has always been fervently pro-Israel. But this obviosly doesn’t jibe with ‘America-first’ nationalism which Steve Bannon obviously cares so much about. So this means Bannon will turn on the Jews at any moment.
Morty, for the love of allah, please be careful around this guy Bannon!
——–
https://forward.com/news/657363/jews-trump-inner-circle-israel-adelson-loomer-epshteyn/
https://forward.com/news/674101/trump-cabinet-israel-rubio-huckabee-jewish/
——–
Bessant at Treasury essentially has direct control of the nation’s money supply and international sanctioning. He is a product of Soros Management, which plays the role of ‘liberal/progressive’ billionaire bogeyman, funding all those allegedly ‘left’ organizations wbich ultimately serve to further divide and antagonize – by design.
Twenty years honing his skills at crazy liberal commie Soros’ ‘management’ enterprise. And now he’s Trump’s Treasury Secretary! One of the most powerful positions in the ‘western world.’
Of course, ‘east’ and ‘west’ are for the plebs.
Anyway, meet the new boss: Same as the old guy. Or gal, for that matter.
We all know the routine by now.
Jefferson Hamilton
>China, too, has lots and lots of homeless in the midst of their ‘lifting everyone out of poverty’ phase that includes minting more and more billionaires
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-lost-36pc-billionaires-three-years-rich-list-hurun-economy-2024-10
Mark Level
Wow!! I summoned not one but 2 genocidal anti-Semites from the depths (never before seen on this site to my knowledge) by praising a podcast with 2 men who are nominally Jewish, though actually Weiss is half Maltese, and since his mother’s family is from Malta he would not be considered a Jew in Israel, he would be “Goy”, oh boy!!
Neither one could actually honestly rebut the Weiss metaphor that Kamala would’ve been a Russian Roulette gun with 6 chambers full, Trump is one with only 5. Weiss’ metaphor proved apt. As noted at the melt-down meeting yesterday, the EU & Ukraine hoped to lure the U$ Imperial Daddy into WW III in Eurasia, which could’ve ended with nuclear annihilation of the entire human race, as well as much of the animal and vegetable world. No need to move the doomsday clock further forward. The Doomsday Clock stands at 89 seconds to midnite!! No need to push Armageddon (actually Har Megiddo, in Hebrew) any closer.
Let’s do some fact checks of our new commenters: “Bannon has never uttered a negative word against Jews and has always been fervently pro-Israel. ” The latter half of that statement is true. During the divorce from his wife, however, one thing that came up was when he didn’t want to send the children to a school with too many Jews, “He said he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews,” she said in a 2007 court declaration. He worked at Goldman-Sachs for awhile as many other Globalist/ Rentier Vampire Squids did, reportedly didn’t have the warmest relations with the many Jewish traders there as well.
Despite the hate-filled racism of the 2nd commenter, I’ll agree with one of his points, of Bannon’s sucking up to the Zionist Entity, “this obviosly doesn’t jibe with ‘America-first’ nationalism which Steve Bannon obviously cares so much about. So this means Bannon will turn on the Jews at any moment.” Yes, I would say Bannon’s claim that “Traditional Catholics” (among whom he evidently numbers himself) would be natural allies of Jews doesn’t pass the smell test. These fundamentalist, Opus Dei types are as disgusting as the worst Zionists in their xenophobia and hate. Great that one bigot can recognize another!! Not at all in the agreement that Trump is a “Christian,” he worships Mammon, Moloch, the Almighty Dollar and his own Ego.
In closing, I have to share that at first Ian’s willingness recently to let people make insane, vicious, threatening denunciations and even borderline threats within threads was a bit alienating to me. I have supported this site for at least a decade, probably much longer. But I now appreciate the choice to let people hang themselves with their utterly sick and degraded comments. I’d cite “Mark Jacob’s” advice to Steve Witkoff: “but please, for the love of yawheh, just get the subhuman filth known as Arabs out of your historical homeland and then get away from this madman Christian psychopath Trump.”
Wow, just wow!! I bet this is someone who doesn’t make too many friends at cocktail parties!! Must be constantly sniffin’ around for Semites, equal-opportunity hate for Jews & Arabs. Aryan Brotherhood, perhaps! (I personally would question whether Ashkenazi Jews qualify, e.g. it’s well known that Bibi is Polish, unlikely any of his ancestors ever lived in “the Holy Land.”) A dog might bite, a scorpion may sting, at least certain types can be known for their consistency.
It was a little more disturbing to me when people I previously respected started verbally fantasizing about Leopards eating the faces off of those who vote differently in a meaningless Zero-Sum ritual than they do (incl. myself, I voted Jill Stein) or rewording Islamophobic hate spew, but it is always best to see people for who they are, & it’s more comfortable at the distance of online comments than f2f. As “America” degenerates, best to know who you can actually trust and who to shun.
miss jenkins
@Jefferson Hamilton
So, according to Biz Insider, ‘the party’ in China cut the thousands of billionaires it allowed to be created in the first place (1185 admitted to means many many more in reality) by a third – allegedly.
And these resources are all going to ‘the people’ in the form of a dystopian high-tech automated surveillance society.
The good life in China.
Emma
“And these resources are all going to ‘the people’ in the form of a dystopian high-tech automated surveillance society.”
You think our overlords skimp on the surveillance? They simply allow more of that to happen with private companies so there’s more plausible deniability and no benefits to the people.
China’s high surveillance has actually made it much safer and more lawful. Drivers used to honk and drive illegally and chaotically, now the traffic is very orderly. Petty crime used to be a huge problem and it’s almost completely disappeared. Ratings and social media has forced retailers and restaurants to greatly up their game in terms of service and not cheating their customers. They have a decent and humane system to deal with homeless people. https://x.com/OopsGuess/status/1894752761943867572
Most Chinese do like their society as it is now. They’re not pushing their system onto anybody else. Stop projecting what’s in your head into 1.4 billion other people.
1/3 gentile with an asian jewish wife
Neither one could actually honestly rebut the Weiss metaphor that Kamala would’ve been a Russian Roulette gun with 6 chambers full
As I read it, there was no attempt at rebuttal. They were simply pointing out the abject absurdity of the ‘metaphor’ in the first place.
There may be some subtle anti-Jewish sentiment here – certainly nothing rabid. The ‘Jewish establishment’ has been fomenting this for many millennia. As they see it, it serves to make them stronger in the end. It actually comes to define them.
I doubt anyone struggling to pay the bills day-to-day really gives a flying you know what about a given Jewish person’s degree of Jewishness, whether other ‘more Jewish Jews’ consider them Jewish or not, or whether they’re allowed in ‘Israel’ or not.
The point of satire and rhetoric is often to make a larger point about blatant truisms that may get muddied by verbosity and meaningless comparisons.
The truth is that Jews make up .2 percent of the world population.
So, perhaps focus on that for a moment.
How is that one empty chamber working out for the working class, let alone the poor and left behind?
How is that one empty chamber working out for the native population of Palestine?
The IHRA definition of ‘antisemitism’ is on track to be the sole glaring exception to freedom of speech. Another exception made solely for ‘the Jews.’
The Holocaust ™ is THE genocide that MUST be memorialized the world over. Most ‘western’ nations have ‘holocaust denial’ laws that call for jailing people if they dare to question any aspect of the history of that period that is set in stone by the Jewish establishment.
Russia does too.
The way things are going, soon the US will too.
But keep throwing out silly ‘metaphors’ to combat this. It’s really helpful.
I ask again: What the hell is the point of saying that trump has one empty chamber compared to the other side?
It’s a stupid, vaccuous, utterly meaningless assertion that serves no purpose other than creating more of same down the line.
But then ‘podcasters’ are ultimately just ‘content creators’ looking to get hits for money.
Same old song and dance my friend.
Mark Level
Hey, 1/3rd gentile: You’re free to disagree with the metaphor (as is anyone) but in my estimation you don’t read very carefully.
IF the US had remained with Biden’s policy toward Russia, the likely result may’ve been a World War in Eurasia and possible Nuclear annihilation. That now seems far less likely. I’m not the only person ’round the world who drew a deep breath of relief when Zelensky was escorted out of the Oval Office. My understanding of Weiss’ metaphor is that it applied mainly to the American populace. If you’ve read literally anything else I’ve said on this website over many years, you would know I am not wearing Rose-Colored Glasses viz the US’s future. In fact, I am planning to emigrate to Mexico (which I spent nearly a year living in when younger back in the 80s, a full year if my time in Central America is included.)
Unlike the 2 deranged Trolls who you seem to defend, you make intelligent and cogent points, so you have my respect. I was already aware of the small percentage of Jews in the world (retired Social Studies teacher, also a Librarian the last 12 years of a 32 year teaching career). For the Brits to have inserted (mainly) White Ashkenazi Jews into the Middle East, where (per Wikipedia) there are 473 million “Arab” people worldwide, and for the UK first (despite terrorism against them by Jewish extremists like the Stern Gang, e.g. the bombing of the King David Hotel) and the US after to have armed Israel the teeth to endlessly invade, bomb and kill their neighbors, well this is clearly not sustainable. And the bill is now coming due.
I respect & agree with everything you say about the IHRA and only acknowledging ONE actual Holocaust. (For reasons I cannot understand, the Zionist State refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide. Even though Hitler directly cited it when promising to exterminate Europe’s Jews, saying words to the effect of “no one remembers that now.”)
As to your points about race, I agree entirely, I think you are (mistakenly) straw-manning me if you think I believe anything different. I am well-enough educated to know that “Race is a Social Construct”, thank you very much. But the Zionist State (like elements of the Right in the US) cares a great deal about imagined “racial differences.” Culture is more complex and more relevant in daily behavior than race, in most respects, most of the time. Personally, being a “Mutt” myself, several ethnicities combined, I feel positive about some strands of my DNA, and negative about others. But again, that’s because culture is more determinative– I respect my tough Irish & Spanish ancestors, my cultured and artsy French ones, don’t have much positive to say about Germans as they are a deeply conformist and regimented group, and have been for decades. (I do respect the culture of Germany during the initial Romantic era, but that was fleeting.)
“How is that one empty chamber working out for the native population of Palestine?” Somewhat well in the short-term. During the initial phases of the (fake on Israel’s side) “Cease Fire” which Trump rammed down Bibi’s throat, the IDF was only murdering a few Palestinians daily rather than dozens or hundreds. Half a million Palestinians returned to their (demolished) homes from living outdoors in the desert and freezing during winter. A larger amount of aid, food, tents, water, etc. was allowed in over the last 6 weeks than had been allowed in probably over the last 6 months of Biden’s term. That’s not nothing!
Israel will likely resume the genocide, but DD is far from the only podcast I watch, and many military experts I’ve followed (Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Col. McGregor, the Intell. veterans Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson) say Israel is overstretched into Western Syria and can’t now murder as many Palestinian civilians. Your point about Russia is correct. Putin is a canny politician and panders as they all do. Given the large # of Russian Jews living in Israel (where they were initially treated like shit, may be at a better status by now) such pandering is disappointing but not surprising.
“The point of satire and rhetoric” is well understood by me. (I first studied rhetoric when I was only 17 years old at the Univ. of Chicago.) I am no snowflake, either. When I was teaching US history in a poor, mostly Latino school district just south of Oakland between 2006-09, covering from the Gilded Age up to the 1970s, I taught my students Malcolm X’s quote on why he wouldn’t fight in Vietnam, “No Vietnamese ever called me Nigger.” Fair enough. By the time I retired in 2021, I could not have taught such content, I would have been accused of racism (perceived by many as white, to others as Hispanic).
But words like “please, for the love of yawheh, just get the subhuman filth known as Arabs out of your historical homeland” are not “satire,” they are Hate Speech pure and simple. Now, I don’t view Hate Speech as something that must be censored (because who decides? Government agents who are selective, with an axe to grind.) But I don’t condone it or dismiss it as nothing either. I’m pretty much a Free Speech Absolutist, like the only member of Congress I respect, a Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie. He’s also the only member who rejected having a Zionist AIPAC “handler.” (Kamala married hers, as a “Beard.” There’s some satirical speech for you.)
You’re free to dismiss Weiss’ words as off-topic or irrelevant. Frankly, had HRC been elected in 2016, we would almost certainly have had WW III with Russia many years ago, & might not be alive to have this discussion now.
“How do you know what a thing is? By what it does.” I have hated the US Government since I was around 15, as I grew up during the Vietnam Era. (And my dad was a right-wing bully who loved Nixon, also a bigot who hated blacks (“they’re stupid and lazy”) and Jews (“they’re too pushy. They don’t know their place”.)
But when the Blind Pig finds the acorn, if the acorn helps you, that should be celebrated. Obama wanted to make a “Grand Deal” with the Republicans to gut Social Security. They were dominated by the Tea Party and refused to do so because they saw him as a N—–r. The outcome is good, even if the intent was not. Similarly, Trump in term one did only one good thing (in my eyes), quashing the Globalist TPP Treaty to let International Business gut local environmental, safety (& etc. laws). I respect that.
“Same old song and dance my friend.” For the most part, you are correct. However, whenever an opening is created in the razor wire for escape, that is a good thing. Organized Evil (which the Biden admin. attempted, entirely incompetently) may be (not must be, may) worse than Chaotic Evil, which fails via lurching back and forth and missing the mark. Had the “Rare Earths” deal been signed, the utter destruction of Ukraine would’ve dragged on for 10 or more years longer. Now, it will likely be done in one year.
But yeah, the US is doomed. I personally plan to Get Out.
Ian Welsh
Note to new commenters: if you insult and belittle other commenters or me, there’s a good chance your comment won’t be approved. Disagree politely.
Jefferson Hamilton
Keep moving the goalposts, Miss Jenkins. The fact is China is the future and is moving in the right direction, though we may quibble on how halting their steps may or may not be, and the US is the past and is collapsing in not-so-slow motion. Believe me, I have many reasons to wish it were otherwise, but I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes, as, apparently, can you.
Mark Level
Oops! My fingers typed Malcolm X when Muhammed Ali was intended. Typing too rapidly!! Shouldn’t have conflated the 2 contemporary black Muslims, one in sports, the other in politics.
miss jenkins
My fingers typed Malcolm X when Muhammed Ali was intended.
Mark, did you teach your students about MLK’s Christian Zionist upbringing and his slow ‘seeing of the light’ vis-a-vis ‘Israel’ and the media and Jewish Zionist power in the US after corresponding with Malcom X and others?
X, of course, is known for his firm statements on massive media distortions: lies become truths and truths become lies. That sort of thing.
In other news, Heron was quite understandably mad at whitey on the moon back in the day, and he also correctly stated that ‘the revolution’ will not be televised.
Turns out, Gil wasn’t much of a revolutionary in the end.
The entire world is online ‘TV’ now, and they’ll surely send oprah or some black or brown dude to the moon these days and everyone, even mean old whitey, will be in awe.
Lookout Mountain rides again?
Good luck to us.
————–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4
Brother Ali’s got that Muhammad Ali up in the pedigree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04bp4bG6Zhk
shagggz
@Mark Level,
“For reasons I cannot understand, the Zionist State refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide.”
Or any others, I’d hazard to guess. Doing so would diminish their claim to being unique victims entitled to do what they do.
Jorge
About USAID (oh, right, the topic of the article): just under 1/2 of the USAID money was vectored towards Ukraine. Add the money for fiddling with elections in Georgia, Romania, and the rest of Russia’s border countries, we get more than half. (Probably, some was vectored out to other CIA projects.)
Killing this gravy train was a very clear, direct gesture to Russia that Trump definitely wants out of Project Ukraine. Russian intelligence should have enough people on the ground to monitor money flows and decide that this really happened. The Russians know Trump, and know that he loves to throw up clouds of nonsense (a technique they have also adopted periodically). But this was a verifiable real act of negotiating in good faith. (Whether or not Trump’s team realized this at the time is debatable.)
Purple Library Guy
Wow. Just sort of skimmed half the conversation because really, it was the dumbest conversation I’ve ever seen on here.
As to the Trump and Zelensky show . . . I think it’s important to be able to separate the concept of “what side I’m on” from my judgment of particular acts by whatever side. So when it comes to the war in Ukraine, I more or less hope Russia wins because I don’t like NATO and its agenda of US-led world domination. But that doesn’t mean I think the president of Ukraine has a duty to, like, not defend his country when it’s attacked, or that being the president of Ukraine makes someone a bad person because they’re not on my “side”. Zelensky is not a perfect man, but he’s got some guts and he’s trying his best to fight this war, which he wasn’t one of the architects of, because that’s what you do when you’re the president of a country that’s being invaded. The wider geopolitical issues are not your responsibility.
OK and Trump wants to negotiate an end to the war, which is fine in itself. But he’s doing it in the worst and sleaziest possible way. The United States was one of the actors that maneuvered Ukraine into the situation that got it invaded. It is frankly their fault that Ukraine has lost like a million soldiers dead at this point. This was not Trump’s policy, but it’s Trump’s country that had the policy. It is absolutely egregious and treacherous for Trump to now turn around and blame Ukraine and Zelensky for fighting the war that the US fomented. It is also treacherous and grotesque to try to shake Ukraine down for whatever wealth he can grab while it’s weak. And that display of ludicrous childish tantrums at the press conference was horrific, and almost manages to be stupider if it was a setup than if it was spontaneous.
The idea of the setup as I understand it was that Trump wanted to quit funding Ukraine, but wanted some kind of excuse, some kind of pretend moral high ground, so he set up that scene. Maybe. The problem with that is that screaming “You didn’t say thank you enough!” does not moral high ground make. The whole world now actually thinks far worse of Trump than they would have if he had just said he had important state reasons to not help Ukraine. Europe would still have been mad because they’re on Ukraine’s side, but they wouldn’t have been watching a couple of blackmailing schoolyard bullies lose their shit because Zelensky wouldn’t kneel and kiss their asses. And notice, behind the scenes they may have been annoyed that Zelensky wouldn’t sign away all Ukraine’s minerals for free, but at that press conference they were yelling and screaming because he dared express opinions and, quite explicitly, because he wasn’t servile enough.
Trump has gotten used to violating norms of behaviour, and he has gotten used to thuggishly humiliating anyone who disagrees with him. Americans have kind of gotten used to it, and there seems to be a big American constituency for the politics of humiliation. But internationally people expect some basic level of dignity from leaders dealing with each other; even if you’re grinding someone into the dust, they expect you to be polite about it. Every politician in Europe and Asia and Africa who watches that will be imagining that they could be humiliated like that if they ever let Trump get an upper hand on them. Most of them will do anything before they let that happen, mainly desperately avoid having any dealings with Trump’s America. This was an INCREDIBLY stupid thing to do, and also a massive display of what complete and utter pieces of shit Trump and Vance are.
Meanwhile, Putin will smile his small, precise smile and use Trump and Vance exactly as much as they are useful, but will never ever sign a deal that requires that he trust them to do anything. I’m sure he’s pleased that Ukraine has lost a major source of funding and materiel, but I’m equally sure he has nothing but contempt for Trump, for his ignorance and bluster and constant pointless treachery. Particularly since if there’s a political figure in Russia that was vaguely reminiscent of Trump, it would be Boris Yeltsin.
someofparts
Mark Level – Whereabouts in Mexico are you planning to go?
miiss jenkins
I don’t know why my reply to Emma wasn’t inlcuded. Here it is again, minus a couple things:
You think our overlords skimp on the surveillance?
We were talking about China.
They simply allow more of that to happen with private companies so there’s more plausible deniability and no benefits to the people.
Emma, why are you so belittling of everything Chinese?
You talk about ‘the Chinese’ as if they are a monolith.
The ‘benefits to the people’ that you cite include such doozies as ‘law and order’ and you go on to state point blank that ‘the Chinese’ were unlawful and disorderly prior to ‘China’s high surveillance.’
Bad honking drivers.
And they couldn’t figure out how to up their restaurant game so, I mean, high surveillance it is. Prior to China’s ‘high surveillance’ you directly imply that ‘the Chinese’ ripped off their customers.
Not a few bad apples, not a handful of Chinese. No, you are talking about THE CHINESE who evidently just cannot get themselves together without being surveilled and monitored by TPTB all the time.
This of course directly implicates ‘the party’ itself as it has been in power for much longer than the recent ‘high surveillance’ has been around.
So, you are in effect telling us that ‘the Chinese’ sucked before ‘the party’ but ‘the party’ itself sucked before its adoption of ‘high surveillance.’
Or ‘high surveillance’ is a natural extension of ‘the party’ view of humanity: It must be controlled from on high by a technocratic elite.
This is the same underlying mentality as Karp-Andreessen-Thiel. That it manifests in China as ‘the party’ rule that nevertheless mints thousands of billionaires, versus the faux ‘freedom’ rule that mints ‘private interest’ billionaires in the US does not matter in the end.
I remember everyone saying Jack Ma may have been silently offed. Turns out not only wasn’t that the case, but he’s back to his old billionaire ways.
If Ma and the multitude of Chinese billionaires were truly chopped up and spit out there obviously wouldn’t be any need for a ‘high surveillance’ state.
Oh wait, I forgot. You already addressed this issue: The dystopian mega surveillance that no person in China ever asked for or was given a choice in the matter – this dystopian surveillance is necessary whether or not China churns out mega-wealthy people because all the people of China – ‘the Chinese’ – are bad honking drivers who rip each other off and weren’t competing enough cuisinistically to satisfy your palate.
This is all akin to calling ‘the Chinese’ dim-witted and dependent on ‘the party’ and the miracle of technology to help them be ‘law and orderly.’
And those horns, god those damn horns!!
So, to reiterate: You have no problem with a ‘high surveillance’ society in general, or simply on principle.
I wonder if anyone on earth can live freely anymore?
I am reminded of Kushner-Netanyahu-Trump Co’s desiring a ‘better population’ in what remains of Palestine.
In this case, we can’t exactly move ‘the Chinese’ out en masse, but we sure as hell can re-educate them for their own good.
Damn horns.