#ukraine is the obvious one and a source of a lot of other stuff... like family and cats and being a refugee of course.

[qqueenofhades]

-Runs back into the room from having been wrapped up in the Sub Shitshow- context PLEASE on what’s up with Putin!?

Lol okay buckle up:

Yevgeny Prighozin is (well, as of now) one of Putin's closest allies. He is Putin's former chef and now the CEO of Wagner Group, the Russian private army of mercenaries who have spent a decade plundering Africa and destroying Syria in the employ of various terrible local dictators. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has become one of the Russian army's mainstays, mostly because they're the only ones who seem able to actually do anything. Of course, it did still take them nine months to take Bakhmut, Ukraine's *checks notes* 53rd largest city with very little strategic value, but given what a shitshow the regular Russian army has been, that's good. Or something.

The Russian army is mostly good at destroying dams and bombing civilians, which are obviously terrible for many reasons, but not that useful in the military scheme of things.

However, Wagner are also -- I hasten to stress -- thoroughly terrible people. Aside from all the shit in Africa and Syria, they've done likewise in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Legally speaking, they technically "don't exist," which has allowed them to get around a lot of the usual rules and regulations that are supposed to "bind" (ha) the Russian army. They are obviously in Ukraine directly at Putin's behest and doing Putin's bidding, but it turns out that giving an ambitious and amoral psychopathic warlord his own private army of criminals, rapists, killers, and whoever else they can dredge out of Russia's prisons to throw at the front line and die en masse may not be a good idea?

Shocking, I know.

Anyway, Prigozhin has spent months ripping into the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, for what a whole shitshow clusterfuck this whole stupid war patently is. (Not, however, that this has stopped him from continuing to eagerly carry it out, since he's just as much or indeed even more of a zealot as the rest of Putin's government.) This has included blaming Shoigu for equipment losses, underprovisioning of Wagner troops, general strategic numbnuttery, etc. Prigozhin has not, however -- again, until now -- attacked Putin directly, or backed off from getting his losers killed in Bakhmut and/or wherever else. One suspects that Putin has been perfectly happy to let Prigozhin scapegoat Shoigu for the war's failures, since this means Shoigu can always just conveniently fall out a window or something if it gets too necessary to make a public show of displeasure, and not Putin.

HOWEVER, things took a turn VERY FAST today, within about 12 hours. Prigozhin has, as noted, spent months tearing the Russian military leadership a new asshole -- not because he's a good guy (he's a fucking war criminal on like, 10 different levels), but because it is plainly obvious what a shitshow this is and even a war criminal has his limits as to how much totally pointless murderous bullshit he wants to go through, I guess. (That includes telling the truth about why the war started -- i.e. to steal Ukrainian stuff/land for the oligarchs, and not any of Putin's other stupid excuses.)

Today (June 23) Prigozhin accused the Russian Ministry of Defense of orchestrating a rocket attack on Wagner's camp in eastern Ukraine (near the Russian border) and causing massive casualties;

We don't have proof of this yet, or indeed much else of what Prigozhin is talking about, BUT he finally decided to put his Coup Hat On and get serious about "punishing" Russian military leadership, i.e. presumably Shoigu, declaring that "there are 25,000 of us [Wagner soldiers] and we're coming into Russia to sort out this chaos"

So -- again, according to Prigozhin, who is not the world's most reliable source on anything -- he turned his army of yoinks around, left Ukraine, and marched into the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where the Russian military command in charge of the assault on Ukraine is headquartered;

For a while, there was nothing but Prigozhin's various unhinged rants on Telegram to prove any of this, but it's now early tomorrow morning in Russia and there are indeed a lot of videos of what DOES IN FACT LOOK like Wagner mercenaries rolling into Rostov and storming Ministry of Defense buildings;

Firm information on what is going on is almost nonexistent, even for Russia, but Putin is clearly taking this seriously; Moscow is shut down, there are armored vehicles on the streets, Google is down in Russia, and Russian newscasters are interrupting their broadcasts to insist Don't Look, Everything Is Fine Here, Totally Fine, Do You Hear Swan Lake? I Don't Hear Swan Lake!

Nobody can find Putin either, allegedly, but don't worry! He has been "briefed on the situation and everything is under control!"

The Russian FSB (successor to the KGB) has meanwhile issued a warrant for Prigozhin's arrest, said they'll charge/prosecute him for treason and armed rebellion against the state, and ordered him to stand down/his own men to arrest him

This, uh, does not appear to be working

ANYWAY, Putin's basically fucked no matter how this ends. Wagner literally just led an armed mutiny, he can't feel good about sending his ex-bestie Prigozhin back to Ukraine with any confidence that his orders will continue to be obeyed, it's Russian-on-Russian open war in the streets of Rostov and God knows where else, he's totally lost control of the narrative, the war, the domestic political situation, Wagner, probably good chunks of the Russian military command/elite establishment, etc., and we all know what happens to dictators in Russia who can no longer dictate

(And yet the Russian army is still finding time to lob some missiles at civilian buildings in Kyiv tonight, because they suck).

This is obviously a huge lucky break for Ukraine as well, since if the Russians are busy fighting each other, they can continue to push for a big breakthrough on their counteroffensive.

So yeah. Pride Month really wheeling out the big guns here, after Putin was the top option picked for Lady Karma to do her thing on in my poll a few weeks ago.

Stay tuned.

[unhonestlymirror]

Historical shit in Eastern Europe which pisses me off:

Saying the "Polish-Lithuanian" period instead of "Lithuanian" (around 300 years) and "Polish" (around 200 years). Yes, they were different.

Overall russified vision of history. Sadly.

Belarus doesn't exist. Or exists as a "Slavic RussiaPoland". Guys, if we don't start perceiving Belarus as the hostage of russia, as someone who needs help and support - it's gonna become officially russia, and we're gonna have MUCH MORE trouble. Ukraine is in these troubles right now, in fact. I wish we, as Ukrainians, cared about Belarus more, maybe we could have prevented at least some shit.

Obsession with shitting on long gone conflicts in the second and third circle instead of restoring the lost. Ukrainians, I am looking at you. Come on, man, we have ONLY ONE KNOWN PAINTING by a Ukrainian guy of Commonwealth period, and we were in Commonwealth FOR 200 YEARS, this is an unplowed field for research, why are we still discussing Volyn tragedy? during russian invasion times???😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Obsession with shitting on different ways of writing names??? Lithuanians, I am looking at you. In Ukraine, we sometimes call Mindaugas "Myndovh" and Vytautas "Vytovt" - not because we think they were Ukrainian. XD I know Lithuania has tensions with Belarus, but I'd rather concentrate on more important things right now. For example, the fact that most online English sources about Lithuania are very hetalia-like, if you know what I mean. Either from russia's or Poland's perspective (not necessarily bad for Lithuania but a LOT of details are either twisted or kept silent.) Shit-throwing with Belarus about Gediminas-Hedymin right now is like painting the walls while the house is flooding. Think about it.

Calling different historical figures of Commonwealth times just "Polish". 🙄🙄🙄

Belaruthians, just admit the fact that Lithuanians were an important part of GDL who protected you from Teutons. AND STOP CALLING LITHUANIANS "ŽEMAJTY" - SAMOGITIA HAS A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE FROM LITHUANIAN!!🥲🥲🥲 Please don't erase the Samogitian identity...

If ignoring the obvious provocations from lukashists - I, surprisingly, have almost no complaints. Belaruthian history sources, especially written before Lukashenko, tend to be quite objective and detailed. They are still very incomplete and very destroyed.

russia's history is generally a crack-smoking show, but if you know history from other countries' perspectives, you can find a lot of interesting and useful stuff here. Because russians really like to brag about the stolen, which is annoying but also pretty convenient. :))))

I wish more people were interested in Baltic tribes and their interactions with neighbours...

Of course, Ukrainians and Belaruthians should be more interested in their histories.

[harrypotterfuryroad]

How would you show someone who's anti JKR cause they clearly don't know what she'd said that she isn't anti-trans at all and show them what she'd actually said(plus her essay)?

Few people from my online friend group are firmly in 'JKR is an evil transphobe that wants trans people dead' camp, I'm not too sure if others are also against her cause they just like me never actually say anything when the those few are trashing her, and tbh I'm a bit of a coward to check in with others.

If I'd just met them all I'd definietly act like I have no idea what she'd said and innocently ask them, but since I've known them for over a decade and whenever they trash talk her I keep quiet I don't know how to bring it up now, y'know? That make sense?

I really want to make them see the truth cause it's getting harder and harder to ignore them, and it doesn't help that few of them are gendies, and one of them calls themself bi-ace so they firmly believe in trans ideology, so yeah I really don't know what to do.

Any advice?

so there's a few things you can do, here are the ones i've had success with:

unattributed quotes - you just put out something she said without referencing her and see if it's still seen as objectionable. i tweeted the "most misogynistic period i've experienced" quote and gotten people who i know have been vocal and vicious about jk to retweet it. you don't need to do a big gotcha reveal afterward but you can at least keep that in your pocket

play a little dumb - something like "wow she really said that? i better see for myself because it's crazy she would just put that out there," basically asking for sources without coming off like a debate me bro. i know you've said it feels kinda too late to try this, but i'm sure no one would hold it against you if you say you want to understand it better. you can say you're having trouble finding the exact quote they're referencing and make them go through the motions of finding it themselves. they'll either fail to find a primary source or they'll warp something she actually said, but at least you've gotten them past shaun videos and pinknews as their only sources (and if they refuse to go for primary sources then at least you've made them admit that)

point out that lying about their opponents only makes them look weaker - usually this one comes up in regards to like "jk rowling supports vladimir putin and matt walsh!!" you can just link to the tweets where she's vocally critical of matt walsh or the fact that she's doing a lot of humanitarian relief stuff in ukraine. again you can take the approach of wanting to see for yourself. if a really common belief among their group is that easy to disprove, why are they so insistent about it? (bonus if you push on the putin thing and all they can give you is "putin namedropped her in an obvious ploy to soften his image" (which is like thirty eight telephone steps away from "she supports him"))

at a certain point you can just point blank ask them why they think she wants trans people dead, they might just double down but at least it'll be clear that it's based on nothing

[calicoaidan]

Eurovision 2023 - the story so far

I’m gonna be blunt folks, I adore the Eurovision Song Contest, it’s not even a guilty pleasure nowadays.

The concept of it is just something I like, every country gets one shot, once a year, 3 minutes to write and perform a song of their choosing with it being staged however they wish* (well, there are some restrictions).

A list of the recent winners shows the brilliance of it all,

The Swedish slickness of Loreen and Mans Zelmerlow

The heartfelt nature of Jamala when she won with 1944, a song that resonates ever more with current events

Conchita Wurst’s victory with Rise Like a Phoenix, the best Bond theme tune there never was

And through what can often be a lot of noise the breakthrough of Salvador Sobral with what by Eurovision standards was a shock win

It’s not even the winning songs that stick in the memory; Dadi Freyr, Francesco Gabbani, Mahmood, all bangers.

One source of sadness was the remote chance of Eurovision ever being anywhere near home, for near enough the entirety of the 21st century the BBC has tied itself into a number of completely out-of-touch tunes and often hamstrung themselves with some feeble staging - Electro Velvet is probably the best example, just poor. And then, TaP Music – and more importantly Sam Ryder – arrived.

Between his 2nd place, Putin’s fuckery needing the UK to host, and a lengthy bidding process, it has now fallen to Liverpool to host the next contest. Roughly half of the songs in 2023’s contest have now been unveiled and it’s time for some takes!

I’ve zero interest in being harsh, some of these tunes just don’t do it for me and that’s fine – others will thrive on these and that’s the joy of the contest.

From the 18 so far, here’s 11-18:

11 – Latvia

12 – Italy (my least favourite Italian song since they rejoined the Song Contest)

13 – Ukraine

14 – France

15 – Norway (note - this is currently the Eurovision subreddit favourite)

16 – Denmark

17 – Albania

18 – Romania

Between 11th and 15th I see stuff to enjoy, there’s artistic merit, they just don’t fully scratch the itch for me. From 16th onwards I’m just a bit lost, sorry.

And now, we count down from 10.

10th – Malta

It’s a slick enough tune, if they stage it like this in Liverpool it’ll resonate, it’s like a crossover of Moldova’s Sax Man and Lake Malawi’s Friend of a Friend

9th – Spain

It’s a stunning performance, will stand out on the night, but there are bits where it feels a bit flat for me - artistically incredible all the same but yeah, it doesn’t fully carry me.

8th – Ireland

The general attitude towards this song has been hostility from the subreddit, it’s been rather vicious! For me, the lyrics are a bit corny and the live performance on display isn’t amazing because RTE insist on having their selection contest in a shoebox, but the chorus is one of the most anthemic so far. It won’t win, but if they pitch it right they’ll make the final with that song.

7th – Croatia

This year’s pearl-clutcher will be this entry by Let 3, which points their ire to a very obvious individual without directly naming them. The first 45 seconds are a bit of a void, but when it gets going it tells a story that doesn’t need translating - it’s daft but fun. Will it make the final? The jury is out.

6th – Belgium

It’s full 90s, very catchy, another one that r/eurovision hates but I hope it makes it through, it’s three joyful minutes.

5th – Estonia

Well-written, brilliantly-performed, the only thing stopping me from putting this higher is it doesn’t quite peak, a victim of the 3 minute track limit.

4th – Lithuania

Similar issue to Ireland where the verses don’t quite carry but the choruses are lovely, it reminds me slightly of Saudade, Saudade with the harmonies - I feel like this will do better than most expect, not quite a winner.

This moves us onto the top three (who are a clear top three for me at this point), Slovenia, Australia and Czechia

3rd – Slovenia

A very catchy indie tune delivered by a group who clearly want to lean on boy band charm, I’m more interested in the former but this lot are going to be shovelling in the points in May, guaranteed top 10.

2nd – Australia

This is hot off the presses having been released this evening (in the middle of the night for Australian folks, strange) - I LOVE this. There’s elements that remind me of Everything Everything, and then sections that go grungy, world away, it’s a love-on-first-listen kind of tune for me. If it sounds this good live, it’s another top 10 in May.

1st – Czechia

As it stands, this is my clear favourite. It’s powerful, poignant, carries an energy throughout, and between the group of them, multi-lingual as well, it just works. I so, so hope they make this work as a live performance, it should be top 5 as a minimum and it's a potential winner if they pull it off.

So yeah, that’s where we’re at so far - 18 down, 19 to go.

I’ll do a part 2 when we have the full slate and update my rankings. Sláinte.

[saturniade]

having mental health issues is stupid. i hate anxiety i hate autism-related difficulties that prevent me from enjoying my half-baked pretense of a notmal neurotypical life. just set me fucking free from this mortal coil <-- girl who endures the horrors every day

[theskoomacat]

This has been bumping around my head for a long while but am finally sitting down to write it down

This is my take on the plot of Half-Life aka Reasons why I don’t give a headcrab’s ass about Borealis; Give Me My Interdimensional Game of Thrones

(Mind that since I’ve played all games only several months ago I have missed on all the ancient plot discussions and therefore am doomed to repeat already known to the fandom information and even might be wrong somewhere!)

Before the Black Mesa Incident (BMI)

G-Man is seen interacting with Black Mesa (BM) employees and the military (mostly in Opposing Force) a lot before and after the BMI. He also was the one to deliver that pure Xen crystal and basically cause BMI which resulted in the invasion of various aliens.

All of this shows that G-Man’s “employers” (I’ll call them Galiens), represented by G-Man, have been in contact with some part of the US (lbr we don’t know shit about the rest of the world aside from smth Ukraine-like) government for some time, which granted them the rights to do, apparently, whatever the fuck they want in BM - for example, deliver important research stuff (has the crystal even been legit found in the Xen by human researchers or just brought in by G-Man?). He even remarks after confiscating Gordon’s weaponry that it’s “government property” in the end of HL1.

During BMI

Why then did G-Man need to cause BMI? Since he has been hanging out on Earth for a while, it can’t be that all aliens needed to, like, “unlock” this dimension first with the cascade resonance to be able to teleport here. This means that the goal was not to wreck our dimension/BM, but for specifically Nihilanth’s race (perhaps, the Combine, too) to be able to teleport here en masse, leading to the Xen being captured by Galiens.

The end of HL1 when G&G oversee the wreckage of the US military initially made me think that they and Galiens cooperated in capturing the Xen (I didn’t notice they were all dead lmao), but now it seems clear to me that here is where things went a little not as G-Man would prefer. In the end of Opposing Force he calls BM “the biggest embarrassment”. What went wrong? BMI was his hands’ doing (unless the point was that he expected of Eli to stop the tests, but then it’s an entirely different story), the carnage and destruction seemed to be fine with him - he rearms the nuke himself. I think it was the presence of the military in the Xen that was the mistake - they weren’t supposed to go and die there, but someone in the government wanted to get their hands on the Xen and that upset the balance of powers carefully measured out by G-Man (more on that later). They fuck up so badly we don’t even hear about pre-BMI government/military at all in HL2 iirc. But otherwise - yeah, it really seems like G-Man was legit “working together” with the government (despite his/Galiens’ obvious superiority) in order to unleash aliens on Earth and let Galiens capture the Xen.

After BMI

After the BMI (caused by G-Man) causes the invasion of the Combine to wreck the Earth, G-Man enables Freeman to assist the Resistance in wrecking the Combine and saving the Earth. Sounds pretty illogical, right? Unless... the reason for the whole shebang was to drain the resources of the Combine.

Now what I think is happening here is that Galiens and the Combine are at war. Maybe not literally at the moment, but they are definitely rivals in a league far from the Earth’s abilities. Hell, the former can easily bend space and time and the latter can just stop some chemical reaction from happening. But for some reason neither can outright beat each other - maybe they’re just dead even, maybe they’re actually a part of some intergalactical/dimensional NATO so they can’t just throw a rock in the other’s garden without getting into deep shit with other aliens. So Galiens’ plan is to wave a tasty snack in front of the Combine’s face and then watch them crack their teeth on a rock they’ve put inside - without being involved themselves.

I would even go further with this metaphor and say that Nihilanians were the tasty Chupa-Chups, Earth its sweet inner gum and the Resistance choke full of G-Man’s “agents” the enamel-crushing rock inside. Because - let me paint the picture for you - Galiens possess the time-space-bending technology. Perhaps it’s absolutely unique in their civilization, which is why they even have a need to struggle for power and why only the smartest, most resourceful cockroach of an alien, as G-Man basically describes himself, wields it. Tragically, the Combine don’t have anything like that, they’re more into bioengineering, but pursue it by trying to capture Nihilanians, specifically vortigaunts who also can do cool space tricks and even oppose G-Man. Unfortunately, Nihilanians escape from them to the Xen, which is, supposedly, inaccessible to the Combine. But thanks to the resonance cascade they can now reach both survived vortigaunts (the ones on the Xen have been probably exterminated or taken away by Galiens by then) and a fresh source of stalkers on Earth, hooray! Except they don’t know that G-Man is going to make sure they waste even more resources fighting the Resistance than they will ever gain setting up on Earth.

Although it was supposed to go a little bit different, I suppose. Perhaps the Earth (again, here the Earth basically=the US) was supposed to last, well, at least 12 hours. 7. But these trigger-happy morons just had to lose a big chunk of the army in the Xen:\ I guess if G-Man was really counting on Alyx the return of Gordon couldn’t have happened radically earlier, but this must have messed up his plans anyway - mostly because it’s his job to meticulously arrange the Combine and the Resistance in such a way that humans wreck as much Combine shit as possible for as long as possible, which requires them to be seen more as a useful annoyance than a real threat (until they become one) while not being left absolutely powerless.

And it’s obvious that humans are precious to the Combine. Not all, 7 billion is too much so they need to cut that pregnancy shit out, but the rest they keep safe in the cities, feed them and try keeping them tame until the moment they can be taken to the Citadel and made into fresh useful synths - just like they did with the rest of alien species that make up their army.

So what does the future hold for us? Well, unless operation Borealis is a go and the ship is full of Aperture’s certified giant cyborg mantis men and other deus ex machina humanity is at Galiens’ and/or vortigaunts’ mercy. The Resistance might close all portals the Combine is throwing at them but since G-Man doesn’t seem to rely on them he will continue making sure the Combine still find a way to pour some more of their armies on the Earth, and the only ones who can stop him are vortiguants. Although not forever, I expect. At the same time there is a chance Galiens themselves won’t let humanity die completely as long as their plans re: the Combine are fine. They will bleed us dry but at some point they will decide that the Combine are weakened enough, and there will be a big war, and humans might be offered or forced to join it, and Galiens will prevail, and maybe - maybe whoever is left alive will be granted a highchair at the intergalactic dinner table.

[maximuswolf]

The 2020 Election and Lesser Evilism via /r/socialism

The 2020 Election and Lesser Evilism

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How much will this election really change?

We’ve heard that this election could stop fascism, and that the future of this country hinges on our vote. Is this really true?

This election has been framed as the most important in U.S. history, with the very future of the country on the line. Some have even argued that if Trump gets reelected, then the U.S. will become a fascist country like Nazi Germany. In the eyes of some, voting in presidential elections is seen as something which has a big impact and which makes a difference, in this case potentially stopping the rise of fascism. But is this really true? Will your vote really make a difference? Does every vote really count?

It’s not so hard to answer these questions. On the surface, Joe Biden and Trump seem pretty different. Biden is a veteran politician, with decades of experience in the system. He generally presents himself as an elder-statesman, dignified and honest. This illusion is regularly disrupted by his gaffes and slip-ups from calling Black people a monolithic group to calling for police to “only” shoot people in the leg instead of the heart or the head. But we are constantly reassured that he is in fact quite different from the bombastic, bloviating Trump who had no prior political experience and is quite crude.

We are told, by Biden and his allies, that he is really different than Trump. Yet Biden—just like Trump—has been involved in crooked business deals with his children using his family name for personal enrichment. For example, his son Hunter served as a front man in the Ukraine for all sorts of shady, corrupt deals that Joe Biden was involved in. But the FBI (always a “trustworthy” and “honest” source) has said that this stuff about Biden being corrupt is just lies from Russia so we should all ignore the story. Some are quick to reassure us that, despite his flaws, Biden will not do things like use federal troops and forces against protesters (or at least against “peaceful protesters”).

But we’ve heard this story before. While not exactly the same situation, in 2008 Obama was sold to the American people as the antidote to eight years of neoconservative reaction under Bush. He was dignified and well-spoken where Bush was crude and vulgar. He was supposedly against the wars, while Bush was for them. Obama was an outspoken critic of domestic spying under the Patriot Act which Bush’s administration had created; Obama would be better than Bush for undocumented immigrants, and so on. We were promised a lot of “change” as Obama’s vague slogan went, but we got mostly more of the same, albeit sold to us by a politician who was much more articulate than the prior president.

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If you look at the facts, it becomes clear that there is far more continuity between administrations than change. Presidential elections really have very little impact on U.S. state policy. Just look at how Obama followed in Bush’s footsteps:

Bush started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Obama expanded them, carrying out the “surge” in Afghanistan shortly after being elected, while pretending to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq by replacing them with drone strikes and private mercenaries like Blackwater.

Speaking of drone strikes, while Bush’s administration pioneered the use of drones strikes, it was Obama who massively expanded the program. Every Tuesday he sat down with the head of the CIA to personally decide who the U.S. would assassinate from the sky.

Bush and Cheney expanded domestic spying and torture in their 8 years in office. While on the campaign trail, Obama made a lot of promises about prosecuting people who did this. Once elected, not only did he not prosecute them, he made it clear that he would provide them with immunity for their actions, so that they never had to worry about being put in jail for torture or spying on people.

Bush and Cheney pursued an aggressive policy of deportations of undocumented immigrants. Instead of reversing this, Obama massively expanded it, deporting over 2,000,000 people during his presidency, far more than any president before him.

Bush catered to fossil fuel companies, worked to get them Iraqi oil, and expanded drilling in the U.S., but Bush was nowhere near as good at this as his successor. Obama oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. fossil fuel production since World War II, and turned the U.S. into the largest oil producer in the world.

Bush bailed out the banks in 2008, but Obama continued to bail them out repeatedly over the course of his administration, and even had Citibank and other companies help to hand-pick his cabinet.

These are just a few examples that show how much continuity there really is between administrations. Despite all the money and efforts that politicians spend trying to make it seem like they are different from each other, the actual differences in policy from one administration to the next are very small. Perhaps recognizing this reality is part of the reason Michelle Obama referred to George W. Bush as her “partner in crime.” It’s easy to see why she would have sympathy for Bush, given her husband’s record as a fellow war criminal.

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More recently, people have been correctly condemning Trump’s deployment of troops and other federal agents to suppress the George Floyd protests. Even Biden joined in this criticism, although he was quick to specify that he opposed using force only against “peaceful protesters.” In reality Biden has called for the prosecution and use of force against “anarchists” and looters at the protests, mirroring similar language from Trump. These terms paint with a broad brush and are used to justify crackdowns on activists, especially those who defend themselves against police violence. Those who claim that Biden will be a better alternative to Trump on this question have forgotten how the Obama administration pursued nearly the exact same policy as Trump in suppressing Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and Baltimore. Troops were deployed to brutalize people, Feds were called in, including the FBI, and some activists were even assassinated by the government. During Occupy, Obama’s FBI even had a plan to use snipers to simultaneously assassinate key leaders of the movement in every major city in the country if the protests continued to escalate.

Take another one of Trump’s most horrifying policies, his family separation policy at the border. He has locked up children in cages, forcing them to sleep on cement floors in cages of the concentration camps at the border. But many of these concentration camps were built during the Obama administration, and children were already sleeping on concrete floors behind bars just for having come to the United States before Trump was elected. Trump’s only “innovation” to this cruelty was to make sure that the kids were not in the cages with their parents.

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Can you tell the troops sent by Trump to crush protests apart from those sent by Obama?

It is true that in practically every field, Trump has pushed forward more right-wing and reactionary policies. But far from being his personal drive towards turning this country into a fascist dictatorship, these changes are just the most recent in a decades-long trend by both parties which has pushed things further and further to the right. What we have seen over the past decades from one administration to the next, is far more similarities than differences. Regardless of who the people vote for, the same repressive policies at home and abroad are carried out, with things only becoming more repressive over the years. In this election we are being bombarded with messages from everyone from Biden himself to former heads of the FBI and CIA that he is really the best option, or at least the lesser evil.

Given the history of past elections in this country, we should see clearly that electing Biden will not solve any of these problems. Nor will we be able to “hold his feet to the fire” and make sure that “he is accountable to the voters.” This is a liberal fantasy, based on the corrosive logic of lesser-evilism. It tricks people into supporting the system (in one way or another) because of a deeper nihilism about real change, and convinces them that the only way to make change is through a system set up by the ruling class and their political parties for their benefit.

​

How different are the two parties after all?

But the truth is that voting really makes almost no difference. Biden will not save us. He will instead continue the long-standing rightward march in U.S. politics. Only we can save ourselves, through getting organized, fighting back, and ultimately creating a revolution to establish a new form of government that actually serves the people’s interests. The deep-seated nihilism that believes that change is only possible within this system fails to see how unstable this system really is. This country has only been around for just over two hundred years. Humans have been on this planet for a few hundred thousand. Are we really supposed to believe that there is no alternative to the present system? Isn’t it obvious that if we work together we can build something far better for the people of this country and the world, a political system where we aren’t always picking the lesser evil, but instead fighting for something good?

It’s time to cast aside illusions about electoral politics and prepare for the long and difficult struggle ahead. We are at the beginning of a major economic collapse, climate change is ravaging the planet and the U.S. and China have begun a new Cold War. Both candidates have made it clear that they will serve the billionaires and bail out the banks, that their plans for climate change are more of the same subsidies to fossil fuel companies and they have both promised to be bigger warmongers than each other in this inter-imperialist conflict with China.

We the people have to find a way forward. We need to break from the nihilism of lesser evilism and see that we can really change the world. But first we have to get organized.

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For more of our updates, follow us on twitter (https://twitter.com/revunitedfront) or check out our website: https://revolutionaryunitedfront.com/

About us: We're the Revolutionary United Front, a US-based revolutionary organization in the U.S. organizing in the Greater Boston, New York, and San Francisco areas. We're working to support and advance various people’s struggles ranging from anti-war, immigrant, and proletarian internationalist solidarity.

Submitted November 04, 2020 at 10:58AM by revunitedfront via reddit https://ift.tt/386mZEm

[go-redgirl]

Exclusive — Republicans Mull Ethics Charges Against Schiff Ally as Democrats Turn Back to Failed Russia Strategy

House GOP leaders are considering pursuing ethics charges against Democrat Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) for alleged misconduct he engaged in against Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) at an Intelligence Committee meeting on Wednesday morning.

“He was very rude,” Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) told Breitbart News on Wednesday evening of Maloney’s behavior towards Nunes and others during the committee meeting earlier in the day. “Members don’t question other members in hearings. This wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting. It was really inappropriate in my opinion, and pretty childish.”

Others familiar with the incident told Breitbart News that when a transcript of the incident—with the exact words of Maloney’s accusations and questions of Nunes during the meeting—becomes available, House GOP leadership lawyers familiar with parliamentary rules will consider bringing formal ethics charges against Maloney for his alleged misconduct toward Nunes during the meeting.

The standing rules of the House of Representatives make it such that one member cannot accuse another member of lying, and also cannot hurl insults at them. Depending on the exact wording of what Maloney said, when the transcript becomes available in the coming days, GOP lawyers may seek formal action against him by the House Ethics Committee.

The background of what led up to the Maloney incident is as follows: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is gearing up yet again to try to level more baseless accusations against allies of President Donald Trump, this time over packages that were sent to a number of Trump allies inside and outside of Congress during the lead-up to the House impeachment of Trump last year.

What’s more, the Democrats appear to have leaked classified information to Politico in order to weaponize the narrative to the media and are now engaged in over-the-top tactics that may be in violation of House ethics rules to boot.

In reality, however, the broader picture here—Nunes told Breitbart News–is that Schiff is doing the Russians’ bidding.

“They’re clearly conducting election interference right now, either wittingly or unwittingly on behalf of Vladimir Putin,” Nunes said in an interview on Wednesday evening. “Putin doesn’t have to do anything. He doesn’t have to run one real op. But they just run around ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ all the time. Well, they’re the ones doing it. They’re the ones who went to Russia to get information. Not Republicans. Republicans never went to Russia to get anything. Democrats did. Four years of disinformation, and they’ve been proven wrong all the time, and they’ve turned the committee into a dungeon of conspiracy theories. They don’t even do real work on Intel.”

Last week, Politico reported leaked details—including citing what it said was classified information, which is illegal to leak—about supposed packets of information sent to congressional allies of Trump last year to hurt presumptive Democrat nominee former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Top congressional Democrats are sounding the alarm about a series of packets mailed to prominent allies of President Donald Trump — material they say is part of a foreign disinformation plot to damage former vice president Joe Biden, according to new details from a letter the lawmakers delivered to the FBI last week,” Politico’s Natasha Bertrand, Kyle Cheney, and Andrew Desiderio wrote.

In the second paragraph of the article, the Politico scribes revealed what they said was classified information. Politico wrote:

The packets, described to Politico by two people who have seen the classified portion of the Democrats’ letter, were sent late last year to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and then-White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. The packets were sent amid a Democratic push to impeach Trump over his effort to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden and his son Hunter the sources said. Graham and Grassley denied having received the material, and Mulvaney and Nunes declined repeated requests for comment. One person familiar with the matter said the information was not turned over to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment.

Members of Congress, especially those on the Intelligence Committee, are regularly sent stuff from overseas powers. There exist a number of protocols, whereby staffers send such materials to the proper authorities for vetting.

“If you’re a Republican and you get on the Intelligence Committee, anything you get from a foreign country, it gets sent off to the proper authorities, and likely you would never even touch it or see it because the people who get the mail do that for us,” one member told Breitbart News. “That’s at the committee and your personal office and your district offices, and for sure your home.”

So while the latest attacks from Schiff seem like an interesting narrative or storyline from the establishment media, it is in reality fairly meaningless and mundane.

But all of a sudden Schiff called a committee meeting behind closed doors on Wednesday morning. There, a party-line vote was held to reveal certain pieces of the information about these packages to the whole Congress. But then things got ugly when Maloney began verbally accosting Nunes—the GOP ranking member—and hurling insults at him and at Republicans in general.

While Maloney’s office has not replied to a request for comment telling his side of the story, Republicans like Crawford were quick to come out and point out how out of line they think the top Democrat ally of Schiff was behaving during this exchange.

“He just kind of kept on the issue of these alleged items being sent to the committee,” Crawford told Breitbart News. “So obviously Devin Nunes didn’t comment on that. Here’s the thing: it’s standard practice that if you get a package from unknown source in a foreign country, it’s probably a good idea to call the FBI and let them handle it and not handle those packages and don’t open them and go, ‘Hey I wonder what this is? I guess it’s Christmas came early this year.’ No, you follow the protocol, which is you turn that over to the FBI. That’s what happened.”

Crawford added that Maloney seemed to be, at Schiff’s direction, trying to “goad” Nunes and Republicans into some kind of response that would then be weaponized and leaked. “It was mostly trying to goad … particularly Ranking Member Nunes, but also our side writ large, trying to goad us into making a comment,” Crawford said. “The thing is you don’t want to engage. It’s like trolls on social media. They want the attention and so you don’t want to give it to them.”

Then, if they said something, Schiff’s team would turn around and leak it to the press before it came out when the transcript of the meeting would eventually be made public.

“That’s the whole point, and that’s what this committee has devolved into under Schiff’s leadership—or lack of leadership would be the better term,” Crawford said. “It’s purely turned into an oppo research arm for the DCCC and more. This is an important committee, and it has a long history of acting in a bipartisan way, but Schiff has broken that.”

Crawford added that Schiff and his allies like Maloney behaving like this on the committee means that HPSCI, which is supposed to focus on intelligence threats to the United States, is now a laughingstock shell of its former glory.

“We’ve got a lot of threats, a very diverse threat matrix that exists around the world, and what have we been able to do in this committee under his leadership?” Crawford said. “Virtually nothing, and that’s because he’s been so focused on political advances and trying to position himself and take down Trump that they haven’t done anything even remotely related to intelligence and everything we’re charged with in that committee. It’s a mockery, it’s a complete travesty, and this is why the American people need to know this is how bad his tenure has been – would continue to be – if he were allowed to continue in that position.”

The Federalist’s Sean Davis on Wednesday published a deep dive debunking this latest scandal. His piece goes into depth about it all. But asked in a brief interview on Wednesday evening about the whole thing, Nunes told Breitbart News this is just the latest example of Schiff and his allies cooking up more nonsense within 100 days of the election.

“They never stop,” Nunes said. “The Democrats never stop with conspiracy theories and politicization of intelligence. They just read through intelligence reports to decide what they can leak to tie something back to Russia. The irony of this is they’re the ones who colluded with Russians. It wasn’t us. In 2016, they’re the ones who did it. You can’t even make this up. It’s so wacko. They just continue to push conspiracy theories that are nothing more, nothing less than that. How many times do they have to get busted on this? We have receipts of them doing it. We have court documents of them doing it. We have plenty of declassified information now from Horowitz and everywhere else that they were the ones doing this. They won’t give up trying to cover up what they were doing in 2016—and they’re doing it right now.”

Nunes added he believes the Democrat playbook will fail again, just like it did in 2016.

“They’re doing the same thing again,” Nunes said. “They’re running the same playbook as they did in 2016 over again. It’s pretty obvious. But we’re onto them this time. But all we can do is talk to people like you and say, ‘Hey just go back and look at the last four years. They were the ones colluding with Russia, not us.’”

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Wyatt answers a question (Part1)

Telling me not to so something makes me want to do it even more, DJ. Why Israel? Because when I joined this movement, I notice everyone talks about every other country but no serious discussion on Israel. No one is safe from criticism imo. So how about we do that, DJ? Shall we? Let's have honest discussion, DJ. Because truth is coming. It is obvious that elite 1% hide behind good jewish people to commit atrocities and profit on top of them. Much like America. I have no problem admitting that. We are great, but we are also monsters to much of the world. The elite 1% have created the jewish vehicle and manipulate good Americans and good Israelis, they do not care about the Jews. At. All. They hide behind them. In fact, Honest Jews should be most vocal. This common knowledge outside the schizophrenic propaganda bubble in America. Oh trust me, DJ, they don't care if you Jewish or Moslem or Christian. They have plans for each of you. They will use you. Tarnish your name. They will ride you like vehicle, & when you crash, they will use other vehicle. HRC=vehicle. Jews=vehicle. Christian's are vehicles. It's all pretty simple if you put emotions aside and think from perspective of psychotic king. Tbh, all of this new to me, I've only started looking into this topic since 2018. How the good jewish people aren't outraged is beyond me. I really don't get it. It'll be hard, ofc. It's funny. Some Q people follow like no one's biz and have malfunction when Israel brought up even tho Q says "saving Israel last." People afraid to RT etc but my views way up, so obv ppl curious & reading. Massive redpills incoming. Bend over and say ah. One side note. I like Gorka, but he gets foolish and smeared low follower acct I follow not long ago because he asked legitimate Q about Holocaust. Q everything? Gorka called him "denier." That is what I mean. No hate ever, we want honest discussion & curious why the deflections Also I dont always have opinion on the stuff I write about, just sayin. So if you say anything to me like dumb cuck, I'll laugh. I'm just typing what I see. Even from multiple perspectives sometimes But the Q was about the Holocaust numbers. Fair question. So I looked into it. The outright denial is chidish imo and not serious person. People definitely died, and there were labor camps, but numbers get questionable. Yes, yes they do. You can find examples everywhere. There was a single witness who supposedly was in two concentration camps and is the primary source for about 1/3 of Holocaust deaths. It's a nasty rabbit hole, but you figure out that a lot is stack of exaggerations. One of the most obvious is the fact that the Nazi's crematoriums would have had to burn a body about 10x faster than a modern one and be running 24/7 for years with literal zero downtime. There's a reason why they specifically say "Historians agree that 6 million died" because it's just an agreement, not an actual number based on facts. Have you ever seen the Treblinka Holocaust Memorial? It looks pretty strange for a "memorial". Looks like they just     Holocaust historians claim that during WW2 almost 900,000 people were killed and buried at Treblinka. And they claim that later the Germans dug up and burned the bodies in order to destroy the evidence. In 1999 a team of experts used an $80,000 Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) device to check for evidence that the soil had ever been disturbed as . They found no evidence of any soil disturbance. They covered the field with 17,000 boulders/stones and called it a memorial.Now you can't run any more Ground Penetration Radar tests - not without moving 17,000 boulders (which are set into concrete).  Of course, doing this would be disturbing a sacred Holocaust "memorial" - which would land you in jail.  Mission Accomplished. The whole Holocaust thing and the way the elite 1% use as a vehicle is very strange and fascinating at same time. Are you not at all curious as to why this is the only genocide event that needs legal protection by throwing "deniers" into jail? Or do you just happily overdose on the forced narratives? Surely the elite would never lie to you. They aren't psychopaths or anything. Trust us. Genuine Question. Why do we hear about the Holocaust over and over in movies, TV shows, documentaries, newspapers, books, etc. but almost never hear about the HUNDREDS of other historical genocides? It seems very weird until you figure out the real purpose of all this. Ask yourself one simple question, How in the world does Israel get away with their mass murder, ethnic cleansing and brutal oppression - if we're going to be honest. I have criticism for both sides of that conflict, don't get me wrong. I'm staying on outside looking in though. Why are we very allowed to discuss the idea of white privilege, but forbidden from discussion of the hypothesis of Jewish privilege? Foolish if you don't think it applies the other way too. In three words... Guilt/elites/vehicles. Guilt over Holocaust. Sick, but brilliant, no? The ultimate Guilt trip enables the ultimate in psychological manipulation. You see, Holocaust means that they entitled to special rights - the right to forbid people from discussing their disproportionate wealth & political influence. THE PERFECT VEHICLE. How do you not see? A found that the number one reason Jewish Americans give as the source of their identity as Jews is not race or religion.  Instead when asked "What does it mean to be Jewish?", the number one reason given (73%) was "Remembering the Holocaust". Hm. Some people think of it as a secular pseudo-religion called Holocaust-ianity or some shit (combining the words "holocaust" and "Christianity").  Laws in many U.S. states, known as , mandate teaching to all school children. Vedddy weird folks, no? This indoctrinates kids with the belief that the Jewish people are "unique" in their historical victim-hood.  This puts Jews at the very top of the victim hierarchy. This was the goal from beginning, since widely believed victim narrative gives you political power, being top of victim hierarchy give you the most political power.  That's why holocaust-ianity causes people to believe that Jews deserve special rights that no one else has. They mean well, but man are they slow. For example, holocaust-ianity means wealthy inbred morons can manipulate Israel and somehow hold ethical exemption to create type of racist country, whether citizens realize or not. Laughable. Israel is diverse. I know 4 that live in Haifa and they travel all over. Lefties, righties, buncha groups. If Mr.Trump just stomped out the major criminal networks we wouldn't even be dealing with any of this bullschiff. Regular citizens always the ones who suffer. It's pathetic. Normal chill citizens there can easily do what we are doing. What I'm saying is I condemn both sides of region but also support both sides for defending themselves. Innocent people always caught up in the middle. What I'm really saying is that Israel needs to flush their toilet. Not hard to separate elite agenda from normal people on planet. Some idiots will follow like lefties here. Man made systems. Can be infiltrated and can be used as vehicles to manipulate the masses of genuine good people out there. Also dont forget the horrific stuff Japanese did. And then you have them working with China and selling sensitive information and testing out traitorous surveillance tech. Like Hillary. Who is Rothschild pet. God forbid we should ever cut off their billions and cut aid entirely for now - they might really stab us in the back. Holocaust-ianity gives right to violate principle free speech, so people can be censored etc. Use Dan Cringeshaw, but never trust Dan Cringeshaw. He said it best. Said you're allowed to question everything and criticize every govt except for one lucky winner.  Hint: not USA Currently no other vehicle at time has this special political right to protect the victim-hood narrative against people who might use their free speech rights to question the narrative. Also why Obama talked schmack but still agreed to send billions. Elites are manipulating you. The political power engendered by Holocaust-ianity is so powerful that it must be protected at all costs from the blasphemers, otherwise known as holocaust "deniers." Pathetic boring game by 1%. Make no mistake. Creating J victimhood and using as vehicle is nothing new at all. If you start seriously questioning the narratives, some will malfunction and start melting and end up blocking you or telling me "why they are going to block me now" lolol. It's so childish and weird. All we're doing is talking, asking questions, normal stuff. So scary ... ffs.  Literally only thing I remember learning in Highschool was Holocaust and Rwandan genocide only because chill mf teacher put on movie Hotel Rwanda (really really good btw) about Rwandan genocide. We were taught as if Holocaust was the only genocide. Others not brought up. Why? I got indoctrinated by bs and became bored and 100% distanced from all this. When I saw a lot of the truth and became fascinated and interested in our history and cemented love of country and realized there are shit load of atrocities - feels clown like to treat anyone special. I wish more would sit down and look at things more honestly. Even if you dont know answer. I openly talk about all these topics with whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, my best friend Filipino (Dodi), or other best friend Sikh (Deepak), 99% understand none of this is our fault. That's why the state of Israel denies the Armenian Holocaust.  That's also why the state of Israel denies the Polish Holocaust.  And that's why the state of Israel agrees Ukrainian Holocaust must be downplayed.  Even ADL on video bullied Ukraine into There can be only one **top** victim narrative. We can't even trade positions for like a day. Boring!  And that position must belong to the "most oppressed people in history" - the "chosen people". *barf* The clip showing ADL's triggered bullying is from a documentary called "Defamation". Created by an Israeli Jew. Jews aren't a race, they are a religion Jewish supremacists in some top universities teach that Judaism is only a religion and that Jews are really just white people.  Of course, it's not true and they know it. America's Most Famous Rabbi (as well as Israeli scientists) admitted that Jews are a Race, not a Religion. So why do they teach the "Judaism is only a religion" fallacy? They do this so that they can promote the idea of "White Supremacy" imo. If Judaism is nothing but a religion, that means the concept of ["White Supremacy" can be used as camouflage to cover up the fact that we actually live in a System of Jewish Supremacy. Also you do NOT have to be "Jewish." It's a game. Many people like myself are very new to breaking out of the mind control propaganda.  They've had an almost total lock on the information for many decades.  The internet is allowing a break out of the 'forbidden' information. The Jewish Supremacists are clearly freaking out and trying their best to bring censorship to the internet under the cover of "hate speech" laws. Hopefully enough people can be de-programmed in time to prevent the censoring of more internet. The axis of power in the world is doing tilts and Israel has to start wiggling itself into good position with China. As for the US, state of Israel doesn't give two schiffs about US or its people, you are tax farm and buncha fools who will jump to defense when they tell you to. It's going to be interesting to see how they will attempt to wiggle w Chinese, they are less easily manipulated than the Americans. If you step on toes once they will not forget. Not like US which has gaping whole for ass of the huge arse f'ng it has been getting for years now. You should really talk to some Israelis or read what they write online. A few good websites out there. Israel is more critical of Israel than the US is of Israel. It is hysterical to me. Some Americans think Israel is some hivemind and each person is connected with a string. US "ally" Israel routinely caught sending American troops in to do the fighting they should be doing themselves. Israel is not the home of the chosen people. There are no chosen people. What a strange ridiculous idea. Some conservatives get creepy about it. I see in my replies.  Israelis have own interest in mind, always have. We may think they are our allies, but if somebody else gives them a better deal, they will sell us. That's just a fact. We have no real allies. Doesn't mean we end trade or anything. But we should know where everyone's coming from. It's just weird how the influence is all up in media. Hollywood. Basically 40% of all billionaires. Supreme court. Hell, 2% of population, but 80% of peach mints. Those witnesses were.... you'll never guess. Why would people not question this or at least have honest discussion. This was a brief duckduckgo search that took no more than 7 mins. I was reading article on how Tyler perry owns the movie studio in Atlanta, and how it’s bigger than paramount and dream works and other studios combined. So I started thinking about other influences in Hollyweird. Hollywood, I didn’t know this, made up of more than one movie studio. I’m ignoramus to this stuff. So I duckduck the owners of all the major studios in Hollywood. Boy oh boy, they’re all yeah you guessed it. To me, it's more interesting than anything. I'm just naturally curious. And it wasn’t till 2018 that I was exposed to this how Jewish Supremacists manipulate normal Israelis and normal Americans, and that would explain why America is Israel’s ho. Even that tho, the America is Israel’s biatch thing, I still don’t fully understand the foreign policy we have with them but I hear that phrase thrown out a lot by people who are known as "no bs" people. The inconsistency in the Jewish proportion of heavy hitter business people is fascinating. It really is. I’m still a shit and still learning when it comes to this and our ties with Israel. Over last few weeks I’ve been thinking about religions and how there’s really only three major ones, all with some things in common in their stories but with one major commonality, the holy land: I don’t think any of the religions got it right, something could have happened x amount of years ago in my opinion and the religions are essentially people’s versions of the story, most inconsistencies with a few similarities. How would we know. We wouldn't. Could very well be like a game of telephone. I could be wrong though, it could be something else but as I get older my belief in God grows, and idek how to pray to it or what to read about because I don’t think anyone’s got it right. And I'm a Catholic and believe in God. When your team runs the award-giving committee, you tend to win a lot of awards. That said, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the Jewish team. They've got an 'us-against'-the-world' thing going that encourages them work together and achieve some pretty cool things. Unfortunately, 'Us-against-the-world' also implies you can treat everyone who isn't on your team as an enemy combatant. It's this embattled attitude that generates a kind of ruthless, unsympathetic attitude toward players on the other team. And they are FIRST to call out any other group that adopts same strategy. It blows my mind how many people fail to understand this is a MACRO evolutionary strategy for them and they wish to slowly breed out and exile out races they don't like etc. Using Jewish label as a front. Yep, they even gave the White Helmets a Nobel Peace Prize. That shows the level of propaganda they are able to perpetuate against the American people through their mass media apparatus. Tons of Overwhelming Evidence That Israel Supports !slamic Terrorist Groups in Syria. You never hear about the regular, everyday Jews and it's shameful. I obviously know and talk to poor Jewish peeps, but it’s a thing, it’s such a thing to the point that it’s a stereotype. While stereotypes can be offensive or seem irrational because they cast a wide generalization on a large group of people, they exist for a reason and stick around for the same, so they must be true on some level. Not all catholic priests diddle. I went to 2 years of communion classes as boy at a catholic church with other kids and the priests were awesome. That doesn’t take away from the fact that a shitload of kids did get touched and molested by priests on such a large scale that the Vatican was aware. And I have no problem admitting Catholic Church one of most corrupt organizations in world and is used to manipulate masses. Not all Jews are bad or are out to take out America or care to gain influence through high ranking positions. It's all just a game. But we're the ones that suffer and get manipulated. Literally every Jewish person I've befriended, are normal, ethical people who care about living life through what their religion seems just. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Jewish people, both male and female hold lots of highly influential and esteem positions in America, a country mostly made up of Christians when it comes to religious demographic, and these positions are dominated by Jewish people at an alarming inconsistent rate. Try reversing role and doing that shite in Israel. They'll kick you out so fast your head will be spinning. I watched interview one time with David Ben Gurion and the interviewer asked the former prime minister about Israel's nuclear program. (Israel has never admitted to having nukes, though there's lot of anecdotal evidence saying they do have nukes...but no country has inspected Israel's program since JFK. JFK was very suspect of state of Israel. So interviewer asks DBG if Israel has nukes and he replies, "We have enemies". So that's the situation. If you see the rest of the world as an enemy, you can do anything, because, it's for your survival. The truth is simply pointing out facts made from observations in data causes lots of childish triggering and weird deflection on this subject because of the deep history. Pointing out the inconsistency in that blacks make up 13-15% of the US population but over 70% of the prison population shouldn’t cause uproar or anger but rather curiosity and request of answers. Most videos of police officers will have you believe most cops use excessive force and that there is war going on between inner city black people and white pool ice officers. Total nonsense. Obviously not all blacks are criminals, but something’s fishy there. For a fact a lot of black people in prison did something wrong that led directly to their incarceration but the numbers simply hint at some sort of fuckery afoot, that leads to people asking questions. Doesn’t take a five minute duckduckgo search to realize how many blacks are doing hard time for ridiculous non violent drug offenses. Same thing goes for the cops. One of most stressful jobs ever, all day people are lying to you, when you show up to a situation it typically doesn’t mean something great is happening, pulling people over to give them tickets must feel like a shitty thing to do when a quota is set by dept. most are good at their job. It’s the few who we see in videos that show a lack of training and or skill under stressful situations. And same goes for this except when these observations are made immediate malfunction cognitive dissonance ensues. The difference with the outrage is they have a decent influence on so many sectors of this country, you can literally be black balled for life from anything. The collective identity makes sure that you think in terms of Group first and prior to anything else. On top of this, Judaism actively teaches infiltration of positions of power, politics, msm, and so on simply in order to better their chances at survival by group based nepotism. Imo the narratives have been twisted by the winners. This where the whole “history is written by the winners” phrase comes in. You have a full understanding of just how powerful the influence is when it comes to people just simply speaking about, or asking genuine questions etc.  

Wyatt @SayWhenLA    

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[santmat]

This Dying 24-Year-Old Has Life Advice You May Not Be Ready To Hear

This Dying 24-Year-Old Has Life Advice You May Not Be Ready To Hear

Posted on 2017/08/9 TAGS: ACTIVISM, DYING 24-YEAR-OLD, LIFE ADVICE, SPIRITUALITY

By Amanda Froelich 

Most of us go through life on autopilot. We wake up, brush our teeth, eat breakfast, go to work, drive home, eat dinner, watch television, go to sleep and repeat. Such a routine isn’t living, however; rather, it’s merely subsisting.

True living is being present in every moment — no matter how mundane, facing a new fear each day, celebrating past and present relationships with friends and family members, exploring and enjoying the outdoors, setting and meeting new goals, and living charitably so others may grow to understand the abundant nature of the universe.

Unfortunately, few give themselves permission to live in such a way until they develop a debilitating disease. Such was the case of a 24-year-old man who was diagnosed with cancer. The unnamed individual, who username is mylasttie, posted his story on a Reddit thread. Because of the profound messages shared, it quickly went viral.

None of us know how long we have on this Earth, which is why it is essential to live authentically and with passion. Read the young man’s letter, and share it far and wide if you feel inclined to do so.

A Dying 24-Year-Old’s Advice

“I am only 24 years old, yet I have actually already chosen my last tie. It’s the one that I will wear on my funeral a few months from now. It may not match my suit, but I think it’s perfect for the occasion.

The cancer diagnosis came too late to give me at least a tenuous hope for a long life, but I realized that the most important thing about death is to ensure that you leave this world a little better than it was before you existed with your contributions. The way I’ve lived my life so far, my existence or more precisely the loss of it, will not matter because I have lived without doing anything impactful.

The tie I will wear to my funeral.

Before, there were so many things that occupied my mind. When I learned how much time I had left, however, it became clear which things are really important. So, I am writing to you for a selfish reason. I want to give meaning to my life by sharing with you what I have realized:

– Don’t waste your time on work that you don’t enjoy. It is obvious that you cannot succeed in something that you don’t like. Patience, passion, and dedication come easily only when you love what you do.

– It’s stupid to be afraid of others’ opinions. Fear weakens and paralyzes you. If you let it, it can grow worse and worse every day until there is nothing left of you, but a shell of yourself. Listen to your inner voice and go with it. Some people may call you crazy, but some may even think you‘re a legend.

– Take control of your life. Take full responsibility for the things that happen to you. Limit bad habits and try to lead a healthier life. Find a sport that makes you happy. Most of all, don’t procrastinate. Let your life be shaped by decisions you made, not by the ones you didn’t.

– Appreciate the people around you. Your friends and relatives will always be an infinite source of strength and love. That is why you shouldn’t take them for granted.

It is difficult for me to fully express my feelings about the importance of these simple realizations, but I hope that you will listen to someone who has experienced how valuable time is.

I’m not upset because I understand that the last days of my life have become meaningful. I only regret that I will not be able to see a lot of cool stuff that should happen soon like the creation of AI, or Elon Musk’s next awesome project. I also hope that the war in Syria and Ukraine will end soon.

We care so much about the health and integrity of our body that until death, we don’t notice that the body is nothing more than a box–a parcel for delivering our personality, thoughts, beliefs and intentions to this world. If there is nothing in this box that can change the world, then it doesn’t matter if it disappears. I believe that we all have potential, but it also takes a lot of courage to realize it.

You can float through a life created by circumstances, missing day after day, hour after hour. Or, you can fight for what you believe in and write the great story of your life. I hope you will make the right choice.

Leave a mark in this world. Have a meaningful life, whatever definition it has for you. Go towards it. The place we are leaving is a beautiful playground, where everything is possible. Yet, we are not here forever. Our life is a short spark in this beautiful little planet that flies with incredible speed to the endless darkness of the unknown universe. So, enjoy your time here with passion. Make it interesting. Make it count!

Thank you!”

http://bernardalvarez.mysharebar.com/view?iframe=https%3A%2F%2Ftruththeory.com%2F2017%2F08%2F09%2Fdying-24-year-old-life-advice-may-not-ready-hear%2F&title=This+Dying+24-Year-Old+Has+Life+Advice+You+May+Not+Be+Ready+To+Hear&description=By+Amanda+Froelich+Truth+Theory+Most+of+us+go+through+life+on+autopilot.+We+wake+up%2C+brush+our+teeth%2C+eat+breakfast%2C+go+to+work%2C+drive+%E2%80%A6

[mcdouglecompany-blog]

The Full Extent of Joe Biden's Corruption, 6-Lies To The FISA Court, Stossel- Male Brains vs. Female Brains and Leftist Equal Mass Blackouts.

The Full Extent of Joe Biden's Corruption, 6-Lies To The FISA Court, Stossel- Male Brains vs. Female Brains and Leftist Equal Mass Blackouts.

The Full Extent of Joe Biden's Corruption.

California's mass blackouts

6-Lies To The FISA Court

Stossel: The Science Around Male Brains vs. Female Brains.

  The Full Extent of Joe Biden's Corruption.

https://youtu.be/jxrR6dmzpCI

Mr Reagan

Over the past few days, I dug into Biden's history in Ukraine. What I found was astonishing. Watch the video to see the full extent of Biden's corruption.

    California's Facing More Rolling Blackouts, But Thank God They've Saved Us From Plastic Straws.

https://youtu.be/cKvGPa3FCM8

Brittany Hughes

Northern California is slated for another round of mass blackouts as the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, or PG&E, has said they’ll turn off power to millions of people every time bad weather rolls through so their crappy antique power lines don’t get snapped and start another wildfire. Because apparently, the only way to keep half the state from burning to the ground is to turn it into Little House on the Frickin’ Prairie.

    6-Lies To The FISA Court (Gregg Jarrett)

https://youtu.be/lRJ69KzLnio

Sean Giordano

Gregg Jarrett filled in for Sean Hannity on Friday (11-27-19) and discussed aspects of the FISA Warrants I am sure many do not know. All of this can be found in his book, "Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History" (https://tinyurl.com/s6prywv). I add a quote from HotAir discussing the New York Times saying the Steele Dossier is garbage and probably Russian propaganda. But this is after two years of them using it as “Gospel Truth” – here is that and a couple other noteworth articles: ✦ NY Times: Say, This Steele Dossier Appears To Be False (And Maybe Was A Russian Disinformation Effort) (HOT AIR: https://tinyurl.com/w7pepql) ✦ If This New York Times Reporter Suspected the Dossier Was a Fraud Why Is He Only Reporting on It Now (RED STATE: https://tinyurl.com/s3anutr) ✦ NYT Finally Acknowledges That Steele Dossier Might Not Be That Factual (DAILY WIRE: https://tinyurl.com/uwwnjth) ✦ WTF MSM!? NY Times Admits the Dossier May Have Been a Russian Disinformation Operation (THE BLAZE: https://tinyurl.com/s4t7zlb) At any rate, this is a great pre-cursor to the December 9th IG Report… which will be followed up by clarifications from Durham, surely. ______________________ For more stuff from Hannity, see: https://www.hannity.com I use AVS4YOU.com for audio editing, and VEGAS Pro 17 for pairing audio and media (https://tinyurl.com/ybgou46g).

    Stossel: The Science Around Male Brains vs. Female Brains.

https://youtu.be/GLptT1u8LWI

ReasonTV

It's politically correct to say men and women are mentally the same, but Stossel lays out science that says otherwise. ------- Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/reasontv Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magazine. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes: https://goo.gl/az3a7a Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines. --------- Lately, we hear that men and women are biologically the same. A BBC video claims, "there seems to be no purely male brains versus female brains." "Seems like we’re just not that different after all," echoes the Huffington Post. Politically correct corporations act as if that were true. When Google engineer James Damore merely suggested that biological differences might explain why half the people in tech are not women, he was fired. Professor Gina Rippon recently wrote a book that confirms the popular narrative. "New neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain" is the subtitle. Rippon tells Stossel it's important to tell people that that men’s and women’s brains are the same, so people don't mindlessly follow gender stereotypes. Stossel pushes back, "It's not natural that in school, more boys want to play football and more girls want to do ballet? I want to run and bang into people." Rippon responds: "Well, I think actually girls might want to run and bang into people, but because there's an image that girls don't do that, they're stopped from doing that." That's popular to say, but Stossel has covered research that shows big innate differences. In one experiment, students were blindfolded and then walked through the maze of tunnels. They were then asked which direction they'd moved. Men had a much better sense of that than women. In another experiment, students were left in a cluttered room to wait. Later, women were much better at remembering all kinds of details about that room. Men were more likely to say: "I dunno, some stuff". Of course, the students may already have been molded by a sexist society, Stossel notes -- but newborns also show gender differences. Boys tend to look longer at objects, like tractor parts, while infant girls stared more at faces. Stossel asks Rippon about that, who responds: "if you look very closely at the data, a third of the girls actually seem to respond more to the tractor parts than the boys." "A third," Stossel repeats. "A third," Rippon replies. "But two-thirds didn't!" Stossel retorts. Rippon says the study should be redone. "Do it again with a bigger set of newborns [and] a better controlled set of stimuli.” Evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman says there's overwhelming evidence of biological differences. "Cultures around the world show very similar differences between men and women," she points out. "Men are more likely to seek status, women are more likely to take care of children. Women are more likely to stay in the home. Men are more likely to do dangerous, aggressive things like go to war." Stossel pushes back: "Because we men have been socialized: 'work's important!' And you women have been told by your mothers, 'take care of the kids.'" "Why would you see that across every culture in the world?" Fleischman responds. "Even if you look at nonhuman animals … monkeys ... they don't have culture, yet there's still these very large differences between males and females," she adds. In those species, too, males focus on war and status, while females nurture children. Among scientists, these differences are well-accepted, Stossel notes. The journal Neuroscience cited 70 studies that found differences. Stossel asked Gina about some of the most obvious mental differences. "I stutter. Most stutterers are boys. It's not a brain difference?" "Yeah, yeah. There are those kinds of brain differences and I'm definitely not a brain difference denier," Rippon replied. Rippon worries that talk of sex difference will increase sexism, but Fleischman notes that minimizing sex differences can hurt people, too, by pushing them into fields they're not naturally suited for. Politicians pass laws to force "equality". "Saying that men and women have different aptitudes isn't sexism. It's actually a statement about the true nature of the world," Fleischman says. "If we keep saying that those differences in what men and women choose to do are because of sexism, nobody's going to end up happy with what they're doing, and we're going to keep making laws to remedy what's actually just the result of freedom." The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------   

Mr Reagan

AOC & The Squad - GoFundME https://www.gofundme.com/f/aoc-and-th... DONATE Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mrreagan Subscribstar: https://www.subscribestar.com/mrreagan Paypal: http://paypal.me/mrreagan BitCoin: 3Nabe9EY99ZhFke3HEANKe3uBMwZZqPm1w ----------------------------------------------- MR REAGAN MERCHANDISE https://teespring.com/stores/mr-reagan ----------------------------------------------- JOIN THE MR REAGAN TWITTER, FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM! https://twitter.com/MrReaganUSA https://www.facebook.com/MisterReagan https://www.instagram.com/MrReaganUSA ---------------------------------------------- MY BOOKS VOLUME I http://a.co/d/cml5zkG VOLUME II https://amzn.to/2M8w7dS ----------------------------------------------- Music by The Passion HiFi www.thepassionhifi.com

  ReasonTV

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/reasontv Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magazine. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes: https://goo.gl/az3a7a Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines. ---------

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[thisdaynews]

Republicans rip Mick Mulvaney's 'rough patch'

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/republicans-rip-mick-mulvaneys-rough-patch/

Republicans rip Mick Mulvaney's 'rough patch'

It’s been a “tough week” and “rough patch for Mick Mulvaney” that has not aided his credibility, said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) bluntly.

“It’s hard to figure out what led him to make some of those statements last week, both in the initial news conference and then the follow-up. I’m glad they walked some of that stuff back but yeah, it’s hard to explain,” Thune said in an interview. “He’s trying to make amends and correct the record, so to speak, so we’ll see. Ultimately, he serves at the pleasure of the president.”

And if Trump is weighing whether to keep Mulvaney or cut loose the third man who’s held the seemingly impossible job, many Senate Republicans are not likely to offer the embattled aide much support. Trump himself did not answer a question about Mulvaney’s status on Monday and the White House did not return a request for comment for this story.

And if Trump is weighing whether to keep Mulvaney or cut loose the third man who’s held the seemingly impossible job, many Senate Republicans are not likely to offer much support. Trump himself did not answer a question about Mulvaney’s status on Monday and the White House did not return a request for comment for this story.

The former conservative congressman from South Carolina has never been a favorite of the congressional establishment. He was a Freedom Caucus member agitating against the GOP speaker, received no Democratic votes for his confirmation to be Trump’s White House budget chief and was sidelined during budget discussions earlier this year with Hill leaders.

Senate Republicans are currently threatening to torpedo the judicial nomination of his close friend Sul Ozerden, an episode further testing the limits of Mulvaney’s sway on Capitol Hill.

One Senate Republican noted that “acting” has remained next to Mulvaney’s name for nearly a year “and there’s a reason for that.”

“He’s always been on the edge,” this senator said. But now “he’s on thinner ice” than ever.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a close ally of the president who opposes Ozerden, said he was shocked when he heard Mulvaney say aid to Ukraine was frozen as Trump sought an investigation into Democrats, before spending the next 72 hours trying to walk it all back.

“I thought: Whoa. This is new,” said Hawley, adding that Mulvaney’s later explanations satisfied him.

“It seems starkly at odds with what the president had been saying and what others in the administration had been saying,” Hawley said of Mulvaney’s initial comments. “I don’t think it’s helpful. It’s certainly a distraction. … It’s certainly introduced a lot of static.”

In the Trump era, the job of chief of staff has not necessarily involved working closely with congressional leaders.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prefers to speak to the president himself rather than Mulvaney, according to a source familiar with the dynamics; the source added that McConnell has always gone to the president directly regardless of who is chief of staff.

And under Mulvaney, Trump’s open-door policy with rank-and-file Republicans has become even more freewheeling than usual. Senators speak to the president frequently with no layering of staff, allowing access to a president for whom no one else can really speak.

That’s been a boon to some senators, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has seen Trump move his way significantly on foreign policy as the president prepares to pull most or all of the U.S. presence out of Syria. Paul said on Monday that Mulvaney is doing a “great job.”

Mulvaney has also pleased Paul but frustrated many other Republicans by advancing budget cutting priorities. He’s done more media briefings than the White House press secretary, though his credibility has taken some hits, like when he strenuously objected to a POLITICO story saying he was advocating to get rid of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta; three days later Acosta was gone.

Over the past week, Mulvaney has found himself in increasingly dire straits at precisely the wrong time. GOP lawmakers were already exhausted from answering questions about the president’s decision to abruptly withdraw from northern Syria and whether it’s appropriate to request political assistance from a foreign government.

Then came Mulvaney with two new controversies.

During a White House briefing Thursday, Mulvaney appeared to acknowledge a long-denied quid pro quo with Ukraine. And he said the G-7 would be held at Trump’s property in Doral, Fla., setting off a new wave of alarm that Trump was profiting off the presidency and violating the Constitution.

The acting chief of staff has been engaged in clean-up duty since, hosting some congressional Republicans at Camp David on Saturday. The president himself dropped the Doral gambit after sustained criticism from Democrats and a handful of members of his own party.

“We found him to be between a rock and a hard place, and it’s been one of those things where he fully intended a different message than the one that came out and he’s doing his best to correct any misperceptions,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Yet correcting the record has proved difficult, with Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) likening Mulvaney’s initial walk-back to trying to use an “Etch A Sketch.” The following days brought more confusion.

Mulvaney said Sunday that the United States withheld foreign aid to Ukraine because of Ukrainian corruption and concern about whether European countries were also providing assistance. But Fox News host Chris Wallace noted that Mulvaney left out a third reason he mentioned in his Thursday news conference — that aid was conditioned upon Ukrainian cooperation with a Department of Justice investigation. DOJ, meanwhile, has said it is conducting no such probe.

Still, the performance was preferable to Thursday’s off-the-cuff affair, during which Mulvaney, asked directly about a “quid pro quo” between aid to Ukraine and probing the 2016 election, said the U.S. withholds aid under similar conditions “all the time” and that people should “get over it.”

“Obviously what [Mulvaney] said in the press conference was a real concern because he said, in effect, they were holding up funding going to Ukraine in part based upon a desire to have Ukraine carry out an investigation with regards to the 2016 election,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters on Monday.

“I guess I liked the Sunday explanation better than the earlier one,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 4 GOP leader. Asked whether Mulvaney should continue speaking about Ukraine, Blunt replied icily: “He’s never asked me for any advice, and I don’t expect him to ask me for advice on this.”

Despite the limp defense for Mulvaney, no senators were openly advocating Mulvaney’s dismissal, in part because there’s no obvious successor.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who more willingly criticizes the Trump administration than most, left it up to the president. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Mulvaney is in a familiar place for any politician at the highest rungs of power.

“We’ve all been in that barrel at one point in our political lives,” Graham said.

Read More

[clubofinfo]

Expert: A few dozen GRU officers spent several thousand dollars to acquire fake U.S. identities and post fake news on U.S. social media, before and after the 2016 election. They hacked into some state and local electoral boards and for some reason (maybe just to see if they could do it) stole information on half a million voters in Illinois and Arizona. (Just like the NSA probably has information on lots of Russian voters.) The impact of these posts has been exaggerated. They certainly did not shape the election. Those suggesting otherwise are either ignorant or driven by butt-headed Russophobia, or both. The Russian officers hacked the DNC and (allegedly) gave the files to Wikileaks, which released them, revealing that FACT that the monstrously corrupt Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DNC had rigged the (fake) Democratic primary for Hillary against Bernie. The latter is really the big sin. How DARE the leaker leak the fact that the U.S. system is so undemocratic. How dare anybody look at the empire’s electoral process and say the emperor has no clothes. Bernie Sanders was much more popular than Hillary Clinton throughout the Democratic primaries. Multiple polls showed him much better poised to defeat the republican candidate than Hillary. But Debbie told her staffers, “Don’t be silly, Bernie’s not going to win.” She made sure her candidate won. But as the Democrats arrived at their nominating convention in July 2016 Wikileaks published her scandalous emails and she and the whole DNC leadership were obliged to resign in shame. Wasserman Schultz’s successor, CNN commentator and overt Hillary shill Donna Brazile has apologized to Sanders for her own inappropriate aid to Clinton (passing along debate questions to her during the campaign) and for the DNC’s inappropriate handling of campaign funds to advantage Clinton. In its fixation on the question of “Russian interference” the media ignores the content of that interference—which was, more significantly than the production of disinformation, the revelation of inconvenient truth. The Democratic Party thwarted the highly promising candidacy of Bernie Sanders, bitterly disappointing (and one would hope, appropriately disillusioning) a generation. The U.S. electoral system is not sacrosanct. It’s a particularly corrupt form of what Marxists call “bourgeois democracy,” meaning that it allows the voter a choice of at least two Wall Street-backed candidates for an office. The voter is supposed to appreciate this “right” to vote for one or the other offered. In 2016 this meant the precious right to vote for (1) a buffoon nominated as Republican candidate due to the corporate media’s relentless promotion of him through free air time (in Nov. 2015 The Nation reported that Trump was getting 23 times as much free media coverage as Sanders), or (2) a cold, warmongering establishment Democrat whose stolen coronation had been foreordained. And the Russkies wanted to interfere in this pure democratic process! They wanted to actually EXPOSE the fact that the Americans themselves had rigged their own election! And what tool did the Russians most effectively use? Why (it is alleged), the exposure of the truth, in the form of undoubtedly authentic documents, historical primary sources documenting the corruption of U.S. “democracy.” How DARE the Russians facilitate the U.S. electorate’s awareness of DNC antics! That’s private, in-house stuff, U.S. dirty laundry. Not Moscow’s business! For Moscow to reveal this stuff was total INTERFERENCE! Unforgivable! And when Rand Paul blandly tells Jake Tapper on CNN that the U.S. has interfered in foreign elections many many times more than Russia in the last 70 years, Tapper bristles in patriotic indignation that Paul would posit “moral equivalency” between his holy country and any other, when it comes to such interference. A country “exceptional” by definition, depicted as such to its subjects in their education process and ongoing political indoctrination, cannot be the moral equivalent of any other. The U.S. is GOOD, Russia is BAD, this ought to be OBVIOUS and since Trump is obviously a Putin puppet, he too is bad and ought to be impeached. The alleged GRU intervention had minimal impact on the vote count in November 2016. Its main impact was—if the NSA’a attribution is correct—to facilitate voters’ (and non-voters’) awareness that the system does not, in fact, work. It does allow people like Bernie Sanders to become president. Case closed. Not the case of Russia, but the case of the U.S. electoral system. That Russian hackers may (repeat may) have played a role in the exposure of reality, they helped make the case that the system is rotten. If that was “interference” it was surely a good thing. A Zen priest will tell you: “See things as they really are.” Wake up. The reality is the system sucks, and now the system, moribund and in self-defense, lashes out at Russia leaving Trump in an awkward position. Everybody knows most Russians preferred Trump to Hillary, for good reasons; Hillary had pushed NATO expansion, sought regime change in Russian ally Syria and armed terrorists to topple Assad, led in the destruction of Libya, sought to influence the 2011 Russian elections, compared Putin to Hitler and the annexation of Crimea to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudentenland in 1938, and pushed for regime change in Ukraine. The U.S. media found a “Gotcha!” moment when Putin in Helsinki told reporters that he had hoped for a Trump victory. Now finally we know—yes, he liked Donald more than Hillary! Well, duh. CNN obviously preferred Hillary. Is it abnormal to express a preference? Did “the Russians” interfere by having an apparent overwhelming preference, for some reason, for the guy saying he wanted good and normal relations with Russia to the known-quality woman who is an obvious, conscious, calculating adversary? RT (as “all the U.S. intelligence agencies” famously agree, since this is a fixed talking point of cable anchors) favored Trump. So did Fox News. So? Did the U.S. news media treat the last French election, in which Emmanuel Macron ran against Marine Le Pen, even-handedly? How does RT reportage, accessed by very few people in this country, constitute “interference” in this country’s affairs? The real election interference scandal is the scandal of corporate interference. So long as public knowledge and opinion is shaped by media constrained by advertisers’ preferences (to avoid certain topics and forms of criticism, and embrace others skewing reportage to serve the system’s interests), there can be no real “democracy,” no real rule of the people, here or in Russia or anywhere. http://clubof.info/