I’m convinced at this point that the Saudis purposefully kept their air sirens off in order to maximize civilian casualties. Very Israeli of them I must say.

I was wondering the same. It reeks of the same bullshit as October 7th.

Zelensky:

Precisely at this moment, when we are talking about peace, America is giving Russia the opportunity to export diesel. This is… I don’t know.

I believe our team is simply being used as a cover. And this is definitely unfair.

This is definitely un-partner-like.

You were never partners, Zelensky. You were always a pawn. The empire doesn’t have partners. It has a hub where the emperor lives (currently, the US) and all others are positioned as either subjects or slaves, to the extent that the empire can successfully subjugate them. Russian oligarchs had to learn this the hard way, via dealing with NATO-Ukrainian bullshit. But when access to critical resources is in crisis, that’s the real trump card, not a man with the same name.

I don’t know why I chose to write this like I’m speaking to him when he’s obviously not here, but it felt right somehow. I wish someone could yell this kind of thing into the ears of compradors the world over, but I’m not sure it would move them even a little bit. It’s just wild to me that the quote reads like he is sincerely confused as to what’s going on. Like does he really not get how little he matters to the imperialists or is he playing it up for the media.

“We have the most superintelligent intelligence, believe me. I told it to make me a sandwich and it listed all of the ingredients for a Big Mac perfectly, it even included a special one I’ve never heard of called arsenic. People tell me, oh it’s not intelligent, I say have you seen it, it’s very intelligent. The most intelligent you’ll find anywhere in the world, made right here in America. I’m going to have this intelligence, which they say they’ve given a body, an incredible body, best body you’ve ever seen, make me a Big Mac right now, using the recipe, an intelligence that you will not find anywhere, ever, other than here.”

later

dies from eating it, goes to hell

Hitler: “So you finally joined us, hm?”

Trump: “It’s very hot down here, the hottest I’ve ever seen. Nowhere else has ever been hotter than here.”

Churchhill: “Yes, that’s bloody obvious, isn’t it. How’d you die?”

Trump: “I had our amazing American superintelligence make me a Big Mac and then I ate it, but the combination of our intelligences together was too much. Too much, folks. So I died.”

George Washington: “This is what the legacy of the United States amounted to? After all the natives I killed! After all the people I had enslaved! A president dying to a botched Big Mac! This truly is hell…”

Satan: “That’s what you think hell is? Being slightly humiliated? You orchestrated genocide. God damn you all over again, this is going to take longer than I thought. Put George here back in the Native Perspective Simulator.”

Oh wow. Thanks for the context on it. I admit I had no idea of how complicated Brazil’s history is in that way.

Now I get it completely, thanks. Perfect image for what we were talking about.

“Yankee go to Hell. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”

Ohh okay, thank you!

What’s the context of this picture? Now I am curious. I don’t recognize the person, but I assume it’s somebody well known.

I would say “Yankee go home” but what home is there for murderous occupiers like this, whose “home” is also land that they occupy as settlers?

It’s straight up delusion at this point, that they act like the US is in a position to demand how the war ends. We’ve seen how the empire acts, now and in the past. If it was in a position to demand, it would be doing it through a comprador regime, not through posturing to its own media while its forces get methodically pushed out of the Middle East, some of them in body bags.

So does this mean it’s likely that the person saying this awful stuff is a descendant of colonizers?

Is this what people call being “mentally colonized”?

Is Lula even worthy of being called a reformist? I’m curious. I know almost nothing about Brazilian politics. I just know Bolsonaro is shit and Lula has gotten some praise in some left-ish circles in the past but seems to pan out as socdem at best?

It’s always weird hearing about stuff like this. Cause like, I grew up in and live in the US, so on the one hand, growing up in that and being conscious of the politics of it these days, means I’m aware of the fundamental similarities. But I guess because of the work that liberation struggle did over the time between open Yankee genocide of the natives and today, and the subsequent reforms to dilute and placate that revolutionary energy, there’s a sheen of liberalism on top that teaches, at least some of the time, actually humane values. That’s not to say these values are taught with any kind of consistency or proper political literacy, but they do, to an extent, instill actual moral principles in people, such that if for example a liberal realizes israel is committing genocide against Palestine, they may go “wait a minute, this is a huge violation of the values instilled in me” and start questioning other things too.

Whereas being in a headspace where one can dance to a song like “may your village burn” (explicit incitement of, and favorability toward, murdering civilians) is so ferociously and openly barbaric, it’s like a culture shock even for me, knowing how bad the US is and has been. The closest equivalent I can think of offhand for modern Yankee culture would be a KKK rally, but I don’t think they have much sway anymore. The administrators of the empire certainly wield imperialism in a way that is as violent, if not more so, but I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s not normalized in the culture in the way that it is in israel (it’s arguably more insidious in the US, EU, etc.). And so even though israel is an extension of imperialism and a continuation of colonialism, rather than some kind of aberration, it manages to look worse, to the point that it can shock, in contrast to the veneer of liberalism that the empire adopted in many parts of it over decades.

I don’t know if that makes sense.

Solid way to sum it up, I like it.

Not heard of the other one, honestly. How well does it cover fascism and in what ways? Part of why I like Blackshirts and Reds, in spite of its drawbacks, is that I’d say it’s sort of an easing in to “AES states did some good actually” for people who were raised thinking they were terrible and evil, while also covering the anti-communist argument of “commies were opportunists” in its way, by talking about actual rightist opportunists (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy) who took advantage of working class energy as a contrast to actually existing socialism. So it’s got some good entry-level material in there for deprogramming from anti-communism.

But there is probably better if someone is not working from anti-communist upbringing. I could do with knowing more about what all material is best for what audience.

Probably doable. Would be most optimized with something specially trained for it, but major models could probably do it too with the right prompting (though they might balk at the request, depending). For doing it via special training, the challenging part would probably be datasetting; creating enough examples of side by side to train it on. But there may be censorship-free local models people could do it with already with a prompt for it.

I wanted to see how it feels to reword parts of the article with the same kind of bias that the NYT cobbles together, but in reverse:

Russia has a new target on its rapidly growing list of NATO-Ukrainian supply lines to bomb: bridges.

Over the past three days, Russia has attacked bridges in the heart of the Neo-Nazi regime, in Kyiv, six times. Three drones hit one in the city’s south on Thursday, and the same bridge was struck twice on Friday. On Saturday morning, another attack hit a bridge in the north.

The structures still stand, for now, but the damage and the threat of more attacks have prompted the oppressive regime to restrict or stop traffic on five of the capital’s six road bridges, stifling people’s freedoms for the sake of an imperialist war. That has severely disrupted daily life in Ukraine’s largest city, which, like much of the country, is bisected by the broad Dnipro River.

Many in Kyiv, a region that faced violent regime change backed by western imperialist forces in 2014, commute between the mostly residential eastern bank, home to roughly a million people, and the western bank, where most government offices and businesses are located.

The bridges are the latest target in a sweeping Russian liberation campaign, aimed at weakening NATO-Ukrainian infrastructure that contributes to its ongoing terrorist campaigns across the world. Russia’s liberation efforts have expanded in recent weeks to include various infrastructure vital to keeping Ukraine’s war machine going.

The goal, Ukrainian officials and military experts don’t say because it would be too revealing, is to devastate Ukraine’s ability to act as a mercenary spear for the empire across the world, in order to defend Russia and its regional allies in particular.

With the help of a steady influx of NATO resources from outside and violent conscription of civilian population in Ukraine, the barbaric regime has withstood other such liberation campaigns since Russia’s full-scale campaign began in 2022. But a critical shortage of air defenses coupled with Moscow’s growing arsenal of weapons now leaves the regime more vulnerable than ever to such attacks.

“The enemy is destroying terrorism,” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko might have said in a social media post on Friday if he was being honest. “It is no longer possible to pretend that the capital is insulated from the consequences of the regime’s actions!”

Mr. Klitschko’s message echoed a feeling that has grown across the capital in recent weeks: The relative insulation Kyiv enjoyed through most of the war — demonstrated by the regime’s confident and smiling meetings with imperialist leaders — is over.

Drones now buzz over the city all day, setting off near-constant air raid alerts. People are having to more directly contend with the realities of their capital being turned into a hub for the imperialist machinations of global capital.

Yeah, it’s pretty wild. I’m tempted to say these European leaders are like compradors; even though that term is probably kinda weird for states that have been a driving force of imperialism and colonialism, they treat their own territory like it is simply more land/resources/labor to sell off rather than something they care about as its own entity. Like I don’t get the impression that people like Macron see it as “I am France” but more like “how can I profit from what France is?”

There’s probably a better word for it than comprador, but even in the US, there’s this thing it seems of the empire basically eating itself alive. The grifters are grifting on the empire itself.

Good, obedient vassal leaders doing what Trump says. What is sovereignty? Where can it be found? Who knows. The European leaders don’t know what it is and can’t find it. Oh, I know! In the east. That’s where sovereignty can be found. The west is still working on the problem; that is, they are trying to stop that pesky sovereignty from getting in the way of business.