mozz

I saw this in cropped form initially, and I thought it was going to be the US, Israel, and the fossil fuel industry. Not quite right but not quite wrong either.

I notice a certain slight tendency in your comments to talk about China, implication that aid for Taiwan was "bought" from the US congress by someone, tendency to delve into the details of tariffs and suchlike.

Quick question for you: If I protest in China against a Chinese policy I don't agree with, what happens to me?

(This isn't a whataboutism -- China doing something doesn't excuse the US police from doing a much milder version of the same thing. I don't think they should be beating or arresting protestors here either. I'm just curious how universally you apply this concern for protestors who had their asses beat.)

Sometimes conspiracies literally exist. It's where the word comes from.

I phrased my point a little poorly maybe -- I meant that from Israel's POV, I think US weapons aren't critical (and definitely not to fight against Hamas, although that's not their only regional enemy), but US diplomatic aid is absolutely crucial.

The issue that Israel's POV is working on a project to wipe out a civilian population so they can take all their land and pretend they never existed, and so US aid shouldn't be looked at purely through the lens of what's needed by Israel at any given time, is a pretty relevant addition to that, yes. 100%.

Journalists have incredibly broad protections against getting sued for saying something like that. In general, for public or political figures, they can say whatever they want, in a way they never could against a private citizen, for exactly this reason.

There are fuzzy cases at the edges (like Bob Murray suing John Oliver), but Trump is so clearly a public figure that he can't sue them for libel without getting laughed out of court. This is why he keeps bitching periodically about the libel laws and how we have to fix them; because they protect people's right to talk about him and he hates that they can do that and he can't punish them for it.

"How Democracies Die" goes into this in quite a bit of detail. Once the fascists start breaking the rules, there's a terrible temptation to start fighting back in kind, violating norms like the one against politically motivated prosecutions dictated by the executive branch, which it's easy to decide it's time to start breaking, because we have to do something or else they might take over the fucking country. Breaking those rules is one of the last stages in the collapse of the democratic system which will hasten the fascist takeover, though. It must not be done. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you have to fight the uphill battle continuing to obey the rules against people who are breaking them. It sucks but in most cases it's the only move that leads to any good outcome.

Biden is doing the right thing by staying out of the prosecutions and letting the DOJ for some awful fuckin reason handle them at the same glacial pace that it handles everything. Why they're doing that, I don't know, but Biden is right to stay out of it.

* From dingdongs who are repeating -- accidentally or on purpose -- some bullshit that was professionally constructed to emotionally resonate and sound convincing on surface level, so that when people spread it on social media it can do its job and help Trump get elected and fuck up the country absolutely beyond recognition

Their whole framing of the story should acknowledge that he's an enemy of the United States. He got dozens of CIA assets killed, he supported our enemy in a shooting war that's still going on, and he tried to kill a bunch of politicians to seize power. Instead, they're treating him like a candidate for president. Every single newspaper should be running stories about what a catastrophe it would be if someone who's so clearly hostile to the United States managed to seize control of the United States government.

It's like those editors from World War 2 that wanted to tone down coverage of Hitler because he's a popular and successful leader. I mean, your statement's not fully objectively wrong. But also, objectively, you're missing the point.

Here's a list. Some excerpts:

slashing U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) funding, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security

invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries

create a federally funded "American Academy" that would deliver online courses and grant free degrees that excluded "wokeness or jihadism". The plan would also be funded by taxing the endowments of major universities

every state report exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother's state of residence, and by what method

There's lots more.

He committed the idealist's perennial sin: He thought that because the system is bullshit, it's okay not to play ball with it.

"Hey this is a bunch of crap. I can be guilty or innocent, and the right move is always to plead guilty even if I didn't do a damn thing wrong, because if I try to fight the case they're gonna tack on a ton of new charges and they almost always win and I might go away for most of my life."

"Preach."

"I'm gonna plead not guilty because I didn't do anything wrong."

"No no no no no that is not the way to reform the system no no no that is a bad mistake"

Aaron Swartz was a fuckin hero. Read his posthumous book, it is wonderful. But the same idealism and faith that led him to the good things he did in his painfully short time here, also led him not to understand how to engage with the US federal government and keep your skin.

I did say exactly what happened: He edited posts. And I explicitly addressed what you're saying here: I'm saying it doesn't matter how "harmless" the edits are that you're saying create such a big difference. I'm saying any amount is bad (which isn't the same as saying that any edit is the same as any other edit).

It's mostly the Republicans; there's no mask involved.

Of course the time to fight this fight was back when voting for $17 billion worth of aid to an openly genocidal regime, which everyone was okay with for some fuckin reason. As always happens, trying to "split the difference" accomplished nothing at all besides pissing off all the good people and no good faith at all from the evil people, because that's not how they operate.

Congratulations, you fucks.