Saying this as someone who organized a campus protest against the invasion of Iraq before it happened back in 2003… the participation in the genocide of Gaza may be the most evil thing I’ve seen America do in my lifetime.
Greenleaf
joined 2 years ago
Ok cool, now what side was the now enthusiastically Zionist Germany on?
During the Cold War, soft power in the global south mattered because the western powers wanted to keep as many countries on their side as possible, and when your opponent is a nuclear-armed USSR you can’t just use the military or sanctions as your only option.
But since the fall of the USSR, soft power in the global south isn’t important anymore. The US, Western Europe, and their allies in the Indo-Pacific are perfectly happy to ignore the concerns and opinions of anyone who isn’t already totally aligned with them. This contradiction hasn’t come to a head until recently as there wasn’t even any push against the western powers until recently. But the only effect of that is the western powers are now happily donning the black hat. Oderint Dum Metuant, and all that jazz. If the global south won’t bend the knee voluntarily then they WILL recognize western supremacy by force, whether that be economic or military means.
And that’s why supporting Russia in the war against NATO is so critical. That’s the current flashpoint in the Cold War between the western powers and everyone else on the planet.
Right! When I talk to people I have to leave out so much (pretty much everything before 1948) because when you talk to an American about history you only have a couple minutes at best before you completely lose their attention. But none of that makes Israel look any better.
Bowser’s Bad Budget
This is a Mario Party 3 mini-game.
95% of Americans have no idea what you’re talking about. They mostly believe in some vague notion that there are Jewish people there and Muslim people there and they’ve been fighting for thousands of years and this is just an extension of that.
But the upside of such breathtaking ignorance is that, so long as I’m not dealing with a racist or some evangelical over 65, I’ve found it’s actually pretty easy to bring people over to a nominally pro-Palestine position. I simply frame it as “the UN created two countries in 1948. Eventually, Israel attacked Palestine and occupied it. And now for decades the Palestinians have no real rights or freedoms and Israel is slowly trying to take all their land. The Israelis refuse to let them have their own land but also refuse to let them be citizens in Israel”. That angle works surprisingly well on Americans.
MintPress and The Red Stream both are great for following international events (Red Stream I think is run by comrades). Then there’s teleSUR_english, Resistance News Network, Middle East Eye, and Rybar (the last one there is for very detailed analysis of Ukraine, but I’ve heard mixed reviews on how good they actually are at OSINT).
“Look at what you made me do”
At 500,000 deaths, on a per capita basis then you are at a level of genocide on par with the great crimes of the 20th century like the Nazi invasion of the USSR or the American genocide in Korea… in a far shorter time frame. I really hope the number isn’t close to being that high. If it ends up being that high I would put Biden below Nixon but above W for most evil modern era US presidents.
Death to America and death to “israel”
We are self-deprecating and irony poisoned enough, time for a bit of an antidote.
This news mega, and Hexbear writ large, is such a great resource for understanding what’s going on in the world. Proof that the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism really is the most powerful lens for understanding the reality around us.
I sat down and ate breakfast for a long time at a hotel over the weekend. The breakfast room had Fox News blaring the whole time. Obviously you’re getting a heavy reactionary slant on things with them. But beyond that, it’s just the quality of information was so low, it was actively harmful to watch. You’d better informed not watching anything and absorbing information about the world around you from the ether. Saw some MSNBC last month and it’s not much better. Not so much inventing reality from whole cloth like Fox News, but still leaving out plenty of critical information, without which you still really can’t understand the world around you.
It’s never been more clear to me how deeply propagandized mainstream news is. It’s not even always a conscious act (though it definitely is a lot of the time), just your normal base/superstructure stuff.
And this news mega, this site, and Marxism broadly is such an oasis. Helps you not only stay properly informed, but keeps your sanity as well.
Could be, but “pen guy” - a guy likes to have a lot of pens on him at all times - is a real guy, too. My dad is one, dude wears short sleeve dress shirts with a pocket just so he can cram pens in there.
I don’t know what the right word is. My first thought was to call it “gaslighting” but I don’t think this is the right word here. Maybe there’s a better non-English word.
What I’m referring to is the fact that no one on planet Earth believes Israel isn’t intentionally murdering civilians by the thousands. There is no explanation for not letting food and water in if not for reasons of collective punishment. Like, I’ve even tried to come up with a BS line I would take if I was Israel, and I can’t think of one. To my knowledge Israel hasn’t even really addressed not letting food and water in, they just simply do it.
We all know what Israel is doing. But the imperialists and Zionists simply trot out lines about “Israel isn’t targeting civilians” and “Hamas is the enemy, not the Palestinian people”. No one believes it but we are sort of “expected” to believe it. What would you actually call this?