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1·6 days agoThere are significant differences between the American & European center left. However, when you zoom out far enough, they are similar enough.
So the answer can be either “yes, they are similar,” or “no, there are significant divergences between the two.”
Not to mention that both of them have very different journalistic reputations. So, even if they are similar enough in biases, one is far more high brow than the other and consistently produces more reliable and in-depth reporting (BBC).
They are the mouthpiece of Jewish finance & neoconservatism designed to advance the cause of Zionism and attempt to redirect prole racism from conventional racism & Nazism towards Islamophobia and a very controllable anti-immigration movement.
They are actually what has been designed to prevent a popular far right movement from taking place minus one that is completely defanged and can simply be used to pour prole energy into forever wars to advance international capital.
It’s pretty conventional stuff.
I don’t know why anyone is so bothered by it - it’s basically just three clicks to the right of CNN.
Yeah, like I am totally a supporter of protectionism because it makes sense to throw a bone to local industry and enable them to compete, especially when that is the de facto position of most societies around the world.
It’s also bizarre to do massive bailouts for certain industries then just become super principled about the free market on another one.
I had heard it said that the reason why the US sometimes tolerates grave trade imbalances and sending jobs abroad is because it gives us a lot of diplomatic clout.
Like I just recently learned that when India is negotiating deals with the USA, the issue of H1B visas is openly discussed. The reason that Indians take up such a massive amount of the H1Bs doesn’t have much to do with collusion within the immigration system - it has to do with promsies we make to unload their skilled workers into the US since they depend on the remittances they send home and being able to give some kind of good deal to their own citizens who have an education. It is a massive pressure relief valve that they can send huge amounts of Indians abroad since it means that they do not have to provide opportunities for them at home (because there are none). Without this, there’d likely be a hell of a lot more unrest in India.
21·6 days agoHoly shit, it’s a human interest story about a kidnapping that I happened to come across there.
Where are the lies…? Do you think someone over at Breitbart was like I gotta make a fake human interest story about a kidnapping that ends well - it also has to be FAKE, I can’t just lift it from other journalistic sources… I have to be true to the Breitbart motto of EVERYTHING MUST BE FAKE CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA, even when not explicitly conservative…
OK, that’s interesting, I see…!
You could say, though, that Michael Jackson is very undeniably a historic black American who suffered through living in poverty in a poor area and partly lived through the civil rights movement, though he was quite young… He was an ambassador for black Americans even if he did not want to be.
This is a radically different experience than what Kamala had, and who am I to judge black Americans who feel that being a black American person requires some connection to that world…?
My grandfather did not learn that he was adopted until he was at his own mother’s funeral (his father had already died). Someone there believed that he knew, and had brought it up casually. He turned as white as a ghost and proceeded to not discuss it for ten years.
My father was there, and he has always had interest in discovering the truth.
30 years later, with my grandfather in his 90s, he has no desire to know his biological parents, and when he learned he is completely a different ethnicity than both of his parents, he shrugged it off and said it was irrelevant because his cultural identity from his parents is the only relevant factor. Perhaps there is some internal discord over it, but I truly think that he remains psychologically unbothered. This has postiively impacted my own relationship with “blood” and “family,” seeing them as irrelevant, yet also understanding my father’s own desire to know their identities and trace the roots… He views it as an opportunity to have more family and more layers of identity, not as a biological identity canceling out another identity.
Of course, knowing that there was no foul play makes it a lot easier.
I did not know that about Pres. Wilson, thank you.
I also appreciate what you are saying here. I am not some extremist who thinks we need to remove Biden when his team is capable of navigating the last days of his Presidency but it would be strange to pretend those who disagree with me are goons for thinking as much.
1·6 days agoThink of it as being a little more profound.
… To be completely fair… She had no say over her brother’s situation, and I have even heard it said that Michael was suffering from vitiligo, which spurred his skin bleaching because it was producing a very mottled effect… But yeah, IDK, I do not follow Janet closely or anything.
I just do not see her as responsible for what her brother did, and do not think I can really have an opinion on what her brother did because the motive may have been completely benign. There is even something to be said about Michael Jackson eventually coming to terms with his own relationship with his race and what that may have meant for him.
A mega-rich popstar not even being satisfied with being black and later understanding his internalized racism is quite a story, if true.
All suffering on earth is a means for us to repent and improve ourselves, since we are actually created imperfect.
My position would actually be that Janet Jackson has a right to say this, and I think her position, and the position of other people who have a take on culture, race, its expression, etc., are also interesting.
I assume you have a similar enough position - let Janet talk, and let her be wrong (if you think she is wrong), and I suppose it’s just fun for me to discuss it.
Janet is a pretty liberal black woman - made her appearance back on RuPaul’s drag race back in like Season 3 or something, which I believe was before The Straights were head over heels into it.
I think she’s actually voicing something that elements of the black community have felt for a long time: there are people getting credit for blackness without being authentically black, which is why wealthy African transplants to the US without real authentic African American roots are sometimes also treated like a sort of outsider (and vice versa).
I do not think it’s so different from working class white people criticizing weatlhy white people who pose as working class…
It’s actually quite in line with a lot of Critical Theory: race is a social construct, and thus things like Whiteness and Blackness are defined by the lived realities and the perceptions of all manner of people.
If this was the year 2009 and we were talking about a half-Jamaican, half-Indian district attorney in San Francisco whose father and mother were both academics and who grew up in Canada attending a private school and black people were criticizing her for capitalizing off of her bloodline but not being authentically black, there would be zero controversy here.
The problem is that a black woman is criticizing a candidate who is half black by blood and needs the black vote for the liberal party in a Presidential election… But if she was for the Conservative party? This observation about her would be all anyone talkeda bout on the left.
idk, I wouldn’t dispute the fact that Biden is not really there running the country himself.
The Democrats agree - they took the unprecedented step of forcing the sitting President out of his candidacy after nominating him months & months earlier.
I am always shocked by this because I just personally couldn’t imagine living in those conditions for a second…
Like, I can imagine drug addicts casually neglecting their kids, failing to brush their teeth, feeding them junk food, giving them unlimited screen time to shut them up, locking them in rooms, and failing to keep them in fresh, clean clothes… I don’t approve of it, but I understand the logic of this happening after a series of bad decisions…
But it takes a massive breakdown, IMO, to just be in a scenario where you are casually accepting the fact that children are covered in literal feces and trodding over piles of shit in the vicinity. I just don’t get it.
This is basically what I thought it was - there really wasn’t any mystery here.
I feel sorry for the families.
It would have in some strange way been easier to digest the fact that their child was murdered than that their child killed themselves through their own narcotics abuse.
It is not good enough that heaven exists for the innocent and the faithful - it must exist for me, raight now.
01·7 days agoThis is checkmate because the only thing I could do to respond to this would begin talking on the internet about how “I am a capable man who dated many non-believing women without issue…!” while I am like this married 40 year old man with children.
I am a loser if I say nothing; I am a loser if I reply. You win this round, JeeBai.
lol yeah - a similar system is actually used in some other parts of the world. The Koreans use denominations of 10,000 and 100,000, and a trillion as a single syllable as well.
I believe trillion as a denomination only become popular in modern times due to the currency, though, but I am not positive.
#Hezbollah’s deadly pagers were sourced from a Taiwanese company and contained explosive material planted by Israel: reports
Hezbollah’s exploding pagers were sourced from a Taiwanese company, officials told NYT and Reuters. Both outlets reported that Israel also planted the pagers with small amounts of explosives. Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese company named, denied on Wednesday that it manufactured the pagers. Thousands of Hezbollah-owned pagers that detonated in unison on Tuesday were made in Taiwan and had been tampered with by Israel, according to multiple reports.
The wireless beeper explosions, now widely considered an unusual and audacious attack on the Iran-backed militant group, raise serious questions about Hezbollah’s security. Lebanese health officials say the detonations injured at least 2,700 people and killed nine more.
The New York Times reported that Hezbollah had purchased the pagers from Gold Apollo, a manufacturer in Taiwan.
The Times cited unnamed officials, at least some of whom were American, and wrote that Hezbollah had primarily obtained the AP924 model of Gold Apollo’s pagers, though it bought another three models.
The outlet further reported that two officials said Israeli forces had planted small amounts of explosive material — as little as one or two ounces — next to the pagers’ batteries with remote switches. …
Per Reuters, he said the devices were instead manufactured by a European firm that had the right to use Gold Apollo’s brand.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,” he said, according to the outlet.
Hsu called the incident “very embarrassing,” but said his company had also been made a victim, per Reuters.
Reuters had earlier reported similar findings to The Times, citing an unnamed senior Lebanese source who said that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 beepers, including the AP924, from Gold Apollo.
The same source told the outlet that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, had planted a board inside the pagers that contained explosive material and could remotely receive a detonation code. "
“It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,” the source said, per Reuters.
The outlet added that it had examined some of the exploding pagers and said their design and stickers matched devices built by Gold Apollo.
Gold Apollo and the Israeli Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Hezbollah and Lebanon have both blamed Israel for the exploding pagers, though Tel Aviv has not claimed responsibility.
Pagers became a significant part of Hezbollah’s communication network earlier this year, when its leaders decided to use the devices out of concern that its cellphone network had been compromised.
A July report from Reuters citing multiple sources familiar with Hezbollah said that the group had made the switch due to the loss of several commanders amid hostilities with Israel.
Business Insider via MSN
I now honestly believe that a bunch of them like to believe their own shit, or that they have to convince those among them of their own shit in order to just make the process of rallying support for unsavory characters palatable. Just like how normal people will just go ahead with what the mainstream media tells them, normal billionaires will do the same…
So, the CIA creates the PR lines for the major media mouthpieces around the world and everyone just endorses them.
I bet the funniest conversation we never get to be a part of is when major bankrollers of the Democrats/Republicans (or your local versions) call each other up a day after the political banquet and ask one another if it’s really about the party line for real or about the profiteering & realpolitik.
The situation with Latin America has been overwhelmingly depressing since… forever.
Capitalism basically “works” for the developed world because we are at the end of the supply chain.
… When a median income American or a Frenchman or a Japanese person does poorly in school and then spends 3-4 years binge drinking or doing club drugs before joining the workforce, they can go to a trade school and end up with a solid income, a three or four bedroom home, two cars, everyone with a smartphone, cable TV, a gaming addiction, and a tidy little family with upward mobility…
… When a median income Filipino or Nigerian or Indian does absolutely everything right, tries hard and school, and they aren’t one of the most talented 5%, they will break their back and work six days a week to simply maintain their position in a world of shit.
But bowtie professor man at University can explain to you why it’s fair because SUPPLY & DEMAND… You are born in an area where an unskilled laborer gets to be in the service industry making $3,000 a month with a high school degree, and skilled laborers in many other countries making 1/8 that… And this imbalance is a FEATURE, not a BUG, because, if you haven’t noticed… I am sitting in air conditioning and shit posting on the internet and I am not working my fingers to the bone in Bangladesh next to a fan.