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10/14/2023 7:24 pm  #181


Re: The Fuck Happened?

To paraphrase @dril (or Rock): you do not under any circumstance gotta hand it to Hamas.

I've been avoiding the big horror of the month this week.  Just keeping my head down, trying to stay cool.  I speak of course of the latest war in the Middle East.

Luckily, things haven't been quite as bad as I feared, from any side.  You did get some pretty appalling, but predictable, reactions from the "so-called left" (I prefer to call them "sinisters") who cheered the murder of the "colonialists" and the "hipsters" at the music festival, and, for some reason, fell under the notion that this barbarism made any significant step towards Palestinian liberation and not quite the exact opposite of that.  But despite some of the usual suspects, this hasn't been as full-throated as I had feared, and a substantial number of sane heads are wisely distancing themselves from these sentiments.  The vast majority of the progressive-left media that I consume has been irretractably clear about condemning wanton violence, because, as I said in another thread, there is nothing progressive about collective punishment or dehumanization, and have not been shy to call out critically these bastard factions with their para-glider memes.  And on the other side, at least here in America, we also thankfully didn't see the full-throated reactionary calls for a counter-jihad like we saw after 9/11.  Although my survey of right-wing media is dramtically more limited, and I'm sure some of them are pitching anti-Muslim screeds, but politically, at least, I don't see any appetite for any military intervention abroad or social discrimination at home.  It's still early yet, as we're just getting to the "ground invasion" phase of the war, but I see both of these signs as promising.

As disheartening as it was to see some of the idiotic leftist takes on this, I'm happy to see some of the swift back-tracking that's also occurred.  You still have these dumb-ass student groups, the DSA, the BLM and others, but you also have some important voices pushing back.  Bernie Sanders: "This attack is a major setback for any hope of peace and reconciliation in the region – and justice for the Palestinian people", "The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter who does it."  AOC: "It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it. That is a core tenet of solidarity.  The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment. It also did not speak for the thousands of New Yorkers who are capable of rejecting both Hamas’ horrifying attacks against innocent civilians as well as the grave injustices and violence Palestinians face under occupation."  Jamaal Bowman: "We must proceed on the basis of recognizing our shared humanity."  Volodymyr Zelensky: "In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity."

As AOC says, "it shouldn't be that hard" to make these statements, to transcend the tribal binary and call evil what it is.  Hamas is not the "resistence".  They have not moved the needle a single millimeter toward Palestinian liberation or sovereign statehood.  They are not the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.  They are, however, in charge of the open-air prison that is Gaza, although they have not had an election since 2006, when they barely won a slight majority before taking over completely with military force the following year.  Most of the Gaza people were not yet born or too young to vote at that time.  Hamas has never done anything that wasn't counterproductive to the Palestinian cause.  It's embarrassing enough to have to explain these basic facts to people who are allegedly college-educated, but it's infuriating when I read a headline from professional journalists that reads "Palestine says..." only to be a story about statements from Hamas or the Islamic Jihad.  And none of these professional journalists seem interested in getting a statement from Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, which is the legal representative of the Palestinian people.  So there's enough embarrassment to go around.

But it's instructive to put this crucial distinction into context and perspective.  This mass perception of Hamas being the representation of Palestinian 'resistence', while completely obfuscating the PA, is not an accident of misinformation, but a deliberate informational strategy to delay the urgency of establishing the Palestinian state, and this is why it is especially embarrassing for these fools who pretend to "stand with Palestine" to fail to understand this distinction.  Hamas is not only against a two-state solution - they are committed to nothing less than the complete eradication of Israel as a state - but they are intentionally used to prevent a two-state solution by Israel themselves (whether wittingly or not makes little difference).  Netanyahu himself explained this strategy as clearly as possible in 2019, in a quote that has gone viral this week, "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.  This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."  Or to elaborate slightly further from the New Yorker: "For the Israeli right, then, Hamas in Gaza is convenient proof of Palestinian disunity and untrustworthiness, and support for its claim that Palestinian independence means more Hamas victories - including missiles coming from the West Bank, too. Actually, support for Hamas in the West Bank is only around twenty-six per cent. Still, if increased Hamas violence can be made to seem unavoidable, then Israel’s annexation of the West Bank can be presented as inexorable."  It's the most basic "divide and conquer" playbook.  And when referring to "human animals" or "wild beasts", it's clear that Netanyahu and friends have very little interest in distinguishing between civilian and terrorist.

What Netanyahu and his extremely right-wing government wants is the eventual annexation of Judea and Samaria - the West Bank - which Netanyahu and previous administrations have been slowly encrouching on for the last 25 years with increased evictions/settlements.  They needed to reform the power of their Supreme Court to override the court's staunch support for human rights, which are the proposed reforms that caused all of the massive protests in Israel this year and pushback from the Biden Administration.  What Hamas has conveniently accomplished is to hand Netanyahu's government an iron-clad justification for a full-scale security lockdown of the Palestinian people.  The working assumption is that the violent crackdown we're seeing in Gaza right now will inevitably be turned to the West Bank eventually.  Ironically, or not, the demographics of the music festival that was seiged on Saturday leaned young and liberal, or precisely those who were protesting the judicial reforms.  Netanyahu has a window of time and sympathy with which he can argue the necessity for these reforms, making it easier to further erode the rights of the stateless Palestinians and non-Jewish Israelis.  Now, I suppose if I wanted to get really conspiratorial, considering Netanyahu's past statements of support for the funding of Hamas, added to the benefits to his long-term objectives, and maybe I could point to the news that an Egyptian Intelligence Minister had called Netanyahu 10 days earlier about "something big", "something unusual", "terrible operation", and, gee, I wonder why there were so few IDF troops watching that wall, and, well, you could see where that goes.  But I don't want my main point to get lost which is that these student socialist groups marching in the streets are a bunch of dumb-ass stooges who haven't read nearly enough history books that don't start with "Das".

And another unfortunate symptom of tribal binary politics is this notion of "equivalence", so some people get their feelings hurt when you point out obvious things like, um, war crimes and white phosphorus and hospitals and schools and refugee shelters and nine dead UN officials and 20 square miles of sardine-stuffed civilians and all of that other distasteful "reality" of warfare, as some dismiss it.  Again, it shouldn't be so hard to condemn collective punishment and stand in solidarity for less death, but some people either have a knack for confusion or perhaps an unhealthy thirst for carnage.
 


 

10/17/2023 12:22 pm  #182


Re: The Fuck Happened?

The conservative pushback is startng to rev up.  Obviously, it's all Biden's fault first and foremost.  Calls to block Palestinian, or even all Arab, immigration is picking up steam.  Competitive Marco Rubio wants to go one better and cancel visas for anyone who supports Palestinian statehood.

And Ron Desantis made an easy fool of himself, explicitly erasing the distinction between Palestinian civilians and terrorists: "Not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic".  CBS' Margaret Brennan had an excellent and mockingly condescending response, "I'm sure you know, all Arabs are Semites."

Margaret, I'm going to guess that Ron Desantis did not know that.
 


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10/21/2023 4:08 pm  #183


Re: The Fuck Happened?

If Bill Maher is good for one thing it's that he can unapologetically (or is it just tactlessly?) summate the basest incongruities spouted by corporate media.  The only really helpful use of his latest show's discussion on the Israel/Hamas conflict is in recognizing the things that he never says.  For example, the words "settlements" and "settlers" wasn't mentioned a single time.  Neither was "Fatah" or "Palestinian Authority".  Instead, he and his guests refer to the conflict as "both sides", implying that the Hamas and Palestinian sides were one and the same.  We've seen this not only throughout the recent conflict but for the last three decades.  Maher explicitly warns that a Palestinian state could turn into Hamas, ignoring the lack of support that Hamas has in the West Bank.  And finally, in case his Islamaphobia had a risk of going completely over his audience's heads, he pointed out that "they're all the same assholes".  (As I predicted, we're already seeing violent crackdowns in the West Bank, where some 50 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7 despite the West Bank being on the other side of the country and having no evident role in that massacre.)

Another useful omission of context that, in fact, happens to reveal all of the context necessary is from last Sunday's ABC This Week.  Martha Radditz revisited some interviews that she had conducted from 1988 to 2014 in the West Bank between two families, one Israeli settlers and one Palestinian.  The Israelis couldn't understand why they couldn't live in peace.  The Palestinians couldn't understand what was so hard to understand.  The settler family members were each captioned as "Israel citizen"; the Palestinians each as "West Bank resident".  Martha Radditz seemed unaware as to what the problem could possibly be.
 


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10/25/2023 7:48 pm  #184


Re: The Fuck Happened?

The semantic squeeze surrounding what is considered acceptable or hate speech regarding the Israeli-Hamas conflict has continued to tighten based on whatever agenda is being defended.  "Anti-Semitism" is fraught here, as (sorry to say, Margaret Brennan, that not everyone knows) Palestians and Aranbs are just as Semitic as Jews are.  "Anti-Zionism" has its own loaded currency in conspiracist circles.  Once we get into "anti-colonial" or "anti-Western" rhetoric, we're well outside of productive discourse.  So maybe it's best to simply draw boundries around what is and is not "anti-Jewish" hate speech.  Defending Palestinians' rights is not anti-Jewish, unless, like so many of the tribal cheerleaders on either side, you assume that these sovereign rights are zero-sum between them.  Supporting a Palestinian state is not anti-Jewish - in fact, support for a two-state solution is still, ostensibly, the mainstream position of the Israeli public, although this support has dropped significantly since Obama's presidency, and cearly this recent outburst is not going to help the matter.

Calling for a ceasefire in the recent hostilities is also not anti-Jewish under any sensible perspective, although the UN Secretary General is being called to resign for doing just that, even though he quite explicitly condemned Hamas and their Oct. 7 massacre.  Similarly in America, these calls for ceasefire are being conflated as siding against Israel's right to defend itself.  And more perniciously, there are still a few voices on the far left who continue to invoke the rallying cry of "from the river to the sea".  To be perfectly clear, this phrase - referring to the river Jordan and the Mediterranian Sea - is a call for the complete eradication of the state of Israel, literally wiping them off the map.  This is not a cry for "freedom" or "self-defense" and definitely not for "peace".  Quite the opposite.  It is a call for escalation of violence and exponentially more bloodshed on both sides, and no one should be confused about this.  Those who defend or excuse or tolerate such a sentiment have the equally eroded moral authority as those saying that "there is no such thing as a Palestinian people".

Or, as something people used to learn in kindergarten, "Two wrongs don't make a right", a rare bit of sanity from an unusual source, Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia.  His composure is worth quoting in detail:

There are no heroes in this conflict, only victims...

I do not support the military option in Palestine. I prefer the other option: civil insurrection and disobedience. It brought down the British Empire in India and the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe...

I categorically condemn Hamas's targeting of civilian targets of any age or gender as it is accused of. Such targeting belies Hamas's claims to an Islamic identity. There is an Islamic injunction against the killing of innocent children, women, and elders. The injunction is also against the desecration of places of worship...

I also condemn Hamas's gifting the higher moral ground to an Israeli government that is universally shunned, even by half of the Israeli public, as fascist, miscreant, and abhorrent. I condemn Hamas for giving this awful government the excuse to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its citizens and bombing them to oblivion...

I condemn Hamas for further undermining the Palestinian Authority as Israel has been doing. I condemn Hamas forsabotaging the attempt of Saudi Arabia to reach a peaceful resolution to the plight of the Palestinian people...I condemn Israel for funneling Qatari money to Hamas, the terrorist group as defined by Israel...

Hamas's activities against the Palestinian people [are] well documented, how they treated the Palestinian Authority when they took over in Gaza in 2006. As I said, I'm no friend of Hamas. Anyone who provides support to them should be taken to task.

Israelis who are calling for UN-SG Guterres to resign for calling for a ceasefire are likely not to be more sympatheitc to Bibi's old archnemesis, Barack Hussein Obama, but maybe Obama can be the voice to normalize the ceasefire calls without such aspersions sticking to his shoulders:

But even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters. In particular, it matters — as President Biden has repeatedly emphasized — that Israel’s military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations. Upholding these values is important for its own sake — because it is morally just and reflects our belief in the inherent value of every human life

The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population [in Gaza] threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis – it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long-term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.

And while the prospects of future peace may seem more distant than ever, we should call on all of the key actors in the region to engage with those Palestinian leaders and organizations that recognize Israel’s right to exist to begin articulating a viable pathway for Palestinians to achieve their legitimate aspirations for self-determination — because that is the best and perhaps only way to achieve the lasting peace and security most Israeli and Palestinian families yearn for.

It means acknowledging that Palestinians have also lived in disputed territories for generations; that many of them were not only displaced when Israel was formed but continue to be forcibly displaced by a settler movement that too often has received tacit or explicit support from the Israeli government; that Palestinian leaders who’ve been willing to make concessions for a two-state solution have too often had little to show for their efforts; and that it is possible for people of good will to champion Palestinian rights and oppose certain Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza without being anti-semitic.

And as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said, "It should not be hard" to speak reasonably when discussing this conflict.


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10/27/2023 10:41 am  #185


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I just can't even pretend I'm going to ever get into a conversation about the Hamas/Israel situation currently unfolding. Absolving Hamas of its attack a few weeks ago is only the kind of thing someone who isn't worth talking to would ever consider. As is anyone who thinks it is anti semetic to oppose Israel's carpet bombing approach to rooting out terrorists (we know historically how effective that always is right....right?)

As usual, I'm just left feeling disgusted with nearly everyone who even broaches the subject. I'm thankful that you've been supplying some educated responses about the conflict, just so I can stop feeling totally insane for thinking its just been a shit show, both morally and politically, coming from both of these warring parties (with of course all of the more moderate and sensible citizens once again being the ones caught in the crosshairs)

I hate the world. And yes, I need to say this again. It can never be said enough.
 

 

11/02/2023 7:05 pm  #186


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Elon Musk showed up on Joe Rogan for Halloween, and I saw a couple of clips of that.  The latest estimates are that Twitter (Miss 'X' if you're nasty) has lost roughly half of it's value since Musk bought the company, and there's little indication that advertisers will be returning anytime soon.  So why did he buy it in the first place?

Well, pretending that he ever actually intended to, rather than getting called on his bluff, he now tells Joe Rogan that he felt the existential threat that compelled him to such a selfless sacrifice was what he has been calling the "woke mind virus", which he describes as being not only a threat to civilization itself but also to human existence itself.  It seems like a strange term for someone who claims to be a "free speech absolutist".  I don't see any conceptual difference between "mind virus" and "thought crime".  Both have identical implications, and those are also somewhat ironic for the supposedly anti-quarantine leanings of Elon.  The basic idea is that some ideas are too dangerous for public consumption and require strict regulation.  Musk is saying that he had to buy Twitter in order to regulate such terrible, civilization-threating ideas, under the implicit assumption that these ideas are so insidious that it defies any and all critical defenses.  The assumption is that the ordinary individual must be helpless in light of this woke influence.  Because his own child has come out as a transwoman and has disavowed her father, Musk is convinced that such individual minds are incapable of the agency to resist these ideas.  These must be more like subliminal infections, an invasive contagion, and not like ideas that thinking people would actually consider and occasionally agree with or relate to.

Now this entire thread has been devoted to examining any number of the plethora of very very bad ideas floating around our collective neurome.  There's certainly a case to be made for the regulation (moderation) of some particularly bad ideas on social media platforms.  In fact, the entire supposed scandal that Musk's attempted 'Twitter Files' disclosures was supposed to reveal was that Twitter was actually actively engaged in its own anti-mind-viral attempts.  Musk is more of a counterpropagandist than either a free speech advocate or a critical moderator of truth.  There's clearly some propaganda and disinformation that he finds less infecting than other agendas.  Painting his own propaganda-prioritizing campaign as existentially heroic is just more of his megalomania branding.  He insists that he (alone, presumably) must combat this mind virus because the woke agenda will not allow any dissent, because suppressing dissent is what people do when their arguments don't stand up to scrutiny.  But do Musk's arguments against wokeness stand up to scrutiny?  Or did he buy Twitter so that he can supress his own dissenters?

I agree so far that our culture is currently facing a crisis of undeveloped critical thinking and media literacy skills.  I would even go so far as to agree that social media has had a coercive and conformist effect on the public in this vacuum of critical media education.  I also do not believe that Elon Musk has done a single thing to address these issues, much less attempting to correct them.  I don't think Elon Musk gives one rat's ass about individual intellectual autonomy.  I think he simply wants to control his own dominant narrative, without anyone thinking too hard about it any more than they currently think about any other narrative.  He's just another narcissistic messiah ready and eager to build a congregation of nodding fools.
 


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11/09/2023 8:18 pm  #187


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Rashida Tlaib is kinda stupid.  I mean, shes not smart.  She's never been the brightest bulb in the "Squad", and this isn't difficult to assess from comparing Tlaib's statements to those of her peers - AOC, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Bernie Sanders, etc.  These other progressive members of Congress have been much more measured, balanced, reasonable than Tlaib.  Maybe it's poor timing.  Questioning the value of Israeli military subsidies isn't a problem, per se, but maybe on the day after one of the worst per capita terrorist attacks in history, it might be a little in bad taste.  Not a good look.  Now, I'm not saying that anything Tlaib has said is deserving of her being officially censured by Congress, and I clearly understand the bad faith motives of that proposal.  All I'm saying is that...if you start accusing Biden of being "complicit in genocide", then why would you be surprised that a couple dozen Dems then step aside to allow your censure to go through?  The old saying is that there's an art to making enemies, and it's never not baffling how eager some on the left are to make enemies with their prospective allies.  It's why they never seem to progress on implementing their agenda.  So, is Biden "complicit" in genocide?  Or is this typical hyperbole indicative of someone who's spent too many years spitting online hot takes?  I'm not sure if Tlaib understands this, but there's a whole lot of people in her workplace who should be called out?  Her illiteracy in pragmatism prevents her from understanding that there can only be an expansiion of policy options in governance when more of your allies are in government office, meaning that it's generally more effective to target those office seats which have a chance of flipping to an ally.  But Tlaib says, "Mr. President, we will remeber in 2024".  Ok, and then what?  What are you going to do in 2024?  Vote for Cornell West?  Marianne Williamson?  Robert Kennedy Jr?  Why are you even making threats against your own president when you ought to already know that it's completely empty-handed?  I don't know.  Seems like a waste of energy.  Maybe President Trump will be better for your fundraising.

Let's see another example of idiotic futility.  Bernie Sanders - remember him?  One of the pre-eminent progressive voices.  Long a critic of Netanyahu, Israeli occupation and unafraid to call out an apartheid state when he sees one?  This group, DSA Palestine, decides the best use of their time and bodies is to occupy Sanders' office last week.  Making demands.  Saying Sanders needs to call for a cease-fire.  Unaware, I guess, that Sanders has been calling for a cease-fire since the bombing started.  And then they get all traumatized: "He won't even talk to us while we're dying!!!"  These pricks and bitches didn't occupy Lindsay Graham's office.  They didn't even occupy Chuck Schumer's office.  No, let's go fuck with the guy who's been on our side for decades.  Embarrass him.  That's start solving these problems.  Can you see how they're not even acting like they want to get anywhere?

Finally, one last thing about this bullshit "from the river to the sea".  More and more folks are drawing the wagons on this one, diggin' the graves on this hill.  There's the strawman framing saying that the chant is "genocidal" in nature.  Well, that's loaded language, and there's a lot of irresponsible uses of it lately (see Tlaib).  So let me try to be clear about what exactly this phrase means.  It doesn't mean the killing of any Jew.  It doesn't mean the eradication of worldwide Jewry.  What it means is a one-state solution - called 'Palestine' by its chanters - where Israeli Jews will become citizens, and demographically become a minority in an Arab state.  It necessitates the state of Israel to cease to exist.  Almost like it would be...wiped off the map.  Which happens to be exactly the mission of Hamas.  So it seems like, you know, you support Hamas when you use the chant.  And, increasingly as I've seen, you also have additional propaganda going around right now which portrays supporters (like myself) of a two-state solution, as a practicable system of cooperation and mutual respect, as being "racist" because this would mean that such a supporter is tacitly supporting "colonialism".  Now, whatever position you believe, that's great and make your case, and I will definitely be making mine.  But let's cut the horseshit.  If you want to wipe Israel off the map, and use the language supporting that position, be honest about it.  Or else maybe we should just wind back the colonial clock and start sacrificing babies to Moloch again.
 


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11/12/2023 1:55 pm  #188


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I've hated Tlaib from the first moment I saw clips of her campaigning. Her stupid shows loud and clear whenever you hear her try and explain any of her positions. And her recent controversies are just more evidence of the fact that being loud doesn't make her any less stupid.

That said, as usual, the coverage and criticism of what she was censored for was fumbled by everyone. She can be dumb without supposedly calling for a genocide.

 

11/12/2023 1:58 pm  #189


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I'm trying to decide if Trumps recent push to have his trial televised would be a disaster for him in service of nothing but attention, or if it would actually play right into his hands to make him appear like a victim.

My feeling is the former, but I probably shouldn't underestimate the ability of the public to get the wrong message from everything, especially considering how badly the media would fuck everything up.

 

11/12/2023 8:26 pm  #190


Re: The Fuck Happened?

crumbsroom wrote:

My feeling is the former, but I probably shouldn't underestimate the ability of the public to get the wrong message from everything, especially considering how badly the media would fuck everything up.

The media are a crucial component in everything, including Trump's election in the first place, for which they still seem ignorantly unrepentant.  "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled..."  Because Trump said the media was bad (sad!), then it became the reflex to rally around the poor media.  Any criticism was met with, "Oh, so I guess you agree with Trump that it's 'fake news'?"  Well. not all the time, and more specifically not for all the same reasons.  I think this was a big reason why these comedy shows shifted away from media satire in the Trump years to soapbox pandering, and the greatest of our previous media satirists, Stewart/Colbert, were never adequetely replaced.  Jon Stewart, who took up his media critique on his new show, has now been fired  for other reasons, so unless anyone wants to let him have a front-and-center role for hosting this imminent Trump Trial Circus, I doubt any of the mainstream news coverage will have any shame in its lust for likes and clicks.  There Will Be Noise.


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11/22/2023 1:11 pm  #191


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Let me see if I can quickly parse this recent Elon Musk mess.  The short of it is that a whole bunch of high-profile advertisers are leaving Twitter ('X' if you're sassy) en masse because recent reports from Media Matters and the ADL have pointed out that Musk is doing a real shitty job moderating hate speech on the platform he knee-capped.  And so Musk has declared (*Foghorn Leghorn voice!*) that he will go Defcon 3 on the Jews by launching a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against what he is calling a dastardly plot against his good name.  Is he an antisemite?  He says "Nothing could be further from the truth."  But is that the "actual" truth?  As we tend to see with similar matters, when anyone has to say something like "nothing could be further", we find that it's quite easy to not be so far after all.

So who dis?  Well, it's been easily evident for some time that hate speech has been on the rise on Twitter since pretty much as soon as Musk took the reigns of the platform, but can we say that he's actively supporting specific hate speech simply because he may have incidentally broken the site's moderation and verification systems?  Let's look at the "actual truth", the evidence in question.  On November 15th, a Twit "formerly known as Eric" (@breakingbaht) wrote the following: "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."  The tweet continues by calling out "Western Jewish populations" for supporting "hordes of minorities" in "flooding their country" and, assuming these hordes are Muslim (because Trump), bringing their antisemitism with them.  To all of this, Musk then says fairly unambiguously, "You have said the actual truth."

So that's a lot to unpack, but the working assumption seems to be that we consider that Musk agrees with the various assertions here. 

1) Are "Jewish communities" pushing hatred against whites?  That's only the first bar, and it's a steep one.  This is essentially identical to claims by the old John Birch Society that said that the Civil Rights movement of the 50s-60s was being covertly run and operated by Jewish communists who were purposely stoking racial animosities in order to subvert American "norms".  Similarly, in more recent depictions of "wokeness", it's also described on the right-wing as "cultural Marxism" intended to dissolve our national integrity, and the "Jewwws" have simply been replaced with "George Soros" and "globalists".  But nonetheless, at this point, Musk has an obligation to provide any evidence whatsoever of this "community"-wide effort of anti-white hatred.  Gee, I hope someone bothers to ask him for any.

2) Setting aside the balls of collectively accusing one of the more prominent historical ethnic victims of racism and xenophobia for, in fact, being responsible for perpetrating racism and xenophobia, note the "Western" in the next sentence.  This is a bit of slight of hand which manages to erase the need to cohere the inherent contradiction between "pushing hatred against whites" and the inconvenience of being white themselves.  Since this understanding renders the tweet absurd, he substitutes "Western" as a placeholder for "white".  (This is also a bad habit among some on the left, so it may very well effectively confuse some people some of the time.)

3) "Hordes of minorities" is about as flat-out racist as any phrase I can imagine, and for most cognizant humans will be sufficient to end the discussion.  It implies violence and invasion, and also implies that our national values are ethnically congenital (in other words, racially determined).  The inescapable "actual truth" that is the only legible reading of this tweet is that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost for those Jews who have been conspiring to incite racial animosity against white people domestically while organizing an immigrant invasion to then "replace" them, only for these immigrants to then inevitably turn on their Jewish masters because naturally.

If Musk is prepared to offer an alternative interpretation of this tweet, to reveal some kind of hidden actual truth which is far too sublime for mortal eyes to perceive, then, again, that's his obligation.  I suppose we should all be so patient.

For whatever reason, Musk has not done this.  Instead, in doubling down, he's continued with language worth scrutinizing.  In a later tweet, after this blew up in his face, Musk went deeper: "The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West" - by which his unmistakably means white Christians - "...despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel.  This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat."  So now we have two pretty astounding claims to add to the obstacle course: 1) Does the ADL attack white Christians (and how)?  And 2) What are these tenets exactly?  And, um, why have they failed to prevent the overwhelming amount of Jewish criticism of Muslims that we've commonly seen since 1948?

Let's go ahead and say 2) is farce and dismiss it out of hand.  1) is far more telling, and dovetails cleanly with the "actual truth" of Jews "pushing dialectical hatred against whites".  Again, I cannot see any other conclusion here other than that Musk feels an existential threat from the Jewish community (defending themselves is an attack on us!) which has also manifested in this Jewish plot to introduce the duel existential threat of minority immigration (They're trying to replace us!).

The question now for any reporter or journalist without earshot of Elon Musk: "Exactly what is the actual truth?"  A: More white babies.   
 


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11/22/2023 1:20 pm  #192


Re: The Fuck Happened?

(I'm going to save the "duel/dual" Freudian slip for posterity.)


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12/27/2023 10:05 pm  #193


Re: The Fuck Happened?

There's a new disinformation effort to undermine Jack Smith, the Justice Department prosecutor leading the two main federal cases against Trump.

It claims that Jack Smith, the special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and for his alleged swiping of classified documents, was part of a multimillion dollar extortion scheme when he was the chief prosecutor investigating and prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo. In the past two weeks, this unsubstantiated narrative has started popping up on fringe right-wing sites and social media posts. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and QAnonish MAGA champion, has promoted this tale. These allegations appear to be in the early phase of the right-wing transmission belt that propels false stories and conspiracy theories from less prominent platforms to more established conservative media and toward the mainstream—often facilitated by Republican members of Congress.

The article is worth reading in full, but the conspiracy theory is quite convoluted, and, other than accusing Smith of possibly taking kickbacks from those he may have been investigating in Serbia/Kosovo, there's nothing here which has any relevance to explain any ulterior motive on Smith's part in prosecuting Trump.  The primary "witness" is a well-documented crook who only spoke to a voice on a phone claiming to be 'Jack Smith', a call facilitated by someone calling himself "Florian" who was claiming to be a CIA agent.  It looks like someone was likely trying to shakedown some shady people involved in shady business in the Balkans, but any evidence that any of this involved the real Jack Smith (assuming even that they meant the Jack Smith and didn't just pull a generic American name out of thin air) or any actual CIA agent is extremely dubious.  More than that, what this illustrates is that, in very similar fashion to what we saw with Giuliani's attempts at extracting incriminating info on the Bidens in the Ukraine, people in Trump World seem to enjoy fishing for their enemies' dirt among some highly questionable characters in the Eastern European underworld.

The other relevant link between Trump and Serbia/Kosovo does have a motive for targeting Jack Smith, however, for his role as a Kosovo war crime prosecutor.  One of Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, had tried to broker a deal between Serbia and Kosovo in 2020, but this deal involved a lot of shady shit of its own.  (Details here)  And Grenell has cultivated quite a relationship with pro-Russian factions in Serbia, and Russia has been engaging in psyops and spyops in Serbia for quite some time.  So it seems pertinent to mention that Jack Smith's war crimes prosecutions threw a wrench into Grenell's efforts:

In June 2020, the SPO announced the indictment of Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi. This came three days before he was to travel to the United States for a special summit with Serbia at the Trump White House...

In response to the indictment, Thaçi canceled his trip to Washington, and the summit was scuttled. This meeting, promoted as a step toward a final peace settlement between Kosovo and Serbia, was touted by the Trump administration as a major accomplishment. The talks had been brokered by Ric Grenell, a Trump-appointed special envoy....

Smith’s decision to indict Thaçi before the summit has long rankled Trump and his crew.

So it sounds like there's some payback here that doesn't necessarily involve these specific Trump cases.

And on a completely, I'm sure, unrelated story, dropped on a late Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago and apparently soon forgotten by most news outlets, a 2700 page binder of sensitive classified Russian intelligence somehow disappeared during Trump's final days in office.  Just thought I'd throw that out there.  It's interesting that one of Trump's National Archive representatives who was "allowed to thumb through" the binder when it disappeared was one John Solomon, the same former reporter who had been fired from both The Hill and FOX News for his role in laundering Rudy Guiliani's Ukrainian disinformation campaign against the Bidens.

"May they rot in Hell.  Merry Christmas!" - Donald J. Trump
 


     Thread Starter
 

1/03/2024 9:15 pm  #194


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I haven't spent a lot of time going through the freshly released "Epstein Documents" today, with names revealed and other salacious promises.  All I can figure out at the outset is that among the court documents released, there are none which describe, for example, the DVDs which were seized from Epstein's safe by the FBI, or the reported names on those discs or the nature of the contents of them.  Instead, what I can see, is that these documents are mostly previously available depositions and witness testimony with formerly redacted names reinstated.  So we get exciting stuff like one Epstein victim saying that she met Michael Jackson at one of his parties.  "Did you massage him?"  "I did not."

I don't want to say this release is a dud, maybe there's some good details which have yet to be brought to light.  But let's not be mistaken.  There's no indication that this release, and these names, offers the meat of the scandal, which is exactly who Epstein's clients were, who Epstein was supplying girls for, and who he was holding dirt on.  We'll have to continue waiting for those deets.
 


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1/05/2024 6:01 am  #195


Re: The Fuck Happened?

OK.  Seeing the docs about David Copperfield thanking Epstein, describing his "expected arrival" as a "jackpot" is probably pretty damning.  Unfortunately, "celebrity magician" is pretty low on the blackmail-worthy totem pole.


     Thread Starter
 

1/11/2024 10:39 pm  #196


Re: The Fuck Happened?




Jesus, Bill, I hope you checked her driver's license.

Mila Antonova, the woman whose affair with Bill Gates is said to have been the real impetus for the Gates' divorce (rather than the other couple of employees he paid off), is not an employee, and, um, was of legal age at the time they began their affair.  No, the only really embarrassing part of their courtship is that they met at a Bridge tournament.  The card game.  I guess it could have well been Bingo or Backgammon.  Sexy venue to pick up your baby-looking shorties.

Antonova is back in the news because she comes up a bit in the new Epstein docs.  Like much of the rest of the recent releases, however, there's not a whole lot of explosive revelations.  There are, however, some interesting details buried in the margins.  For example, Antonova apparently was associated with Anna Chapman, one of the first of the past decade's Russia honey-pot scandals.  And the Gates-Antonova relationship (2010-201?) would have been roughly coinciding with Chapman's attempts to honey-pot a still-unnamed cabinet member of the Obama administration, and approximately the same time when another convicted Russian honey-pot, Maria Butina, was working her way through NRA executives and Republican operatives and fundraisers, including Patrick Byrne, the Overstock CEO who was one of Trump's main allies in trying to overturn the 2020 election.  To be absoultely clear, Mila Antonova, the Bridge champion, has never been charged for espionage like Chapman or Butina.  I'm simply drawing the chronology.

According to some of the newly released docs, Jeffery Epstein, who had paid for some of Antonova's computer education bills, had tried to leverage this information against Bill Gates in 2017.  Either Gates hand over a "donation" to a charitible fund that Epstein was trying to start, or else it might not be so good for Melinda Gates to find out about his girlfriend's student debts.  Gates, apparently, never did pay Epstein, and the Gates are now divorced, but that doesn't mean there's an absolute causation there.  Melinda could have just as easily have divorced Bill for getting involved with Epstein in the first place.

Riding the Russiagate rails some more, and again there's nothing very definite, I'll admit at the outset.  But looking over the released documents, and I do notice that Epstein was taking a number of meetings at his NYC townhouse with Vitaly Churkin, who was then the Russian Ambassador to the UN, during the weeks after Trump had secured the Republican nomination in September 2016.  These meetings also included people like tech billionaire, media mogal and Trump booster Peter Thiel as well as one of the Trump campaign's closest advisors, Tom Barrack.  Again, to be clear, this doesn't mean anything untoward going on between the Russian government and the Trump administration.  Chutkin's name does not come up at all in the varied connections of the GRU/hacking/targeted propaganda program that was being conducted and described in detail by Mueller and the six Senate Intelligence Committee Reports.  In fact, Chutkin would rather unexpectedly drop dead of a heart attack shortly after Trump's inauguration, on the 20th of February 2017 (a week after Michael Flynn was fired as National Security Advisor for lying to the FBI about his Russian back-channel communications), making Chutkin only the sixth high-ranking Russian diplomat to die mysteriously in the nearly four months since the 2016 election.  Trump's State Dept then placed a gag order on Churkin's autopsy, and the Russian government determined that "disclosing details of the autopsy results could... hurt his reputation".

This is how conspiracy theories generally work.  There's a whole lot of interesting coincidences. 
 


     Thread Starter
 

1/11/2024 11:05 pm  #197


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Another name in the Epstein docs is less sexy than either celebrity or espionage, but still pretty interesting,




Leon Black is just a finance industry fluffer, private equity, junk bonds, whatever it takes.  Founded Apollo Global Management.  Fancies himself an art collector.  Not surprising he's got connections to Epstein but would anyone care?  But it is strange to consider that Black here paid Epstein some $158 million dollars over five years for financial "advice".  Or "services".  Whichever.  Not that these are the kinds of people who tend to be stingy with their money or anything.  That's an eye-opening amount for rendered services which are never made explicit.

More to the chase, I think.  Leon Black also paid out $62.5 million to the Virgin Islands to settle any matter that may have come up during their investigation of Epstein's impropriety.

Still, Leon Black is more on the goon level.  A true cashier.
 


     Thread Starter
 

1/24/2024 4:32 pm  #198


Re: The Fuck Happened?



Who doesn't love a good Beatles conspiracy theory?

At the very basic level, 'Paul Is Dead' is almost a perfect litmus test to distinguish those types of conspiracy theorists who entertain some minimum degree of scrutiny and skepticism from those who are hair-on-fire idiots.  When you hear talk about labeling 'conspiracism' as a category of mental illness, they're referring to those simple people who can't remember what Paul McCartney looks like.  Proceeding into more advanced levels of Beatles conspiracy, we get into their subversive Satanic influence, evident above in their obvious hand displays of "devil horns" and the 666 symbol slyly disguised as an 'OK' gesture.  Slightly more savvy conspiracists will recognize the latter as the "Eye of Horus" sign, and will be so wise as to understand the context of Aleister Crowley/Illuminati/Masonic occultism, reinforced by the seemingly obvious but oh-so-subtle clues sprinkled throughout their LP covers, even being so bold as to put the Dark Prince Crowley himself on Sgt. Pepper.  As the ushers of this New Age of Horus - in Crowley's terms, The Crowned and Conquering Child (Baby Boomers) - The Beatles indulge and encourage a generation to follow his magickal practices of sex, drugs and drums.  Finally, Phd-level conspiracists will realize that the very name 'Beatles' refers to the sacred Scarab of Egyptian myth.  I value the effort of those conspiracists willing to go the extra mile.



(Some Scarabs even have Wings!!!)


More recently, however, all of the fun got sucked out of The Beatles' imaginary lore by those who take these things way too seriously.  In Qanon circles, this kind of Satanism quickly devolves into mundane pedophilia and cannibalism.  Anti-woke busy-body Sameera Khan not only sees the vicious spirit of Satan right there in their blatant and notorious 'butcher cover', but she has the keen intuition to see the deeper truth that The Beatles weren't merely debauched drug-addicts with an insatiable taste for baby-flesh, but a carefully calculated "psy-op" straight from the commies in the British Crown to "popularize wokism in the US".


(Caught in a totally candid picnic)


Much of the ensuing conspiracy theory seems to primarily be sourced from one Dr. John Coleman, someone who claims to be an ex-MI6 officer who now specializes in strongly right-wing tinged conspiracy books.  Two of his books mention The Beatles as part of this nefarious perfidy.  His Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300 seems on the surface to be boilerplate globalist elitist cabal nonsense.  But it does offer the insight that not just The Beatles but the entire 1960s counterculture was manufactured and orchestrated by the British government.  Called the "Aquarian Conspiracy", the goal was to brainwash the American youth by encouraging rampant drug use and hedonism, rebellion against authority, destroying the education system and undermining the "family unit".  Also described as a "mass destabilization operation".  Now, you might ask, "Wasn't the British government concerned about these effects on British youth as well?"  Bah, something about 'broken omelets', yada yada.








Above is pure, unpasteurized porn for the unrequited conspiracist.  In Dr. John Coleman's follow-up book, he places the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations at the center of this malign plan to engineer an army of hippies to smoke and fuck anything that moves in your neighborhood.  Most conspiracy theorists would not have been imaginative enough to create such a compelling culprit if it had not had the charity to exist.  Tavistock began as a clinic which specialized in psychiatric research, but would expand into social science, behaviorism and. most insidiously, corporate consultancy, where they would utilize their psychological and social behavior research to aid in advertisment campaigns and, quite frankly, propaganda development.  When you have such an institute with programs with names involving "social change and operations research", "applied social research" and a "committee on family and community psychiatry", and with a client list that includes both the Council on Foreign Relations and Unilever, it shouldn't involve too much curiosity before the conspiracies start spinning.  Such an institute as this is the perfect factory to manufacture such a mass cultural media psy-op as The Beatles and the 1960s counterculture.  And, for the either very credulous or incredulous (depending on who's asking), its vast psychosociological resources would also helpfully explain why The Beatles, and their ensuing cultural revolution, was so popular and successful and profound, much more than arguably any single cultural media entity ever before or since.

You may have noticed that Tavistock was partly established with money from the Rockefeller Foundation, a perennial honeypot for conspiracists who will not fail to recognize that, somewhat simultaneously, the Rockefeller Foundation was also conducting the Radio Research Project, with a similar emphasis on mass psychology and communication.  You could see how such research into the population's listening habits, and their susceptibility (1938's War of the Worlds broadcast), would be extremely useful in the service of mounting a society-shifting mass media psy-op.  In addition, both of these projects had tangential relation to the Frankfort Institute of Social Research scion, Thomas Adorno, who specifically was the Chief of the Music Division for the Radio Research Project.  Due to this position, as well as Adorno's stated theories on how simple, rhythmically repetitious music can almost hypnotically influence a mass audience, the conspiracy theory emerged that Thomas Adorno must have not only authored the entirety of the Beatles' musical catalogue, and the entirety of the British Rock canon, but most likely invented all of Rock and Roll as we know it.  All engineered to unleash the libidinous id of the post-war youth to undermine America's recently acquired status as a global leader.

Or something.  You know, when you think about it though, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Unless!  Adorno and his fellow 'Frankfort School' of critical theorists are sometimes referred to as "neo-Marxists" (even though they were equally critical of Marxism as they were capitalist culture), so clearly, this was an attempt to kneecap Western industry.  But, like I pointed out, if they were so critical of this capitalist "culture industry", including specifically the mass production of media entertainment and technology, well, they had a funny way of showing it, since the cultural revolution produced by the Beatles involved a great deal of consuming media and technology.  And isn't it at least a little bizarre how well this overall arc of a theory happens to dove-tail with the then Soviet propaganda that accused this exact same music and culture of being a CIA psy-op to undermine communist society?  Which is why they had so severely censored and suppressed its transmission behind the Iron Curtain?  Maybe these right-wingers now pushing this story will tell you that it's because they knew the power of the poison they unleashed.

Speaking of poison, the spectre of MK-Ultra is never too far behind.  This has also been resurrected as proof that the 60s was one big psy-op.  Tavistock gave us The Beatles, but the CIA gave us LSD.  Put them together and....well.  We did alright, actually.  Was this supposed to bring down American society or something?  What exactly was the plan here again?  To sow the seeds for an excuse to try to rewrite history in 50 years time as a Christian conservative grievance screed?  By the way, has anyone thanked Tavistock yet?  Is Daily Wire even trying to manufacture a Beatles?  I doubt they could manage a single Hermit at this point.  Does Candace Owens even sing?  But we're supposed to feel bad because somebody gave Tina Turner some acid?

Like a lot of things, the above, as right-wing conspiracy disinformation, is a much better example for what's cracked our contemporary culture and society than the Beatles and the 1960s.  One quote from some dweeb on reddit does pretty accurately describe the problem: "Once you realize how much you’ve been lied to about the Beatles, even if only in small ways where you still think Paul is Paul, it primes you for accepting that much of your culture has been a psy-op and false."  It's worth asking: who's priming you, and why?  This increasing inabilty to discern truth and glean knowledge from information is the whole point of the real psy-op underway right now.
 


     Thread Starter
 

1/30/2024 5:23 pm  #199


Re: The Fuck Happened?





Today's edition of our muddied epistemic waters follows along in the tradition of "accepting that much of your culture as been a psy-op".  In quite literal terms, all "culture" happens to be psychological operations in the most fundamental sense.  The pertinent question then is "who's steering the ship?", if anyone at all.

I have to admit.  I was watching Sunday's AFC championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens.  I didn't have any real money on the game or anything, but I had picked the Ravens.  So, sure, when I saw that quick and easy first touchdown by Taylor Swift beau, Travis Kelce, the thought occurred to me, "Oh, I see, there's some big NFL money that absolutely needs Taylor Swift to be at the Super Bowl this year".  Now, I may have been a little stung by the collapse of the Ravens' defense ("just leave the top tight end in the league wide open, guys?"), but I didn't take the thought too seriously.  At the time.  But there was a gnaw.

As Colbert mentions above in the clip, Taylor Swift is "the NFL's biggest star".  It's been a lame joke all season.  It's a perfect example of trying to decipher whether such a cultural phenomenon, or rather collision of multiple cultural phenomena, is the generation of sheer popular excitement and - what the hell? - true love, or whether this vortex of our petty American imagination is, in fact, being orchestrated by forces far too powerful for any humble free message board to unmask.  In my primal sense, I still see a pretty strong economic motive, if I were to choose to imagine such a scenario.  Swift made a few billion dollars last year, TIME's "person of the year", she seems to have a czarist charisma and a somewhat rabid fan base (let's call them...Swiftshirts) who are willing and able to set fire to any printing publication who would dare suggest that maybe she doesn't do her own hair.  (The Colbert joke on these 'Swifties' raises another contemporary cultural issue - why are the fans of the biggest and most successful star on the planet so angry?)  But far more than that, Taylor Swift is money, pure and simple, and it isn't as if I, personally, am irritated at the fact that Swift's appearances at the Chief's games this year has dominated coverage of the sport itself, rather it's irritating to me to see such ingratiating glomming starfucking lust for attention by the media in any capacity.  Star athletes have always been been fucking famous women.  So let's be clear that, from the NFL and the TV network's perspective, this is purely about begging for eyeballs from people who don't give a single shit about football.  It's like those people who only watch the Super Bowl to see the funny commercials.  Now they'll be "Swift-watching".  That's a thing.  There're already running ads about it.

Anyway, I wanted to get that out of the way.  Despite my annoyance at just the opportunistic frenzy that lies at the heart of this unholy union (of the celebrity and football economies, not of Swift and Kelce), I felt that I needed to set very clear boundries between myself, who, at the greatest extent of the mental resources I can donate to this story, still basically sees this largely as an insincere one of greed and fame, and those other conspiracy theorists who are instead taking a more partisan position.

Jesse Watters wrote:

Around four years ago, the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.  It’s real.

This is a grown-ass man in the prime time slot of the single largest news channel in America.  The idea goes as follows: the NFL has rigged the games to allow the Kansas City Chiefs to head to the Super Bowl, not so their very expensive advertisers can get more views from Swift fans, but so that when the Chiefs inevitably win, Swift can then use this moment to announce her endorsement of Joe Biden in this year's election and therefore clinching his victory.  Watters also had on a guest, ex-FBI Stuart Kaplan, who further elaborated:

The (Biden) administration has what they consider a perception, optics management team and those are professionals that go out and identify those people who may be unsuspecting whether with knowledge or without knowledge to do these type of campaigns.  Now, it is possible that Taylor Swift, quite frankly, does not know that she is being utilized in a covert manner to swing voters.

Aw, shit.  You can't have a good psy-op without some old-fashioned MK-Ultra!!!  And since Kelce got the jab, he probably doesn't even know who she is or where he is!!!

Of course there's easier and less suspicious answers to most of this.  The Chiefs are a really good team that's making their fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years, having already won two of them.  Taylor Swift already endorsed Biden in 2020, and has shown no inclination to switch over.  And stars, occasionally, like to fuck each other and make little boutique babies.  And, not to be too much of a Grinch, I will be terribly nauseated if and when after the Chiefs win the big game, Travis Kelce drops to one knee while all of the media's brightest flashbulbs erupt and Tay-Tay gasps agape in agog.  But at least it'll be innocently contrived.
 


     Thread Starter
 

1/30/2024 9:25 pm  #200


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I think I’ve willingly listened to only one Taylor Swift song ever.

It was “Shake It Off”.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

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