Youtube comments of Catherine Birch (@catherinebirch8263).

  1. Even Australia supported a UN resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. Purely because the US told it to, Australia had attacked Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq, countries that had never done anything to Australia and were never going to.. For that matter, countries that had never done anything to the USA and were never going to. Countries that were attacked purely to boost US power and/or wealth. Australia has agreed to attack China if the US tells it to. However even Australia has FINALLY drawn the line at refusing to support a UN resolution to end repeated and ongoing civilian massacres.
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  2. I really do object to this mealy-mouthed analysis of what's happening in Gaza. Ben Rhodes is fretting that civilian massacres might not be in Israel's best interests and calling for "an acknowledgement of differences with Bibi Netanyahu". I cannot find the words to express how insufficient and insulting in its inadequacy this is. "Right wing" is an appalling phrase when used to describe what is actually fascism. "Humanitarian situation" and "human catastrophe" are appalling phrases when used to describe what is actually ethnic cleansing and genocide.
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  3. The one positive point about Trump, and it's a big one, is that he says the quiet part out loud. Palestinians have been saying all along that the destruction of Gaza is about ethnic cleansing. Now the US government has finally said it out loud. It was excruciating watching the Biden administration pretend not to know.
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  4. Then replace it with a proper democracy. Duh.
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  5. Ceasefire. I wonder how long before Israel ... whoopsy-daisy. I blinked and missed it.
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  6. What your grandfather didn't grasp is - that was never the choice. In a pandemic you are never making a choice only for yourself. Had he contracted covid there is a significant chance he would have infected others, including his grandchildren. Who risked not only death (unlikely but it happened) but long term illness and who knows what future health consequences decades down the track, something he had no need to worry about. His family would probably not have left him to die at home so he could have occupied a hospital bed which might otherwise have been available for a heart attack or road accident victim. He could have infected medical staff and other patients. He might have survived covid despite his age, but been left far worse off health and vigour-wise for his remaining time.
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  7. Tariffs are, among other things, a means of moving money from the public to the oligarchs. It isn't only the cost of imported goods that rises. The US companies that manufacture those goods raise their prices because the competition is gone.
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  8. The domino theory as applied to Russia is mainly an American invention. Well, also a veneer that the NATO governments and the EU employ to justify doing what the US told them to do, which this time was joining the American war against Russia with both military and economic weapons. In fact the opposite domino theory is in play. It's NATO and the EU that have being implementing American policy to advance eastwards towards Russia; it was never going to happen that Russia would stand back permit US controlled (via NATO) military bases at their strategic back-door.
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  9. I for one. The Australian government has agreed to let the US use Australia as one of the venues for its upcoming war against China. That's insane. None of the countries the US uses for its wars come out of it well.
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  10. Here's what genuine cause for hope sounds like. "The Us announced today that it has stopped sending arming and funding Israel effective immediately. Resumption of aid will recommence 3 months after the latest day the Palestinian death toll exceeds the 10 year average by more than 10%."
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  11. Also the people of Europe.
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  12. Congratulations to the Pod for not censoring critical voices - that shows genuine integrity.
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  13. FINALLY you've stopped calling it the Israel-Hamas war. It's been clear almost since the get-go that this was a war on Gaza.
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  14. 1:04:10 "We did make mistakes. One of those mistakes was not understanding that when you are too casual, too permissive, about civilian death you end up creating more terrorists than you kill" This may be the single most chilling thing I have ever heard. What is just as chilling is that the two guys from the POD just sit there nodding. The senator just said that US went into Afghanistan not caring about how many innocent people it killed. Some of its leaders now regret this. But only because it backfired to some extent on the US. At the risk of sounding like a naive idealist - What happened to RIGHT AND WRONG? And the time to learn even that dreadfully cynical lesson was 10/11. You know, the day after some terrorists went after you because of the terrible harm and loss of life you'd already caused in the Middle-East; and all to obtain cheaper oil.
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  15. The key word in "human rights" is "human". Listen to how the Israelis talk about the Palestinians - they talk about them as if they were sub-human.
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  16. ... and Mexico and Panama and China
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  17. 1:00:20 [Tommy: Netanyahu suggested to the Biden government moving the Gazans out of Gaza "temporarily" and the Biden government actually raised it with the Egyptians to see whether they'd be willing to take the Gazans.] Enough said. [Ben: There's a difference between that and talking about Gaza being a great real-estate site when the Gazans have been pushed out.] Well ... yes. The difference is the language. Trump says the quiet part out loud. And yes, it was repulsive watching Trump negotiating a share of spoils of ethnic cleansing on public television. But really, who gets what in Gaza after it's been cleansed of Palestinians makes little practical difference to the Palestinians.
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  18. Sorry to hear the administration is frustrated. That really sucks. Of course, not as much as it sucks for the people of Gaza subjected to the ethic cleansing the same administration is funding, arming, and providing political and military cover for.
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  19.  @jmhorange  This a Youtube channel for politically influential people in the country that is responsible for the massacres. Funded them, armed them, provided political and military coverage for them, and continues to veto a UN resolution calling for them to end. And yes, I am asking Americans to face what they're doing.
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  20. Agreed, inasmuch as it might have been hugely better than it is now in any case. However - the Israeli's elected Netanyahu even after Rabin was assassinated and with widespread rumours that Netanyahu was either directly complicit in or at the very least indirectly incited the murder. (Shades of Trump.) Which doesn't really bode well for peace, inasmuch as that shows a pretty strong intrinsic lean to the Right in Israel. Doubly so when you take into account that Rabin himself was one of the original Zionist terrorists who burned Palestinians out of their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. So hardly a leftie peacenik himself.
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  21. Meanwhile Jon Stewart just worked out how to save the US government many billions of dollars in two minutes on a television comedy show. To be fair to Deloitte, I suspect the Canadian waste/fraud/abuse fruit is not as low-hanging as it is in the US oligarchy. And I suspect Stewart had done some research (and had some done for him) in advance. To be fair to DOGE - the Democrats had plenty of opportunity to make those savings and did zip.
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  22. .I'd go for "Trumps plan for continued Global Domination with the inefficiency of Global Good Pretension removed."
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  23. First they came for the Palestinians. Then they came for the journalists. Then they came for the aid workers...
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  24. Three. Soldiers. At a time where the US is arming, financing, and supplying political and military supported for the massacre of ten thousand times more civilians in Gaza. Ten THOUSAND times more. Here are some relevant questions that Tommy and Ben apparently didn't even think to ask. Why does the US have military deployments in Jordan in the first place? Or anywhere else in the Middle-East for that matter. What role does that establishment play in general US dealt death and destruction in the Middle East? The whole thing about attacking Iran ... the US crushed Iran's secular democracy way back in the 1950's. For cheaper oil access. Leading to the installation of an oppressive Caliphate there; after the mullahs played a major role in kicking out brutal dictator the Americans installed in its place. At what point is the US going to be content with the amount of damage it continues to cause there?
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  25. One of the largest semiconductor companies in the world just paid the USA $100 billion dollars protection money to avoid tariff problems. Yes, other countries are going to pay, sit back, and watch.
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  26. A bit weak to demand a ceasefire when you're the one supplying the ordnance being fired. Smacks of insincerity really.
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  27. Could the Jews being forcibly displaced from their homes into camps and then exterminated during WWII ever have imagined that their descendants would one day be doing the same thing to others? And using their suffering as justification?
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  28. What do you think the public announcement of cleaning Gaza was about? Negotiating a personal share of the ethnic cleansing spoils for Trump himself of course.
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  29. Nonsense. Electing Trump has changed nothing except the rhetoric.
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  30. The UN just passed a resolution that Palestine is qualified to join the United Nations. The US ambassador voted against it. Shame, USA, Shame.
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  31. Only then? Where have you been since 1950?
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  32. What I DON'T expect the ISD to do is to stop killing innocent Palestinians or to stop supporting the civilian Israeli terrorists who have been killing innocent Palestinians.
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  33.  @elysedewyngaert178  Oopsie. For a country that has no desire to kill civilians it seems to be going against its own wishes a heck of a lot.
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  34. In real life, one person (or country in this case) taking a stand against a bully rarely works. What does work is when everyone takes a stand together.
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  35.  @jmhorange  Here's a civics lesson for you. In the US, people can indeed see how their Representatives vote. And yes, Congressional representatives are frequently both blackmailed and forced to vote a certain way. That blackmail of Congressional representatives is not illegal is a major reason for where the US finds itself today.
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  36. It's simpler than that. The Court is saying something Biden doesn't want it to.
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  37. The killing of cameraman Samer Abudaqa in Gaza is being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Abudaqa was killed by an Israeli drone attack on Friday while reporting on an earlier bombing of a school used as a shelter for displaced people in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
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  38. 17:00 Trump says the quiet part out loud. No point in maintaining US forces in Syria because there's no Wealth there. But Ben points out, albeit indirectly, that its about Power. And Power and Wealth are the same thing - where there's one, the other follows. Trump gets that for sure, although the time frame might not be to his liking. If Trump has any appealing feature, it is his propensity to say the quiet part out loud. Any other US President would talk about it in terms of saving Syria. Canada has Wealth ... I'm sure it needs saving from something.
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  39. Americans talking about politics in South Korea makes me anstsy. There should not be a South Korea. Or a North Korea. It is so terribly sad. It also makes us realise what an absolute miracle it was that Vietnam managed to survive after America's brutal and pitiless attempt to establish a power base there.
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  40. I'd support that - provided Australia handed over the money in reparation to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
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  41. It is however slightly bizarre to supply food to people when you are supplying money, arms, and military and political cover to Israel to kill those same people.
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  42. Zelensky is an embarrassment, allowing himself to be paraded about whenever and wherever the US calls on him. 24:15 I can't make any sense of what Ben is saying about Ukraine. In one breath he talks about the horror being visited on Ukraine, in the next breath he talks about Ukraine needing to keep the war going indefinitely. And calls it supporting Ukraine! I get it that Russia and the US are enemies, but that's extreme.
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  43. And if that had actually happened (transitioning from a Democratic republic to a dictatorship in just one election) it truly would have been remarkable. But of course America never really became a democracy in the first place, despite the insistence of the Democratic party.
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  44. ALL countries understand this now.
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  45. To be realistic. The things you're talking about here - torture, drone strikes, firing missiles at other countries, supporting genocide - these are things the US does. It's not party political. I'm prepared to believe the US did more drone strikes when Trump was President than when Obama was President. However, it was during the Obama presidency that drone strikes became a thing. As drone technology "improved" it's unsurprising the US chose to use them more often. Guantanamo Bay. Never got closed during the Obama presidency, which lasted 8 years. Ethnic cleaning of Palestinians - that started on a large scale during the Biden presidency. Firing missiles into other countries - has there been any presidency in the last many decades when the US hasn't done that? Either directly, or providing the weapons, military intelligence and finance to the proxy country that did? Team Democrat and Team Republican are irrelevant here.
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  46. ​ @user36112  Antisemitic used to mean anti-Jewish, which is something pretty awful. Then it meant anyone who wasn't a Zionist. Now it just means anyone who doesn't like what Israel continues to do to the Palestinians. It's trending towards becoming a badge of honour these days. I wonder what new word they'll come up with to mean anti-Jewish? I suggest "anti-Jewish".
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  47. So ... why not vote in the majority? Answer: because it isn't the same.
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  48. Agreed, but it's a bit late now. Elon is so firmly attached to the public teat he could easily afford to just give Tesla away.
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  49. Biden on Christmas Eve - I had a long private conversation with Netanyahu. No I did not ask for a cease-fire.
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  50. 4:30 If Hamas is using hospitals as cover it indicates they have no respect for human life. Of course it’s NEVER OK to attack a working hospital under ANY circumstances. If there is an enemy presence, use another option to defeat it. [Congratulations PSW.] 6:00 Despite Joe Biden shifting his rhetoric gradually to include some tepid expressions of concern for Gazan’s , he is still seeking additional funding for Israel and those funds are unconditional wrt civilian security. He is also expressing far less empathy towards Gazan victims than Israeli victims. [Congratulations PSW.] Still no mention of the invisible elephant in the room, which is that Israel is a de-facto American colony established and maintained by US military, financial, and political support for its own benefit. It seems to be literally impossible for practically any moral, patriotic American to even process facts of that type - the nearest they approach it is to allude to “mistakes”. This easily explains the glaring difference in Biden’s empathy levels. Many Israelis are People, few Gazans are People. It also explains Biden’s unconditional funding of the IDF. Biden believes that it is to the benefit of US Power. NOTHING matters to him relative to that. Of course, he thought the invasion of Iraq was in America’s interest also. And, he may be right on both counts. After all, Lord of the Rings isn’t real life. Using Evil tools to achieve Power might not inevitably corrupt the Good.
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  51.  @S62r  It's nothing even close to a functioning democracy. Do you really mean like the Americans imposing a political system on Iraq? Because Iraq hardly needs to be introduced to democracy. What would have been great for Iraq would have been for western countries to have left it to find its own feet; in particular for the US not to have supported Saddam Hussein's regime, as it did for years, and later not to have invaded it.
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  52. And anyway money and power are kind of equivalent. The US must virtually own Ukraine now. It certainly seems to own Zelensky, given the places and occasions at which Biden trots him out. Basically, this war is about US consolidation of its world power. Wealth will follow, as it has from the US using its military power in the Middle East to get access to cheaper oil. At the cost of horrific damage to Middle Eastern peoples, but that's hardly an issue really, just as the lesser but still dreadful damage to the Ukrainians isn't an issue.
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  53. That's NEWS?? The reason why Netanyahou demanded the death of Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated soon afterwards, was because Rabin supported a two-state solution. That was nearly thirty years ago and since then Netanyahou has presided over extended Israeli settlement into the West Bank and the killing of many Palestinians there. It's not just hypocritical to pretend that suggesting a two-state solution to Netanyahou is going to have any other result than denial. It's a cyncially deployed smoke-screen. And give me a break. Netanyahou is NOT the problem. The Israelis who voted for him knew what they were getting - his call for the assassination of Rabin was extremely public.
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  54. When WAS that exactly? Back before the 1950s when the US crushed the new democratic government of Iran? Back in the early 20th century when the US sent troops into Russia to try to restore its royalty to power? The lesson from Vietnam was well learnt, but you are mistaken about what it was. The lesson was that the US population will not stand for its government instigating wars where the American death toll is high.
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  55. Whoever would have thought the blue six pointed star would become a fascist symbol? It seems that the lesson learned from WWII is Do unto others as still others have done unto you.
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  56. Easy. First they convey ro their kids those other kids are sub-human.
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  57. Surely the title would more fairly, and frankly more accurately, read "Israel Weighs Retaliation Against Iranian Retaliatory Attacks, Concerns For Violent Escalation Grows". Also, fewer weapons, less money, less potential for Israeli attacks and subsequent escalation. It's not as if the US couldn't stop enabling escalation. Should it choose to.
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  58. And THERE is the silver lining that leaves me torn between not wishing Trump on the USA, but not wishing the USA on the rest of the world. The sooner the USA stops "helping" the better off the world will be. "Helping itself" being closer to the money.
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  59. I disagree with most of what Bernie has to say, and some of it is just plain incorrect. The idea that Israel is accepting tens of billions of dollars from the US while still telling the US what Israel itself is going to do is not at all absurd IMHO. It’s much like my nephew who continued hitting his brother no matter how many times his parents kept telling him to stop. Why stop when there are no consequences? And in the case of Israel, the US hasn’t even TOLD it to stop. And in the case of my nephew, at least his parents didn't hand him a stick. Or a bomb. Bernie is also wrong that it is illegal for Israeli to block American humanitarian aid to Gaza while receiving financial aid from the US. Yes, that is contrary to a US law. However that law applies to the US, not to Israel. It is the US that is breaking its own law by continuing to GIVE the financial support. It is not against the law for Israel to continue RECEIVING it - US law has no standing in Israel. Frankly I find it quite worrying that a US senator believes that US law applies to the rest of the world. We don’t have One World Government … yet. (I do however agree with Bernie that blocking humanitarian aid is obscene.) I ALSO disagree with Bernie that the immediate concern in Gaza is to feed starving people. At least, not while they’re still being bombed. It’s entirely analogous to advice about what to do after being snake bit - first and foremost avoid further snakebite. Then treat it. Stop bombing the Gazans.
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  60. Maybe it prefers to pretend that Israel is acting unilaterally.
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  61. What on earth would make you think Biden doesn't realise what Israel is and what it's doing?
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  62. IMHO the opposite is the case. I cannot understand why so many intelligent Americans fall for the relentless propaganda that there is an important distinction between Netanyahu and the nation of Israel. Israel was established by ethnic cleansing by terrorists, one of whom, Yitzhak Rabin, later became a Prime Minister of Israel. However he supported a two-state solution and so was too much of a wimp for Netanyahu, who very loudly and publicly called for his assassination. Soon after Rabin was in fact assassinated, Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister. The Israelis knew exactly who they were getting. Of course not every single Israeli supports him, but that's hardly the point.
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  63. You couldn't possibly have fought for the county's freedom. Its freedom hasn't been under attack from the outside within any living person's time. I believe that you fought, but it was to increase the country's wealth and power and to further the personal ambitions of its already wealthy and powerful. That's just not what they told you.
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  64. I'm hardly the first to remark on it. But WTF is the laughing about? It's impossible to tell, but easy to interpret as dismissive and even derisive. So much so that if that is not the case there really needs to be an explanatory and apologetic Bulwark comment pinned to the top of the comments section.
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  65. Canadians who are boycotting US holiday destinations might want to consider Cuba and Mexico as alternatives - by directing your money to another US target country you get a double whammy out of your southern holiday in the sun.
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  66.  @sherrijennings9309  I can understand someone feeling like that, what I would disagree with would be if someone thought their personal preference should take priority over other peoples' health and safety. We all lost something.
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  67. 35:00 A country whose commonly abbreviated name has three letters and starts with U, has been meddling in a civil war and selling arms to participants who are committing terrible acts. The country already has a lot of money and influence yet it still quite unreasonably wants more. This is such a common story. However the difference here is the final two initials of the country's name.
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  68. Without American arms and money Netanyahu would be impotent. He's not the problem.
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  69. Interesting interview. Malala sounds very sensible. The thing is ... after listening, I'm not sure what the two women are calling on countries outside of Afghanistan to do. One thing Malala seems to be saying is that they don't want the persecution of women by the Taliban to be normalized by foreign countries negotiating with them without any Afghani women present. What they are clearly NOT asking for is that another country should use the persecution of women as an excuse to invade or occupy Afghanistan.
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  70. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Biden is getting forced, I tell you FORCED, into attacking Iran. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. If only Iran wasn't so evil and the US wasn't such a benevolent fighter for Truth, Justice and The American Way.
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  71.  @robertruffo2134  It's still got fear. It's gotten by on that for some time now.
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  72. 8:27 So it's unsurprising that the US uses USAID to extend US soft power. Can't really complain about that. However it's a real eye-opener that it's a participant in America's proxy-war against Russia in Ukraine, Amerca's economic war against China, and is an integral part of America's direct intervention in who governs several small foreign countries. Even when you know what the USA is, it's a bit of a slap in the face hearing Connecticut senator Chris Murphy just rattle this stuff off.
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  73. Why is Zelensky wearing his undershirt on top?
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  74. Look! Over there! Iran. Meanwhile ... Gaza. And the West Bank. Biden is too old. It isn't just the apparent physical weakness. Or even the significant risk of dementia during the term of his presidency. It's that his understanding of both Israel and Russia remains firmly fixed in the almost jingoistic government pronouncements and media reporting of his youth. In the words of a recent New York Times article "As a young man, Biden watched Lyndon Johnson’s dream of being remembered for his “Great Society” collapse in the face of youthful opposition to an unpopular and cruel foreign war, with Johnson’s failures leading to the election of a corrupt president from the other party. I hope Biden takes action to avoid a repeat."
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  75. @ Perhaps if you also included the EU. However it's very problematic. The US has military bases in Canada, Australia, the EU, and the UK. They won't leave voluntarily.
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  76. And here I was thinking that the US had selected Australia to be one of the locations for its next war. Which frankly never bodes well for any country. And as for fighting with (as opposed to against) US forces - I've heard some veteran stories about how they dreaded having to fight anywhere near US forces in WWII and Vietnam. Not to mention how the US knowingly sank Japanese ships loaded with allied (but not American) prisoners in WWII. Fortunately I hedged my forecast with "...unless the US decides to attack some other country before it attacks China."
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  77.  @technoloverish  Israel is an American colony in the same way that different parts of the US were an English colony, a French colony, and a Spanish colony. It's based on what country was the primary colonizer, not where they colonized.
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  78.  @bradhombre6912  Until it was colonized by the US in 1948 and took the name of Israel. Duh, not all the settlers came from the US! Many came from Europe, and some from elsewhere. However he US was the primary colonizer. The country that supplied most of the finances, the political support, had the primary influence on the system of government, etc. It just wasn't politically expedient to take the official title - that went to the Zionists. Hence what I said - "DE-FACTO colony".
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  79. Obama is studiously avoiding the whole truth along with everyone else. The whole truth is that the overriding factor in this conflict has been and remains the establishment, perpetuation, and increase of US power and wealth by access to cheap Middle East oil. The US wants a military ally in the heart of the world's most important oil producing district and will do anything, and I mean anything, to keep that. Anything with the possible exception of the loss of too many People's lives, and that only because the powers that be learned their lesson in Vietnam - if too many People die then that inconvenient US domestic public starts to exercise its muscle. (People being American citizens who whose deaths can be directly attributed to the US government. Very few if any Gazan's are People.)
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  80. As I get older (and wiser?) I've come to realise that when one thinks someone's behaviour is "stupid", it's usually just a failure to realise that the other person's objective aren't what I thought. Sam's behaviour only looks stupid to you because you assume he wants to protect the bystanders, or at the very least that he would pay some penalty for endangering them.
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  81. No. It's two governments divvying up the spoils under the smokescreen of it being about individuals. Of course, no question that those individuals will get their cut.
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  82.  @robertbritt6134  I respectfully disagree about Ukraine. Just as history in Israel/Gaza/West Bank did not begin on October 7 2024, despite Israeli propaganda, history in Ukraine did not begin when the Russians invaded in 2022, despite US propaganda. NATO expansion towards Russia had been US policy since the 1990s, and prior to that invasion Zelensky was talking about installing an American controlled (via NATO) military base on Russia's back doorstep (Ukraine). Ukraine is even closer to Russia that Cuba is to the US. Ukraine is really about continuing military expansion by the US. Describing Israel as a mistake is very blinkered. Netanyahou signalled Israel's intentions in advance and the US sent weapons, political and financial support, and military intelligence to Israel. Israel enacted its intentions, US collusion continued. If it was a mistake it was a very deliberate one. Netanyahou and Putin are only relevant in terms of the degree of ruthlessness they are injecting into what would be their country's policy no matter who their leaders were. Russia could never do nothing while an American controlled military base was buit on its back doorstep. Israel knew who and what they were getting when they elected and then re-elected Netanyahou - military backed expansion of Israel into the West Bank and Gaza.
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  83.  @Maja-Danmark  In fact NATO arrived at the Russian border twenty years ago when it included Latvia (and maybe earlier, I'm not an expert). However Ukraine is of far higher strategic importance to Russia. The US doesn't need to overrun countries militarily - it uses its economic power to subvert them and installs NATO military bases later with government permission. I for one hope that Russia and China manage to stand free from US domination. It sickens me that the US is using Ukraine and Ukrainians in yet another proxy war. Zelensky pops up when and where he's told to. The US tried to use Navalny's wife the same way, but Navalny was a true patriot and so is his wife. She might still end up a martyr in the quest to oust Putin, as Navalny himself was, but she still hasn't acceded to being used against Russia even for possible personal revenge against Putin.
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  84. Obama is incredibly charismatic, and probably a good man in many ways. However killing bin Laden seems to have been some kind of turning point in his regard for non-American human life. I can kind of accept that killing bin Laden might have been necessary and if Obama had said he regretted the necessity but there was no choice, I wouldn't hold it against him. However he didn't say that; he bragged about it. Repeatedly. Then, after having opposed the death penalty in the US, he issued kill orders for Muslims overseas without trial. He kept sending drones to kill them, although there were repeated accidental killings of their neighbors and families instead. So he had zero moral authority on the issue of protesters against killing Muslims in Gaza inconveniencing the conference.
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  85. As to what else you can do - nothing. Do nothing. In particular, do not send arms, money. and military support and intelligence.
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  86. Who thinks the US won't be doing its worst to set up a favourable puppet regime in Syria, which, if US efforts are successful, then becomes the latest US backed Middle-Eastern tyranny.
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  87.  @juicejuice1455  "The forces of evil" 🤣😂🤣 Didn't the Domino Theory take a big hit when Vietnam succeeded in kicking out the forces of good? (At a cost to Vietnam of 4 million dead civilians and horrific poisoning of its forests and its people - there are still people born there today with birth defects as a direct result of the American attempts to establish a power base there. )
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  88. Mumbling about how killing tens of thousands of civilians is all a bit much didn't solve the problem. Neither did promising to get some food to people before they get killed. Even deciding not to veto a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (as opposed to actually supporting the ceasefire) didn't do it. For goodness sake, what does one have to DO to continue arming and funding ethnic cleansing with less domestic electoral risk? Deploy the token Socialist! (No offense to Bernie; I believe he personally is sincere. However the hypocrisy of the US Government is so blatant it's cartoon-like. Seems like delay, delay, delay is the watchword for 2024 all around. Waiting with bated breath to see what the next deflection will be.)
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  89.  SomethingBlonde-oc7sc  You've got to be kidding. Biden has gone on record saying the ICC shouldn't be attempting to hold Israelis to account. Turns out that Biden and Trump aren't that different after all when they don't like what a Court has to say.
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  90. Isn't it about time Canada was saved? The US has been so busy saving countries around the globe, particularly those with resources and political vulnerability, that it hasn't even thought about its own neighbour.
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  91. Because Israel is a Western colony.
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  92. 1:07:18 Yes, it would be great if the US did something to help the acute humanitarian situation in Gaza. But in a pinch, Gaza can do without that. Many other countries will be able to help far more than they already are once the bombing stops. As for dealing with threats of retaliation from Iran and driving a hostage and ceasefire deal to closure - no thanks. Just stop sending Israel weapons until the Palestinian death rate drops to what it was 5 years ago. As a bonus, Iran will have nothing further to retaliate against. Great news! The US doesn't need to do anything. In fact, it can stop doing something it's already doing (sending Israel weapons). Then it can help country desperately in need of help; a country where there's huge support for a nascent dictator, where a large percentage of the population lives below the poverty line, where medical help is unavailable to many, where democracy is widely suppressed and threatened even further, where corruption is endemic both within government and withing the justice system ... the United State of America.
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  93. ​ @magicthegatheringlover4277  Your use of the word "correct" to mean "my preferred" isn't really helpful here.
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  94. There have been are a number of young Jewish adults in the press lately who feel very distressed about Gaza. Not what's happening there - what they're distressed abut is that some other students are protesting against it.
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  95. Australia is paying tribute money.
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  96. What a terribly sad and tragic thing and a huge loss to the world. 3:02 Putin unarguably killed Navalny, regardless of the exact circumstances of his death. Yes, indisputable. There has been zero doubt for as far back as I can remember that Putin is a ruthless, cold-blooded, killer. Subsequent "my memories of Navalny". Absolutely fascinating and totally appreciated. That it's inevitable that Biden and other US figures will use Navalny's killing to justify and prolong the current proxy war against Russia via Ukrainian lands and personnel - stomach-turning. Especially since it's totally the opposite of what it sounds as if Navalny himself would want if I've correctly interpreted Ben's description of him as an archetypal Russian and a true Russian patriot. 37:10 That Ben himself is one of those figures is so disappointing. Characterizing the war against Russia as a war against Putin is just plain lying. 40:46 The US should make a propaganda video targeted at a Russian audience about Putin's corruption. Give. Me. A. Break! Those Russians who want to know already do. No Russian who didn't believe Navalny would EVER believe the US government.
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  97. Congratulations to Mehdi Hasan. A formidable journalist. Highly respected. Does his ressearch, has the facts at his fingertips, quick-witted and calm under pressure. What is WRONG with MSNBC? More to the point, who pressured them? That is the exposé I'm waiting for in 2025. New York Times? Ronan Farrow? Anybody got the guts to investigate this one?
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  98. Much the same thing as when you hand over political power to Big Business under capitalism.
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  99. Genocide with plausible (to those who desperately want to be fooled) deniability is still genocide.
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  100.  @vanessawhitneypro  Not only did Netanyahu actually win, he won multiple times. I'm sure you think Biden didn't win also.
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  101. And I am not going to like the US invading China. It's OK for you - assuming you live in the US. You're far enough away that you'll probably be OK, except of course for the flow-on economic costs, which will be significant for the ordinary person. Unless China should decide that self-defense merits an assault of the US mainland, as opposed to just retaliation against the countries hosting the attacking US forces. But I live in one of the countries that has agreed to be a host for your war. Maybe they felt they had no option, but typically countries that host US wars do not come out of it well. Do you guys really not care about ANYONE who isn't a US citizen?
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  102. Since pulling the last American troops out of Afghanistan three years ago, Biden has spent much of his presidency mobilizing public opinion and military might against Russia and playing a deeply engaged role in Israel's attacks on Iran and on the Palestinians. It's evident that his heart (and mind?) is firmly focused on the good fights of his youth. The thing is, 50 years later the world has evolved. I don't think it's too strong to describe Biden's war escalations as tragic. So sick of being inundated with anti-Russian news.
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  103.  @gailseatonhumbert  Oh they understand it alright. They just choose to ignore it. It is not a good fit with their narrative.
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  104. 8:30 As to the "stupidity" of American Foreign Policy. What's stupid about America obstructing a successful transition to a genuinely Syrian government? Presumably its intention is to install its own puppet government - because Power and Money are the same thing (each follows from the other). It's egregiously harmful and immoral, but not stupid. P.S. Kudos are due to the Russians for their evacuations.
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  105. Where does this odd idea that Netanyahu is ignoring the US come from? Yes, he's not acting in accordance with US government statements to its public. Hardly the same thing.
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  106. Keir Starmer stands against Trump's plan to level Gaza but has been totally on board with Israel's plan to level Gaza. All that Trump's done has been to say the quiet part out loud. (And continue negotiations about his personal share of the spoils. Which is despicable and repulsive but has little impact on the Palestinians.)
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  107. It's so dishonest pretending that what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank is down to Netanyahu. He signalled what he was going to use the American weapons and military intelligence BEFORE they were sent. For anyone who was unable to read the signals, which American intelligence organizations of course can .. he did it ... then he kept on doing it. Killing Palestinians has had a lot of support on the news both from Israeli politicians and from Jewish spokespeople in the US.
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  108. The other problem is that the USA actually has military bases in Europe. Also, your assumption that European countries don't want to conquer Russia is pretty questionable. Historically it has been tried again and again and the EU has been complicit with the USA in taking NATO to the border of Russia. Unfortunately I have the feeling that the EU wants to become a Power. Who exactly is "Europe" "defending" against?
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  109. Biden is an embarrassment.
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  110. The point is, what are the likely consequences in the 2024 US Elections.
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  111. Anderson Cooper talking about how he's not there to express opinions is a flat-out lie. He has been a hard-line apologist for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
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  112. Huh? Leverage? What I'd like to know is why the US government refuses to stop violating ITS OWN LAWS. And yes, Biden as President bears a sprecial responsibility there.
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  113. The USA cannot endure a simultaneous trade war with everybody else. The time has come for the rest of the world to choose. Continue to capitulate to the US one by one? (Whether the face-saving way, under a pretense of vassal states being allies, or the up-front way, under a public "or else" threat. ) Or make a united stand for self-determination and sovereignty? Does the EU serve any real practical purpose or will it hang Denmark out to dry? And what about Canada, Panama, and, really, everyone else? Because whatever country you are ... chances are you're next. In fact you've probably already had a turn, or several turns.
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  114. In the 1950s the Iranians had no religious overlords. Then the US decided to overturn their democratically government and replace it with a dictator who provided them with cheaper access to oil. The only group who were able to get enough people together to overturn him decades later was the mullahs ... of whom a faction moved into the ensuing vacuum.
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  115. I don't know what's worse. Sitting there after Israel's track record and actually believing the ceasefire thing. Or sitting there pretending to believe it. Even though when he announces it Biden says it's OK for Israel to break the ceasefire whenever it feels like it provided it says the magic words.
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  116. Biden is still fighting the wars of his youth. The war against Russia. The war against China. The wars to establish US access to cheap Middle East oil. And in the same ways - with proxy military engagements at obscene levels of harm to the host countries, accompanied by intensive propaganda campaigns.
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  117. 4:10 This documents an occasion when despite pressure from the American President, an American city was excluded in the first round. In other words, an occasion when the IOC, to its credit, withstood external pressure. 6:53 This concerns corruption within Russia by Putin over assigning building contracts. It has nothing to do with IOC corruption and has presumably only been included, along with many other negative Russian narratives, because the US is currently in the middle of its latest proxy war with Russia. (If there's been no construction related corruption within the US when it hosted the Olympics I'll eat my hat.) The slanted commentary on the 2024 Games is striking! A country that has been told by the ICJ to get out of the areas it is occupying and to stop massacring civilians, has been allowed to compete. Russia has supposedly been banned for invading Ukraine. However the juxtaposition of differential treatment of Israel and Russia is stark. The most obvious suspect country for having applied extreme pressure to bring that contradictory result being ... well, the wealthy, powerful country that led the illegal invasion of a little country on the other side of the world in 2003 and was NOT banned.
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  118.  @hamlet557  To evacuate where and how exactly? The death toll from terrorism in Israeli controlled areas in Palestine in the last 10 years didn't start October 7. It's just that before that the bulk of deaths were Palestinian. A significant percentage of them were children. The power-imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians is enormous and that includes Zionist influence over rhetoric within the US. Watch the 2014 Jon Stewart clip.
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  119. What Ben is actually talking about isn't Ukraine; it's the Zelensky regime. The regime that does not allow any men between the ages of 18 and 60 to leave the country. Led by the man who decided to push for joining NATO knowing that Russia would never stand by and allow that, and furthermore knowing that Russia is currently led by a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. The Zelensky who gets paraded about by the US at their whim. His future in his own country when this war ends looks pretty grim.
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  120. It's called desperation. Better fast genocide with a bang than slow genocide with a whimper.
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  121. It's hard. But if you really want to defeat Trump, and I have zero doubt that you do, you MUST let Biden go. With full respect and honors and thanks. With his dignity still almost intact. But flogging a dead horse isn't going to win the race.
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  122. 2:45 Commentary that this deal is almost identical to a deal rejected by Israel last May. "it was rejected before an accepted now, what's the difference? The difference is Trump." The difference is tens of thousands of massacred Palestinians, many of whom children, and several generations of Palestinians with severe lifelong trauma, many of whom with permanent injury. Also journalists and aid workers killed by the IDF.
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  123.  @AKK5I  That's A) Dishonest. It is nothing at all like Pearl Harbour. The US hadn't established a colony in Japan using terrorist tactics 80 years earlier. It hadn't been expanding its borders within Japan ever since by moving more American settlers into neighbouring areas accompanied by murders of the Japanese who were there earlier. B) Repulsive. Ethnic cleansing and genocide just are repulsive. So is trying to justify it, even if you hadn't lied.
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  124. But ... but ... international justice is the responsibility of the USA. The inescapable moral burden of its shining-light-on-the-hill Goodness. These ICC pretenders are an Abomination. Don't they even know about American Exceptionalism?
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  125. Netanyahu isn't the problem. Trump isn't the problem. The problem is their countrymen and countrywomen. The people who voted for them. At least in the US there was the excuse that people couldn't be sure exactly what kind of leader he'd be. But even after that WAS known he received the second highest vote of any US Presidential candidate ever, despite Biden winning. And now he's the official candidate of a major US political party. Netanyahu on the other hand was always known. Before his election he publicly and dramatically called for the assassination of Yitsak Rabin, the then Prime Minister of Israel. He was elected after the assassination took place, and re-elected multiple times since then.
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  126. Dropping a Palestinian advocate from a campaign because of a complaint from a country that has just killed tens of thousands of in less than a year? It doesn't get much worse than that.
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  127. Let's face it. China has committed an unforgivable crime. It profited more from trade with the USA than the USA did. Invade! To save its people of course.
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  128. What's the world coming to when you can't massacre tens of thousands of Palestinians without street protests in the country that funded, armed, and provided political cover for said massacre? Truly the Jews are the Real Victims Here.
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  129. Facts are facts. "The cannibals ate my uncle" however is not.
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  130. It isn't unusual for the elderly to blurt out a skewed idea that firmly implanted itself in their mind back in their youth after some shocking event. That's probably all the cannibalism thing is. Although, considering he's the US President, that's bad enough. However, what if is were something more sinister? What if PNG has something the US wants? I would have thought the US could just buy anything they wanted but it's never averse to forcing down the price. What if PNG doesn't want to be one of the hosts of Americas's next war, the one against China? Because those wars never work out well for the host country. Already Americans are dutifully writing about PNG cannibalism. It doesn't take much to dehumanize any foreign peoples just enough in American eyes.
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  131.  @DuvJones  Hakuna patata, The last annexation was weeks ago.
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  132. Biden is frustrated! Furthermore he thinks that massacring 30.000 people directly, and likely significantly more via disease, starvation, etc is “over the top”! Shrug. Meanwhile the US will soon be giving Israel a few additional billion dollars to carry on doing what they’re doing. Hypocrisy is way too weak a word for it. The applicable words are collusion and (although I very rarely if ever use this word) … evil. The holocaust that Israel and the US are visiting upon the Palestinians is evil.
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  133. Since when? Certainly not since the Vietnam War where 4 million civilians were killed. Not all by the Americans it should be said. Even though as a result of US efforts to gain power in that country.
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  134. You might want to think about what the United States did to the last states that seceded.
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  135. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Empire is rotting from the inside. "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out."
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  136.  @user36112  Not so sure about the dumb part. It's worked well for the US up until now.
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  137. While Cohen's wondering how Americans would feel if a small group of Mexicans crossed the border and committed atrocities against US citizens, perhaps he might also wonder about how Americans would feel if a far larger group of Mexicans entered the US by force and established a colony in a large area by burning American citizens out of their homes and then used weapons and money supplied by the Mexican government to help them expand the colony. No doubt Dave would argue it was OK because there had already been some Mexicans living in the US beforehand. And doubly OK because some Mexicans were descendants of people who'd been living in the US millenia ago.
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  138. No, Kissinger didn't do that. The USA did that.
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  139. The same flag worn by most of those who rained down hellfire and poison from the skies in Vietnam. Those who tried to crush the Russian Revolution against its royalty. (To their credit some of them actually mutinied against their orders.) Those who gave the orders that DID crush the fledgling secular democracy in Iran in the 1950s. Those who caused carnage in Iraq. Those on ships that moved closer to Israel to give it cover while it slaughtered Palestinians.
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  140. Huh? What line is that? The BOTTOM line is that Russia was never going to accept a government in its backyard (Ukraine) that supported American controlled military bases on its territory. Both Zelensky and the US knew that but supported the NATO push east anyway. Handing the US an American proxy war advocate's wet dream - a war in which no lives are lost (that matter!) and a country that would stand very long term against American world dominance is seriously weakened. Every day this war lasts weakens Russia further, which is why the US wants it to last as long as possible.
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  141.  @user36112  Frankly, I suspect you might be right. Which really should make most in the West sit up and take notice. Israel gets a lot of publicity one way or another, but when I realised the big difference between how I'd been led to think about it, and how it really is, I for one felt I'd effectively been lied to. Even its origins - we've been misled for a long time. I was brought up knowing about "greening the desert" and "giving the Jews a homeland after the Holocaust". And NOT knowing that way was cleared for the Jewish settlers by Jewish terrorists who burned out the Palestinians who wouldn't move.
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  142. The System is broke. Neither Party campaigned to fix it. One Party campaigned to burn it down. The other campaigned to protect its preciousness. Fundamental reform is what's needed. For those who care about abstracts, unfettered (as opposed to robustly managed) Capitalism is incompatible with properly functioning Democracy. For those who care about their standard of living, unfettered Capitalism concentrates wealth in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. The Economy is irrelevant when it focuses on totals and averages and totally ignores distribution. I dare say it's even angering to hear how well The Economy is doing when your tiny share of it is doing poorly.
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  143. "He started it!" Used to say my brothers and sisters to my parents when we were young children. "Got you last!" Used to say my bothers and sisters and I to each other. However we weren't using missiles.
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  144. But electing Trump isn't something that happened to USA. It's something the USA did.
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  145.  @oceanecastelnau9821  Yes it's offensive. But shock implies some degree of suddenness and surprise.
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  146. Don't forget journalists. So clearly and so naively labelled
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  147. Thank you Donald Trump. For saying the quiet part out loud. Only weeks ago the US government was still pretending that it didn't know that Israel's massacres in Gaza were about fast-tracking its plan for further ethnic cleansing. Although it's repulsive to watch Trump negotiate for his personal share of the spoils on public television, it was no less repulsive watching the Biden administration pretending it wasn't happening while enabling it.
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  148. Give. Me. A. Break. You're not flooding Ukraine with weapons to use against Russia because of moral issues around a rules-base global system. It's been US government POLICY for decades to advance relentlessly eastward towards Russia from Western Europe, via NATO. Your government was in Zelensky's ear, and Americans poured money into Ukraine, and that idiot Zelensky actually thought that he could talk about Ukraine joining NATO and Russia would just sit there doing nothing until there were US c(via NATO) controlled military bases at its backdoor in strategic military sites. What a dolt. He looks good a a uniform though. Quite likely not a bad man, and quite possibly even a good man, but most definitely a dupe.
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  149. The false flag posit seems unlikely for a number of reasons. Which doesn't invalidate by one iota your assessment of the likely impact of the current and projected American approach. Which is not in the slightest "hasty" by the way. It's a continuation of American policy since the early days of Zionist occupation of Palestine. A policy that is based on American interests in the Middle East (oil) and American domestic political interests (a hugely organized and powerful Zionist lobby that includes many on the Christian Right, and which, among other things, falsely conflates being anti-Zionist with being anti-Jewish and all that goes along with it)
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  150. Fact. A person of 85 years old is far less likely to be both physically and mentally healthy than the same person at age 81. Fact. Knowing that indisputable truth, no mentally competent responsible 81 year-old would put himself forward as a US Presidential candidate.
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  151. I guess the Israeli government was lying then when it said that they did it but it was just a mistake.
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  152. Having enough Ukrainians died for your country's war against Russia? Sure, Putin is a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. A bad actor. Both the US and Zelensky knew this before he started talking about joining the EU and NATO. Russia was never going to allow US controlled bases in Ukraine without a fight, or even a US controlled economy, regardless of who was in charge. But pushing towards this when that person was Putin was inevitably going to result in a particularly brutal and ruthless war. Both the US and Zelensky were well aware of Putin's track record in advance. From where I stand Zelensky looks like a zealot who has basically been used.
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  153. More dishonesty than ignorance methinks.
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  154. 22:58 'Part of Israel securing a border requires more military funding." Fine. No problem with that. A quick Google shows that the GDP of Israel is 488 billion. "So President Biden's working to get Congress to pass more than 14 billion in supplementary funding for Israel.' Say what?!? If Israel wants to spend an additional 14 billion for military purposes that's their decision. But what the heck does that have to do with President Biden and Congress?
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  155. Israel's behavior is NOT a violation of US law. Hate to be the one to break it to you guys, but US law does not extend outside the US. It is the US itself that is violating its own law.
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  156. In case you haven't noticed, there is already a two-state solution with the Mexicans. And the US is not moving in settlers to Mexico and then claiming it has to defend them so it needs to expand its territory. Yet, anyway ... I believe someone (Trump) proposed taking over Mexico.
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  157. Wow! I just saw an MSNBC clip of Joe Biden saying he holds Iran responsible for the recent killing of the three American SOLDIERS at a US military base near the Iran border because Iran supplied the weapons to the people who did it. That must the the closest he's come to admitting responsibility for the 10 THOUSAND times more deaths of the CIVILIANS recently killed by Israel in Gaza.
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  158. Um .... er... could the timing have something to do with the grossly increased ethnic cleansing by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank?
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  159. Would that be Mehdi Hasan?
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  160. Yep. Delivering as promised.
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  161. You're a bit wonky on the timeline of Ukraine's involvement with NATO, John. Russia has plenty of reason to fear American attempts to turn it into yet another vassal state of the Empire, and to fear Western European attempts at control also. We can't know what level of threat Russia felt when it invaded Ukraine but it would have been significant. I'm tired of paying for America's war against Russia. I read that Australia gave 1 billion dollars to Ukraine. Australia also paid the US nearly a billion dollars recently, linked to the nuclear submarine program, and apparently we've agreed to pay them that much annually into the foreseeable future. No wonder Trump said how good Australia has been to the US. Talk about protection rackets. The mafia has nothing on the US government. Our hospitals could really have used that money, Then there's the inflation caused by this war. Coming on the heels of the post-covid inflation, and caused primarily by Europe's economic attacks on Russia via refusing to buy their cheap energy creating huge upwards energy price pressure that bleeds into the cost of just about everything. I'm so sick of hearing American talking points about this war being transmitted by Australian voices.
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  162. What a truly dreadful country the United States is. What it has enabled against the Palestinians is sickening. Calling what it is doing to Ukraine "support for Ukraine" is sickening. What it is doing to Russia is sickening.
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  163. That doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Jews have also lived in England for over 2,000 years. And yet, should there be a decision for huge numbers of Jews to go to England with the express purpose of establishing a Jewish state there by force, that would be colonization. And Chistians have lived in the Middle East for over 2,00 yeras, And yet, etc. Yes, some jews emigrated to Israel in response to WW2. But other Zionist Jews emigrated there earlier with the express purpose of establishing a Jewish state by force. Furthermore, the vast majority were American or European citizens who established their colony in collusion with the US and UK governments.
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  164. So America's on a journey towards Equality. It's also on a journey towards Democracy. However when it comes to to constructing a corridor for efficiently transporting African resources to the United States, America seems to have skipped the journey phase. I commend that same approach to Equality and Democracy. The majority of the Western world overtook the US on its looong journeys some time ago and is eagerly awaiting its arrival.
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  165. 12:10 The guest says the war against Russia is about moral issues and American values. 🤣🤣🤣
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  166. 14:35 The guest says that Europe should steal permanently the Russian assets it has seized. Now I see what she meant about American values being involved in the war.
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  167. I once read a story with the immortal line "Hypocritical Nazis. What is the world coming to?" Still. The sheer hypocrisy of these "defense" types still gets to me.
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  168. So the US has been imposing sanctions on Venezuela and trying to force regime change there? Ho-hum, so what else is new? Still ... I feel a bit ashamed of not keeping track. How many other countries is the US doing this to at this moment? And for control of what resources? I don't know whether you've noticed, but the US currently stands a significant chance of electing a Trump as its President. The US government is largely controlled by those sloshing money through it. What about getting your own country into order and stop effing over the rest of the world? What Biden said about America not being at war is true the same way its politicians and judges aren't corrupt. Now it seems increasingly likely that the "not war" with Lebanon will escalate horribly.
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  169. Essentially you pick a definition of "corrupt", or "at war", that makes the narrative technically true even if the implied meaning is false.
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  170. Sounds like Biden has learnt his lesson about Gaza. That lesson being that more propaganda (calling for a cease fire and airdropping aid) is gonna be needed than he'd thought to avoid repercussions from his continuing collusion with ethnic cleansing by Israel.
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  171. Who CARES what Peter Welch wants to happen politically over in the Middle East? Those are sovereign countries. Their politics and who their leaders are is None Of Your Business. Just stop sending weapons to countries that use them to commit genocide. Then get on with your elections.
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  172. Towards the beginning of this century a small group of people decided to target three of an enemy country's major centres - their political centre, their military centre, and their financial centre. They didn't reach the military centre but they hit the political centre and reduced the financial centre to rubble. The attacks were extraordinarily tightly targeted and only 3,000 civilians were killed. I don't recall any US politicians, military men, or reporters, either at that time or since, discussing calculations about the value of the target vs the number of civilians killed.
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  173. Turns out the Israelis have no problem with Nazi ideology per se, only the details about which group constitutes the Master Race, which groups are broadly tolerated provided they collaborate with the Master Race, and which group constitutes the Untermensch (sub-humans.)
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  174. Seriously. You have an Olympic Games segment that doesn't even mention that a country that has recently been found guilty of various serious offences by the ICJ, including illegal occupation and genocidal like behavior, is competing. This might conceivably be explained away If the modern Olympic Games still had any connection to its purported spirit when it was originally convened, on the basis of a form of diplomacy. However since Russia has been excluded, that holds no water. The Games are now a billion dollar Industry, no more, no less, and so it's no surprise how Right-Wing its politics is. And really, the vague sneering by Tommy about the French. So disappointingly insular.
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  175. 2:54 Tommy repeats Pentagon propaganda implying that the death toll might be several times less than the figures from the Gaza Health Authority. [Only he doesn’t use the word propaganda.] 3:10 Tommy repeats IDF propaganda that their bombs dropped on Gaza were intended to target military positions. [Only he doesn’t use the word propaganda. Bombing Gazan civilians while attempting to maximize Hamas military casualties is not the same thing as bombing Gazan military while attempting to minimise civilian casualties.] 16:39 10 minutes about Biden administration’s response. They are trying every day to manage this conflict. Their messaging has evolved. They’ve called for a pause to the holocaust. [Only they don’t use the word holocaust. Huh?!? A PAUSE? WTF.] The lack of other countries coming to the defence of the Gazans is praised as a win. Obama’s past rhetoric against some of the worst of Israel’s past excesses was ineffective but a Good Thing. [Bottom line - the US is saying next to nothing about protecting Gazans. And it continues to DO far, far less than nothing. As in it’s sending Israel even more billions of dollars than usual, providing intelligence to them, etc. etc] 43:30 The war on Ukraine. [Same old same old. The mere fact they call it the war on Ukraine rather than the war against Russia says it all. Russia’s choices were to invade Ukraine before a US controlled military base gets installed there or wait for it to happen. The US wants this war to last as long as possible in order to weaken Russia. ]
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  176. Zionism is a movement founded largely by secular Jews in middle and eastern Europe in the 19th century. Not a central tenet of Judaism.
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  177. Seeking to improve relations with a bully is typically the first approach in cases of domestic abuse between partners. Meanwhile the abused person's ability to get themselves out of the mess is being constantly eroded.
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  178. It's not too late for Biden to fall on his sword politically and lend his considerable domestic policy credibility to a Democrat presidential candidate who isn't tainted by Biden's vigorous personal support for foreign wars.
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  179. Instead of focusing on what to send to the Middle East ,,, aid, doctors, wharfs(?) ... focus on what NOT to send. It's not hard to figure out what that is but if it needs to be simplified, just send nothing. Once the missiles stop, other countries can send aid and doctors. Phew! No negotiations needed. The US government can get on with its job ... governing the US.
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  180. So Trump's saying out loud one of the threats I've always assumed the USA issues to countries that refuse to do its bidding - usually that bidding is cheap access to resources or allowing the US to build military bases on their territory or invading/blcokading whoever the US tells it to. On the one had actually saying it in public is kind of a breath of fresh air. OTOH it might push the rest of the world to develop a joint spine. Meanwhile Trump has actually said out loud that the war against Gaza was about ethnic cleansing. (OK, he said "cleaning", not "cleansing".) It was excruciating watching the Biden government pretend not to know.
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  181. This recycled sophistry is both cringe-worthy and peculiarly repulsive.
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  182. That is the man the Americans elected as their president. At his second time around, after they KNEW what they would be getting, he scored the second highest number of votes for President in their history. He is also the most likely Republican Party presidential candidate for 2024 and the pundits say he has a reasonable chance of winning. Trump is not an aberration. Australia really needs to seriously rethink it's foreign policy. At the least we should not attack any more countries just because the US tells us to, and at the very least we should just refuse to be one of the locations for their upcoming war against China.
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  183. 🤣😘❤🌄
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  184.  @vanessawhitneypro  For a start it would require good folks to outnumber the rest, which, if it were true, would never have allowed Netanyahu to be re-elected in the first place.
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  185.  @vanessawhitneypro  Did Netanyahu actually win? Yep. Absolutely. Multiple times. I'm sure you also think Biden didn't win, too. Yeesh.
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  186. I wouldn't describe enabling and colluding with genocide as "pathetic" ... more "horrific".
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  187. And now another assault on aid workers. Australian UNICEF aid worker Tess Ingram says her convoy was hit by bullets while delivering aid in Gaza. (Google it) The subsequent comments from the Isaeli government are same-old same-old. Both the US and Israel have identical tactics for dealing with public communications about Gaza. Coincidence?
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  188. All that Ukraine ever threatened was to host US government controlled (via NATO) military bases on strategic territory at Russia's backdoor.
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  189. There's no valid reason to think that Is**l is acting despite the US, rather than in collusion with it.
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  190. The US government will never lose interest in attacking Russia by proxy. The US people might though.
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  191. The timeline of this report is a bit odd. It starts at the morning of Oct 7. In the year before that, how many Palestinians were killed by Israelis? How many of them were children? How many Palestinian homes were burnt to the ground by Israeli terrorists backed by the government of Israel? What about in the decade before that? Comparison with 9/11 is absurd. Americans conflate their own ignorance with innocence; hence their confusion and surprise at retaliation.Compounded of course by the feeling of invulnerability on their own soil. Israelis are not ignorant of their own history so any surprise they feel is totally down to their sense of just how much they have the upper hand militarily. The world knows that the bulk of losses will be Palestinian. Just like Putin, the Israeli Right are ruthless, vicious killers. (Anyone remember Yitzhak Rabin?) Unlike Putin, Netanyahu is also a racist pig. They will inflict a holocaust on the Palestinians, fully supported by the USA.
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  192. More to the point, just stop sending Israel money and weapons and running political interference for them. Consider reinstating it when the Palestinian death toll has fallen to below the 10 year average.
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  193.  @jmhorange  I take your point. It's just hat ... I don't really think BB makes the US look weak to other countries. Because other countries know that the US stuff about cease-fires is rhetoric for home consumption and the US doesn't mean it anyway. Not seriously. Maybe they'd like a very-short-term cease-fire or two for home consumption reasons all things being equal, but that's about it.
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  194. A violent savage murderous psychopath who was elected after the assassination of the previous Prime Minister - a man for whose assassination Netanyahu had very vociferously and very publicly called because he supported a two-state solution. The Israelis knew who they were getting.
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  195. 59:30 European political blocks. The whole Left-Right thing seems to be above my ability to comprehend. How does protesting against centrism and austerity politics get the label "Far Left"? How is a socialist/democrat grouping that she identifies as "Left" equivalent to the Democratic Party in the United States, which has an extreme nationalist outlook that later she associates with the "Radical Right", and is arming and funding two major current conflicts while gearing up to attack China?
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  196. Yes, the spin. Sophistry really. And that smug arrogance that sets my teeth on edge.
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  197. What comes out of Biden's mouth are lies, not delusions. He's old, not senile.
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  198. Biden is old, not senile. Of course he knows Israel is a bad actor.
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  199. Of course he knows Israel is a bad actor. Biden is old, not senile.
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  200. Nah. Only Americans actually believe that Israel is acting contrary to US wishes.
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  201. Wow! I'll never forget the CNN reporting of one of the US bombardments of Iraq in the 1990s. It explained why bridges and other civilian infrastructure were legitimate targets and enthused about how accurate the US missiles were. This report of the Israeli attacks on Gaza is almost an "action replay". Curiously, I don't recall a single CNN broadcast enthusing over the accuracy of the 2001 attacks in New York.
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  202. Let's not pretend that the commission of these atrocities by the Israel government was ever in any doubt. The US knew what its money, intelligence, military, political, etc support would be used for. And let's not pretend that Zionist pressure by non-Israelis in the US is not a factor. How big a factor, who can say? However I think the bottom line as always in the Middle-East is oil. The US wants a military ally in place in the Middle-East at any cost except the deaths of too many Real People (being American citizens who were directed to go to the Middle-East by the American government). The rest is smoke-screen for the cess-pit that American power and wealth is built on.
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  203. The administration keeps funding, arming, and providing political and military cover for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the Israelis keep doing it. Even though the administration has started saying they don't want them to. How Frustrating! Here's an idea I've heard thrown around the place. It is foolish to keep doing the same thing and expect it to have a different result. Here's an idea I used to advantage in my parenting days. Make your words and actions match.
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  204. Of course if the words and actions were to match, it's the words that would change. I know it's ridiculous to let the hypocrisy bother me, but at the very least it should be called out for what it is. Obviously as far the level of offence is concerned, the hypocrisy is a drop in the ocean.
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  205. So basically the US government is worried that its citizens will get fed up with paying for its war against Russia, so they send people over to make propaganda videos about The Human Side of Fighting for Freedom Against The Evil Putin. Yawn. But if stuff like that didn;t work, people wouldn't do it. Maybe people SHOULD be fed up. When you talk about people being ignored by autocratic governments, what about the way the US government is ignoring its own citizens about this issue. Well not exactly ignoring, because they ARE going to the trouble of propagandizing them. And what about Ukraine? They were apparently told by the US and the EU that if they brought the EU and then NATO (equals American controlled military bases) to Russia's back door, the EU and the US would deal with the inevitable Russian military response. Zelensky and the US both (the EU doesn't really count except as a US proxy) KNEW there'd be war. Can't the US just let this war finish? It's absolutely terrible. At least the US got out of the way and let Vietnam heal, to the extent it was able, after having rained down hellfire and poison on it from the sky for years. The difference there is that People were getting killed - 35,00 of them. (The 4 million Vietnamese civilians were foreigners so didn't count). In Ukraine no People are dying, only a few hundred thousand foreigners. Zelensky should have known better. And puh-leeze. Spare me the Domino theory. I can't believe that old thing has been resurrected. Did China ever sweep thru Vietnam after it managed to kick out the US military and take over SE Asia country by country? Ukraine is at Russia's back door. That affects its possibilities. That's real-politik.
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  206. If you didn't know it's because you haven't been paying attention.
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  207. If you had honest laws about that Israel wouldn't have the weapons and money to commit the terrorist acts in the first place.
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  208. Just yesterday they murdered four aid workers, including one Australian, and their driver.
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  209. Venezuela's system of government is Their Own Business. Is there still anyone at all in the world who trusts the US for one second about any country where oil is involved? Get real.
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  210. I'm amazed that man doesn't sink into the ground in embarrassment when he's talking about America's noble Fight against Authoritarianism in Ukraine. America is funding, arming, and providing political and military cover for a fascist state that is in the process of ethnic cleansing of people living on land it wants. A state whose current leader came to power after the assassination of his rival; an assassination that he incited, even going as far as to stage his mock death and funeral while he was still alive. Before that the US invaded a small, weak country on the other side of the world, also in the Middle East (oil anybody) and cause horrific and widespread destruction there. Before that ...
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  211. To Virtual Signal or not to Virtue Signal ... that is the question. Here's a hint - the sword fight in Indiana Jones. And I have to say - Virtue Signalling is irritating enough. Listening to someone agonize over whether it's more important than being real about fascism is the living end.
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  212. I always thought the US did so well in the 1950s on the back of WWII. It only entered the war after Japan attacked it, and after Russia has defeated the Germans on the Eastern Front. And then there's what Zelensky recently called that "nice ocean". So the US finished the war hugely wealthy and powerful relative to Europe and was able to buy things up cheaply around the world, at the the same time as having a reasonably intact infrastructure for manufacturing things.
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  213. Why does the US attack anyone? To increase its own power and wealth. It's not exactly rocket science! (Except when it is ... Star Wars is high on the same agenda.)
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  214. I absolutely believe that the invasion of Taiwan by the US is inevitable. That's why it funded and pushed through in the United Nations the creation of this artificial "country" by the corrupt ousted ex-government of China - in order to control part of China. Now that China is threatening to out-Capitalist the US, the US won't hesitate to go to war to retain its global economic dominance (as it has done repeatedly all over the world) using its control of this part of China as an military asset in its war against China.
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  215. So opposition to genocide is now classed as "far left" in the US? I worry.
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  216. So opposition to genocide is now classed as "far left" in the US? I worry.
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  217. Why not just prevent the destruction in the first place? Because the USA told Britain not to. Duh.
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  218. There wasn't really any analysis as such. Just an assumption that the results were awful because at a cursory look the "losers" are on the same political team as the guys.
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  219. Those who talk about Left vs. Right are all on the SAME side; they just don't realize it. The suckers side. Except of course for the few who wield it as a tool for their personal profit.
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  220.  @jimgraham6722  Oh, nonsense. There hasn't been a single Australian prime minister of either party that hasn't invaded whoever the US told it to. Usually small countries on the other side of the world such as Vietnam or Iraq.
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  221. Did the US government attack Israel or take Israeli hostages? If not, that would kinda explain why there weren't mass protests in the US about either of these things.
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  222. This brings to mind the One Ring in Lord of the Rings .The Ring of Power that the Good could have used to save the entire world from being conquered by unspeakable evil. They were sorely tempted yet all the Wise and Good chose to its destruction instead, in the knowledge that using the ring would allow it to inevitably corrupt them into becoming as evil as what faced them. The founders of Israel should never have chosen to use terrorism against the Palestinians who were living on the land they wanted. The die was cast.
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  223. The choice really is simple. You're either building a non-partisan coalition of voters to save us from Donald Trump, or you're a shill for the Dems. If the former, then you must support convincing them to field a viable candidate, not someone visibly feeble both physically and mentally. Don't throw away everything you've built. You will be forgiven for not adjusting to the newly apparent reality immediately because it is so harsh, but that time is short. Choose now.
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  224. Oil IS their business. For many decades now the foundation of US wealth has been what they take from other countries - yes, they pay, but use their military and CIA to break other countries in order to manipulate the price. The video glossed over a few things. First of all, the government the US replaced with the Shah (King) was both secular and democratically elected. It was also backing Iranian women in their strides forward. The reason the US crushed this secular democracy was that it was nationalizing the oil companies which would have resulted in less favorable treatment and higher prices. Not because the government was unstable.
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  225. Back how far? What would be better within the US would be to go forward to implementing the principles of democracy to at least the same standard as most other Western countries. What would also be better would be to allow people in other countries to implement their own principles in their own way. Imposing your own principles on them by military or economic force can only ever have one result, which is their utter rejection.
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  226. Join the queue, Canada.
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  227.  @RexChaplin  No. Australia killed Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraquis, and Afghanis not because of a concept of loayalty, honor, or dignity but because it was told to by the USA. The USA is essentially running a worldwide protection racket, in both senses of the word "protection". Essentially, the USA promises to protect their vassal states from invasion provided the vassal states do what they're told. (Kinda dumb of the vassal states really, because the US isn't going to allow their territory to be taken over by a competing Empire anyway.) Also the USA wields the massive economic carrot and stick of its soft power behind the scenes.
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  228. I find the reaction to Trump talking about ethnic cleansing in Gaza quite bizarre. I mean, everyone already knew what was happening, didn't they? All Trump did was to name it. IMO that is the single and only positive thing about Trump, but it's a big thing - his propensity to say the quiet part out loud. As excruciating as it was watching him essentially negotiate for a share of the spoils on public television, it was far worse watching the Biden administration pretend it wasn't happening while enabling it.
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  229. Virtue has less than nothing to do with it. The Saudis have a LOT of money and a LOT of oil. Israel is another strongly US oriented country established with US economic, political, and weapons assistance also located in the biggest oil region in the world.
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  230.  @danimalplanet18  Precisely. The "human rights" thing is just a bit of propaganda that gets thrown in when the US wants to justify one of its invasions or proxy wars to the gullible.
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  231. Why? Trump's not giving Israel anything Biden didn't. The only difference is that Trump isn't pretending not to notice what Israel's been doing with it.
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  232. Correction. Hundreds of billions. And it's not insurance money. It's a protection racket. It's far more likely that the US will attack China than it is that China would attack Australia - unless of course Australia agrees to let itself be a venue for the US to launch attacks against China .... oh, hang on ... In the unlikely event that China ever would attack Australia unilaterally the US will defend against China or not according to how it perceives its interests at that time, regardless of whether we've paid their protection money or not. Currently they would defend - because Australia is a strategic location it wishes to keep out of the control of its competitors.
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  233. That girl is GOOD. It's almost a case of how the heck we could not have known. .Biden could so easily have given her opportunities to showcase her talent, instead he kept her in the background to eliminate her as his competition for nominee.
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  234. No-one could seriously want the remnant of Joe Biden to be their nominal President. There is no disgrace in retirement. Even Muhummea Ali retired. As for Biden taking the oxygen from the criticism of Donald Trump. Biden needs to get out of the way.
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  235.  @Bvi9169  I am probably being dense but I don't follow your meaning. In particular I don't understand what regime change in Iran has to do with Netanyahu, or by what mechanism you propose they should implement it. I think you might be suggesting that they have a quick civil war and install a regime that Netanyahu approves of? Or that the current regime resigns in favour of a group that Netanyahu approves? The chances of either of those things happening is infinitesimal. Or perhaps they install a US approved regime to prevent the US attacking them? That's a big ask - wouldn't a simpler way of preventing WW3 would be for the US to decide not to participate?
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  236.  @Bvi9169  Yes, I thought I must have missed your meaning. With respect I couldn't disagree more. Regardless of its shameful beginning and ongoing acts of terror, Israel is a sovereign country. Its government is its own business. All the world needs the US to do is to stop colluding with and enabling Israel's civilian massacres and land theft.
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  237. You've got it back-to-front. It's not what America has that the rest of the world needs. It what the rest of the world has that America wants. What America has is military might and money.
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  238. “Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”
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  239. Africa's not the only place the USA is threatening to help. It's also threatening to help Australia. By using Australia a base from which to attack China.
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  240. There was a fear that the 2 million hostages would be killed by widespread indiscriminate bombing. It isn't clear that being killed by hunger, thirst, or lack of medical support is better. And the the initial fear remains. That the US would support this militarily is appalling beyond belief. The simultaneous self-righteous profession of fear of a "humanitarian crisis" is more of the stunning hypocrisy that has accompanied its every foray into Middle East brutality since it crushed Iran's first democratic government back in the 1950s in return for cheaper oil.
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  241. No; Gaza is a nightmare because Americans protect the rogue state known as Israel.
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  242. IMO Left is now a subverted and confusing term. It used to mean "towards communism or socialism" now it (might?) mean "towards humanism". What does it say about the Right that it labels anything that puts human beings first as opposite to it? Nothing good IMO. It doesn't help that humanists label THEMSELVES as Left. The term Right used to mean "towards fascism." Now it seems to include "towards conservatism". What does it say about humanists that they labels traditional values as opposite? Apart from anything else I think it means they're stupid.
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  243. Oh dear. THAT didn't turn out well, did it? Lichtman is without doubt a very illustrious historian and therefore it is without doubt that he is right about Presidential debates having had little impact on election results historically. However to say that means debates are protected paces where a candidate can do anything, including showing pronounced physical and mental weakness, and it doesn't count, was always completely absurd.
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  244. You can just buy it. It's an indirect purchase however, and quite expensive ... you have to pay foreign student fees, turn up to class, and then work in Australia for a few years afterwards. Don't worry, if you pay foreign student fees it's virtually impossible to fail. If that sounds too messy its simpler, and probably cheaper, to buy it by financial investment in Australia, although that route to zitizenship does have minimum stay requirements also.
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  245. What exactly IS ultra left? The only example I've ever heard is opposing genocide in Gaza.
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  246. That's pretty much nonsense. Before the US crushed it and reinstalled a brutal dictator in its place, the government was secular and democratic. IRAN ideology is not opposed to US ideology.
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  247. Huh? China is your foe? Why? What have they done to the US? Other than doing capitalism better than the US does it.
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  248. Maybe Cory Booker is right and the most important thing to get the Dems into power is for the TweedleDems to be better at manipulating the American People than the TweedleTrumps. The only thing is - if that is the case, who really cares which Tweedle is in power? So tired of 95% of TweedleDem conversations being about "the message" and "communicating the message", always accompanied by at least one sentence about how correct they are. Here's some truths. The biggest contributor to worldwide inflation has been America's war against Russia and, to a lesser extent, its war against Muslims in the Middle East. The American Economy recovered from covid on the back of its public while its oligarchs soaked up money, and that was due to Democrat policies. Likewise it recovered from the GFC in 2008 on the back of its poorer public, again down to Democrats. The system needs to change and the TweedleDems have no interest in doing so. The American Health system for example, is not broken. It is functioning well. It's objective to to extract the maximum amount of money from the public for the large health insurance, pharmaceutical, and medical corporations and ultimately the oligarchs at their head. Fiddling on the margins with private health insurance was all Obama ever did. The Dems only ever talk about fiddling on the margins with the existing system. They even pretend like being an oligarchy is something new.
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  249. I'd like to hear something about the nearly 1 billion dollar nuclear submarine linked protection money payment Australia just made to the US. I cringe to think of how many hospital beds that could buy. Australia has agreed to pay this amount to the US annually well into the future. Apparently Trump says that because we've made this payment we're not currently on the list for a trade war. Protection money indeed. I always thought the US was running a protection racket on the world - Trump's just saying the quiet part out loud.
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  250. My bad. I didn't read the article about in properly. Trump never said he'd exempt Australia from the US trade wars. And he hasn't. Wow. We killed Vietnamese and Iraquis, and lost some of our own soldiers, and we're paying an outrageous amount of protection money - but the price of this protection racket has just been raised. The USA is insatiable. At least Trump puts his cards on the table and the world can see things for what they are. Up until now the USA has been picking off other countries in the world one-by-one while both sides spout "friendship" rhetoric. The USA could not win a trade war against the rest of the world simultaneously. Australia should band together with the rest of the world to stop this once and for all. Instead I expect our "leaders" will cave in and offer (in some form) higher payments than we were making before the tariff threat. And then do the same the next time, and the next time, and the next time ...
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  251. The Domino Theory rides again. When was that last popular? Oh yeah, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
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  252. The cost was terrible, but Vietnam not only managed to win their War of Independence from France against the Americans and the French, but also win the subsequent war against the collaborators with the USA, having first kicked out the USA. Which had rained hellfire and tetragenic poison on the country from above. Even today Vietnamese children are paying a medical price. At lease they united the country and could move forward. Korea, which never managed to kick out the Americans and unite, is today a total basket case and a chronic world flashpoint.
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  253. Without the arms and money from Biden, Netanyahu would be largely impotent.
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  254.  @sds5502  You mean if Mexico had cleared out Americans from part of Texas by burning down their homes, established a colony there, and sent the colony effectively unlimited weapons and money to continue the job? I think the US would fight back with everything they had.
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  255. 29:25 Tommy calls the US decision to use Ukraine to attack inside Russia with long-range missiles "Biden's decision". With all due respect to Biden, no-one believes he's making the decisions. Even when they trot him out at unavoidable public appearances his minders have him trained to mumble a few words and then walk away before his condition becomes so obvious that no-one can pretend any more.
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  256. On the contrary, I fully expect that when they bomb more of their 2 million hostages Israel will brag about it.
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  257. Yeah, Israel Is The Real Victim Here! Hamas is forcing them to massacre Palestinians.
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  258. Bernie Sanders "Netanyahu’s right wing government is blocking the borders and preventing the massive amount of aid that needs to get through from getting through and people are dying as a result. That is in violation of American law. We should stop funding Netanyahu’s war machine." That's as good as it gets in the US government. Words. And as far as ceasing to ARM the Israeli war machine there isn't even words. Furthermore Bernie Sanders in an interview on MSNBC says that Israel is breaking the law. But the law he goes on to reference is Section 201 of The Foreign Assistance Act, which "makes it clear that any country which interferes with the provision of US humanitarian aid will not get funding from the United States of America." In other words, it is an AMERICAN act which applies to the US government. It has no standing in Israel. It is the US government itself that is breaking its own law, not Israel.
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  259. Still waiting for Ezra Klein to interview a Palestinian connected to the suffering from the horrific Israeli massacres and from Israeli aggression since 1948.
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  260.  @brantleyerik  Yeah? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Biden claimed to be a stop-gap President before he was elected last time. Then he clung to power for all he was worth and refused to give Kamala a platform to showcase her talent.
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  261. Yeah? What's the EU doing to help with the American threats against Denmark? What did the EU do when America told European countries to join in the Iraq invasion? What did the EU do when America told it to advance eastwards to the Russian border? The EU is a collection of American vassal states.
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  262. So ... UNWRA perpetuates the conflict by keeping Palestinians alive long enough to breed. How dastardly.
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  263. Huh? What exactly do you think Zionism IS? It's a plan for Jewish control of Palestine; ethnic cleansing was always an inseparable part of that. What part of that is so hard to grasp? Roald Dahl, the children's author who was shot down over Palestine while flying for the RAF in WW2, ran into someone who was telling him about their plans to establish a Jewish colony there. Roald Dahl's only comment: It occurred to me that the problem with that was there were already other people living there. OK, Roald Dahl is a bright guy. But really, it's not rocket science. israel was established by ethnic cleansing in the 1950s and now it wants to expand its territory.
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  264. By establishing a base on Mars you increase chances of humanity being by nearly wiped out by a power mad despot by 10,000%.
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  265. Navalny was a Russian patriot. For his wife to site next to the wife of the American President at an official event would be a huge betrayal of him.
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  266. Obama. Isn't he the guy who let Wall S****t off scot-free from any financial or legal consequences of their GFC? I wonder how well that went down with those who lost everything or even with those who struggled and are still struggling with the financial insecurity they were left with? Kamala Harris has approval from one of the worst players for her economic plans. Tone-deaf?
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  267. America doesn't have allies. It has vassal states. The rest of the world has been bending over for decades. All that Trump's doing is removing the veneer. And Bill Kristol - I DON"T care about fighting China. Neither do I care FOR fighting China.
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  268. Yeah, Israel's the Real Victim Here ... 🤮
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  269. For some time I've been able to tell who the Israeli leaders are when they are being interviewed just by looking at them with the sound off. They have the most incredibly smug and disdainful facial expression. I nearly spilt my tea when watching a re-run of Foyle's War the other day - the N%z& sympathizer fomenting anti-Semite feeling in London had precisely the same expression. Of course, he was an actor in a TV series, so kudos to him for knowing what that a fascist looks like.
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  270. 10:00 Oh come on. There was a reason why we never saw Joe Biden. We found out that reason in the Biden-Trump debate last June. And it wasn't "poor messaging". For Democrats to pretend otherwise is insulting and, frankly, shows they Just Don't Get It.
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  271. Netanyahu called very strongly for his predecessor, Yitzak Rabin, to be assassinated because Rabin supported a two-state solution. Rabin had been one of the terrorists who originally established Israel, so was hardly a leftist softy. After he WAS assassinated the Israelis voted in Netanyahu. They knew exactly who and what they were getting.
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  272. Yes, I've always thought that Obama's foreign policy was corrupted by Biden. Far from being anti-war, Biden backed the invasion of Iraq. It seemed out of character for Obama to sanction murdering individual US opponents overseas with drones. It also seemed out of character to repeatedly brag about having killed Osama bin Laden. I'm prepared to believe it was a necessary killing, and had Obama just said that and stopped there I would have had no problem with it. Biden is a hard-core American Exceptionalist and as such a true danger to the world. His playing out of the wars of his youth 50 years later is tragic for the Ukrainians and the Palestinians and also perhaps for the Israelis whose lack of humanity is leading them further in a terrible direction.
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  273. However the current iteration of the war against Russia ends, Russia will be significantly weakened and the US will OWN Ukraine. Without a single life lost! Lives that matter that is. Mostly just Russians and Ukrainians. Zelensky is either a US dupe or a traitor.
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  274. I really like Tim Walz. But no, the rest of the world does not need the US. We do not want the One World Government the US has already partially achieved and is pursuing relentlessly in its continued and ongoing wars, whether proxy wars or not, throughout he world.
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  275. OTOH is is also rather funny in a very dark way watching Chris Murphy defend the USAID organization from Elon Musk. How DARE you accuse USAID of being a do-gooder organization? Here's a list of just some of the truly dreadful things we do. So there! Here I was thinking that assisting rebels in other countries overthrow their governments was the job of the CIA. LOL.
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  276. Just listening to a podcast by Jessica Denson. She's the former Trump campaigner who not only had her own illegal NDA from Trump quashed, freeing herself to reveal negative things about him, but just this year finally succeeded in getting ALL the 2016 Trump Campaign workers freed from his illegal NDAs. Anyway ... she says this "You think you're fighting people who are trying to set our country on fire ...but that's what justifies, that's what in my mind let me give a pass to these disgusting egregious things that I should've never given a pass to..." She's talking about when she was supporting Donald Trump. But people who still support Joe Biden after he essentially green-lighted Israeli state terrorism against the Palestinians need to do the hard thinking and make the hard decision and STOP excusing him.
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  277. Their plan is simple. A holocaust and extermination.
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  278. What goes around, comes around. How many countries has Canada invaded or imposed economic sanctions on because the US told it too? You thought you were buying Protection by taking the lives and livelihoods from people in other countries. Diddums.
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  279. It's quite scary how Ben Rhodes labels basic decency, or even common sense pragmatism without decency, as "progressive". As in Phil Gordon presenting the US history of forcing regime change in the Middle East as wrong (mistaken) rather than Wrong (in Right and Wrong). Since Ben doesn't give the impression of having an extreme personality I can only assume that this reflects the general American world view, and that is very scary.
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  280. I doubt that who the President is makes much difference in the grand scheme of things when it comes to American wars around the globe. The Military Industrial Complex wouldn't leave large decisions like that in the hands of a politician.
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  281. This is a hard one. It also feels like compounding the wrong to have militarily and financially supported American Zionist occupation of Palestine unconditionally, and then also support the exodus of Palestinians from Palestine to escape Zionist violence.
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  282. Basically The Pier makes no sense except as a propaganda exercise; even then the only Americans it will fool are those who want to be fooled. I suppose it might give the US a kind of veneer of respectability that US allies could pretend not to see through if it suits them.
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  283. You guys are genuine and smart. However you're working from a false premise so deeply ingrained that you're not even aware of it. Russia was never going to accept US controlled (NATO) bases in its backyard (Ukraine) without a fight any more than the US accepted Russian controlled bases in ITS backyard (CUBA). Putin is just the coldblooded killer who happened to be the leader of Russia when Zelensky decided to float the idea anyway. Hint: Russia does not buy the premise that US world domination is benevolent. To be honest, I personally don't buy the idea that ANY world domination is benevolent. The US scares the hell out of me. And come on. Kissinger? Kissinger didn't rain down fire and poison and death on Vietnam. Kissinger didn't gut Cambodia. The US did. Kissinger just didn't wrap it up in enough verbal pretense. I mourn Russia.
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  284. Of course Russia wants peace. This war is killing its young men and draining its resources. It doesn't want an Amercian-controlled country at its back doorstep. Ukraine has far, far, more in common culturally with Russia than with the West. Zelensky should never have brought this war to Ukraine. And the whole world is sick to death of funding US Supremacy gambits. Your wars push up prices all over the world.
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  285. How weird. Burlison characterized China as "an aggressor to the United States". Yet it's the US that's building up its military in the Pacific close to China. Not the other way around.
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  286. Nice try. But it's game over for Biden. Don't let it be game over for the Democrats as well. Who even cares if Biden has "good moments"? Let him retire with dignity and hand the baton over to someone who can beat Donald Trump. Who, frankly, is practically Anyone Else.
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  287. Why doesn't the US just butt out? Haven't they done enough harm in the Middle East already? Why the heck did it ever think it had the right to intervene in this over the decades? Or in anything else in the Middle East. Might is NOT right. Perhaps just try Minding Your Own Business. If the US really wants to help, stop partnering with the Middle East country that is spreading Salafism throughout the world. Hint: it isn't Iran. And stop your Military Industrial Complex spreading death and destruction throughout the world.
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  288. Same old same old. Power. Money.
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  289. The key word in "hman life" is "human". Their (usually) unstated but strongly implied belief is that Palestinians are untermensch.
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  290. McConnell wouldn't be the first dementia sufferer to forget their evil self. I think that his mind has returned to a time before he was utterly corrupted.
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  291. Of course they are. Why do you think the Democrats are doing everything they can to get those young voters onside again. They've said that killing tens of thousands of people was a bit much, they've talked about how frustrated they are - they've even deployed The Socialist. What more do you want them to do - stop arming and funding the massacres?
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  292. How exactly is Trump worse? The Biden administration backed ethnic cleansing all the way - the only difference is the rhetoric and arguably it's better out in the open.
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  293.  @Dave-om6nd  To clarify. I was referring to the savings identified by Jon Stewart. I had thought that went without saying. DOGE isn't making those massive and relatively easily identified savings. But the Dems didn't either.
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  294.  @TKUA11  That depends on whether the law is anithetical to free speech and on how it is being enforced.
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  295.  @Bertinator-nm9ld  Easy peasy. You do nothing. In particular, you don't send either side missiles and/or military intelligence.
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  296.  @Bertinator-nm9ld  IMHO it IS that simple. If you have to collude with genocide in order to project power, you are what you fear.
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  297. Who really cares what effect it might have? This is Real Life, not an academic thought experiment. Replace the current system with a real democracy that stops oligarchs controlling the government and prevents them from re-establishing control.
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  298. Trump's WORST blunder was to debate Joe Biden far enough ahead of the election that the Dems have time to find a viable nominee now that Biden's condition is apparent. Personally I find Trump repulsive on all levels and so do many others who would vote for practically anyone else the Dems nominated except someone who is both physically and mentally weak. It is deeply regrettable that meidastouch has taken the route of pretending that the Emperor is fully clothed. You have abdicated from a position of influence to become yet another echo chamber for people who cleave to a belief regardless.
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  299. The USA cannot endure a simultaneous trade war with everybody else. The time has come for the rest of the world to choose. Continue to capitulate to the US one by one? (Whether the face-saving way, under a pretense of vassal states being allies, or the up-front way, under a public "or else" threat. ) Or make a united stand for self-determination and sovereignty? Does the EU serve any real practical purpose or will it hang Denmark out to dry? And what about Canada, Panama, and, really, everyone else? Because whatever country you are ... chances are you're next. In fact you've probably already had a turn, or several turns.
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  300. You mean there's actually someone in the world who's falling for the nonsense about Netanyahu being to blame rather than Israel? Seriously?
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  301. I doubt the Dems really get it even now. It's not just Biden, it's everyone in his inner circle who perpetuated the outrageous lie about Biden's sharpness on the American people, not to mention Party donors, earlier this year. The Dems cannot effectively run on at a platform of, among other things, Trump and his supporters being outrageous liars, if their nominee is one of those people.
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  302. Bu then, Trump wasn't elected to navigate the System smoothly, was he? Or to make it work as it should. He was elected to burn it to the ground. So far, so good.
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  303. Doesn't EVERYBODY know this? After hard-boiling an egg, you give it a little bash to crack part of the shell. Then you can easily distinguish the hard boiled ones.
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  304. So is a large part of the rest of the world. Although our governments are of course still kow-towing to the US.
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  305. To be honest ... Kamala's little speech, effectively saying "Look, I'm in the Right and Trump is in the Wrong" ... for my money it made her look just as childish as Vance indisputably did. More importantly, it highlighted the extent to which American democracy is just window-dressing. Look to Brazil for a democracy that dealt with comparable situation effectively and in a measured way via the law. The moral high-ground is a pretty bleak (and weak) place when you've reached it with the aid of blinkers that made you lose sight of how the Bad guys were taking over everywhere else. Both Obama and Biden have a lot to answer for there. Biden wasn't helped by his mental deterioration - in. his speeches about Democracy he sounded like a caricature of himself, as he did in his speeches about how grateful Europe would be that the US was going to retake its rightful place at the head of the Western world. Ultimately the Democrats didn't even achieve the moral high-ground, just a small hillock. Sending weapons and military and political support to a fascist country for the purpose of ethnic cleansing is disqualifying.
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  306. Hello, American. Australia is that fairly large island in the southern hemisphere; the one with kangaroos and poison spiders. It is not a member of NATO.
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  307. Isn't he the guy who said that because historically Presidential debates haven't had much impact on election results, they're a kind of sacred space where a participant can do anything, including having an episode of senile dementia, and it won't matter? Not exactly a great logical thinker - now, at least. If he ever was, it's too bad he was unable to realize when he was past it.
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  308. The reason Biden not only does not support, but is trying to hurt, the ICC for going after Israelis for war crimes is that his behavior is consistent with his rhetoric around American military, financial, and political support for Israel's actions. The reason Biden supports the ICC for going after Russian war crimes is that it is consistent with his rhetoric around American military, financial, and political support for the war against Russia. There is no inconsistency here unless of course you are working with the premise that Biden's statements have anything to do with basic Justice or even basic Humanity.
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  309. Wow! That's pretty strong censorship for a comment pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of the US government rhetoric urging Israel to kill fewer Palestinian civilians while funding and arming that killing.
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  310.  @PFWoody488  By definition of the word "fact". A thing that is known or proved to be true.
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  311.  @PFWoody488  The only fact I claimed was that "The cannibals ate my uncle" is not a fact. As to what claims you made, I made no claim. Fact.
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  312. I can't agree. Admittedly I am extrapolating from a sample of one. 🙂 However I once worked with a guy from Iceland and his attitude to women was quite unusual - he behaved as if we were actual human beings.
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  313.  @Fanney47  All I'm saying is ... I've got no doubt that you are correct that things aren't as good as they could be. However I'm prepared to wager they are so much better than the rest of the world.
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  314. Can barely walk. Can't properly talk. Can't see the writing on the wall.
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  315. Gaza is one issue in which there is zero difference between the Biden and Trump administrations, except that Trump speaks the quiet part out loud. Biden himself may not have known that the Gaza massacres were about fast-tracking Israel's ethnic cleansing agenda, but I refuse to believe that whatever mentally competent person/group was actually running his administration was unaware for one second. On the average Americans are abysmally ignorant and heavily propagandized, but the American elite is are least as bright and knowledgeable as any elite on the planet.
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  316. His predecessor was gotten rid of another way. From Wikipedia (with references provided) "In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin". The chief of internal security, Carmi Gillon, then alerted Netanyahu of a plot on Rabin's life and asked him to moderate the protests' rhetoric, which Netanyahu declined to do." Rabin was assassinated a few months later. None of which seems to have particularly bothered the Israelis who proceeded to elect Netanyahu as their Prime Minister. Not as if they didn't know what they were getting.
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  317. As far as "heir apparent" to Trump goes I wouldn't write off Damien. Or whatever the kid's name is. I get him mixed up with that kid in The Omen who was brought up in a powerful family and became the (Evil) President of the USA
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  318.  @scarletsletter4466  Yeah, but really ... as if the US could care less about secular democracies! There was a secular democracy in the Middle-East in the 1950s and the US crushed it completely in order to re-install a king who gave them cheaper oil access. That country was Iran. It is only an Islamist country because the mullahs were the only group who could hold together enough people to mount an insurrection against the US installed king who wasn't JUST a king, he was a dictator whose actions were comparable to those of Sadam Hussein. Who, BTW, was backed by the US for quite some time. I have no doubt that there are extremists in the Middle east who wish harm to the West - because it has caused them extreme suffering on a massive scale. Mostly they just want the West to Get Out.
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  319.  @scarletsletter4466  And when the US has a cheaper or comparably priced alternative to Middle East oil it will create a new cess-pit in whatever country(s) the resources that requires abound. For example, many alternative energy sources require batteries for stability. Batteries require resources.
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  320. So the longer Israel remains the more things remain the same. That's how it was established - by Zionist terrorists telling Palestinians they were going to burn down their houses but they could go somewhere else first.
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  321. Answers in order: [Ukraine] Does it matter? They've served their purpose and no People will die. [Russia] Russia is certainly weakened, which is why the US is doing everything it can to prolong the war in Ukraine as long as possible. And no People are being killed. Just a few hundred thousand Russians and Ukrainians. [Israel] Israel of all countries is aware that a holocaust doesn't eliminate terrorist opposition. (Google Abba Kovner who planned to poison 6 million Germans after WWII) However they are not just committing this one in retaliation. They want to expand their territory. [American anti-zionism] Not really a thing. However acceptance of Zionism being reinforced by NO MATTER WHAT means may be waning. Last I heard there was little to no American objection to its continued enforcement by burning out Palestinian civilians to make room for more Jewish settlers.
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  322. What a disturbing broadcast. What dreadful people. What a dreadful country.
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  323. He's a puppet. He goes where the US tells him to when the US tells him to go there and says what the US tells him to say.
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  324. So the US government policy of destabilising Syria while Israel invades, has not changed.
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  325. I detest the overuse of the word Evil, but what other word is there for this? The US has inflicted so much serious damage and death and devastation on Middle Eastern countries. It is stomach turning.
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  326. ​ @mahoganyk  So Jews in Israel can enact a holocaust on Palestinians any time they feel like it and not have it called out for what it is. The reason being that at some time in the past their own ethnic group was persecuted in Russia. I Think Not!
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  327.  @mahoganyk  So Israeli Jews can commit a holocaust against Palestinians without being called on it because another groups of Jews were persecuted by Russia? That argument holds no water.
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  328. Good to know you suuport equality, Michael Cohen. I take it you're not down with Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza then?
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  329. Duh.
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  330. It's more a reminder that the US has yet to attain democracy.
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  331. How exciting! The US might consider withdrawing its support for war in some vague unspecified way unless Israel announces some some vague unspecified protection of some Gazan citizens! Personally I might have suggested that the way to protect Gazans is to stop killing them. But then that's me - simple minded. The exciting part is waiting to see what the Biden government does next in its quest to deflect electoral backlash from its arming and funding of civilian massacres. While nothing could be as obscene as ethnic cleansing, the cynical US political manoevres around it are an obscenity all of their own.
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  332. Ben - there IS no traditional left/right divide on foreign policy. No substantially. Mostly just on how it gets talked about. When push comes to shove the US always acts to boost its Military-Industrial complex. Frankly, that’s been the foundation of US wealth and power since at least WWII. Bernie’s question about whether the US really believes in democracy is absurd. Of course it doesn’t. Not only has it never hesitated to crush fledgling foreign democracies which don’t give the US enough financial benefits, it has fallen well behind the rest of the Western World in achieving a democratic system of government. Trump is only one of many elected officials who've progressed from adopting corrupt behavior once elected to seeking re-election purely for the purpose of "representing" the highest bidder instead of those who elected him. And it's legal.
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  333. 8:30 The "stupidity" of American Foreign Policy. As I gathered life experience I eventually stumbled on a truth about other peoples' gross stupidity. More often than not it's not stupidity at all; it's simply that their objectives and values aren't what you assumed. The same applies to organizations. If your thinking hasn't calcified it's a learning opportunity for you about the other party.
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  334. Yeah? Look what the United States did to the last states that seceded.
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  335. @ 1860 and 1861. The US devastated those states totally and forced them to become part of the US again.
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  336. What's King talking about at the end - younger voters who've made the Israel-Hamas conflict a cause? That wouldn't be enough people to get a baseball game together. The demographic that matters is the voters who've made the Israeli massacres of 40,000 Palestinians a cause.
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  337.  @user36112  Israel was cleared for settlement by burning Palestinians out of their houses. What kind of people (on the average obviously) would you EXPECT to settle there after that.
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  338. Israel wants more land. It's as simple as that.
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  339.  @user36112  Well it's immoral, blood-chilling and soul-destroying, but as for dumb - the US has done pretty well out of it so far. Still it's the soul-destroying part that might be starting to come home to roost.
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  340. @ It could be that all that's needed is for a few medium size countries to cave in to this more overt approach to World Domination and the rest will follow. It's not as if other countries weren't already paying tribute; it's just being raised, not newly imposed. Hitler was starting from scratch.
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  341. I think it would be more accurate to say that if the Palestinians continue to be killed by Israelis only in far greater numbers than before October 7 that the innocent civilians of Gaza will be paying the price for the actions of Israel.
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  342. Yes Anderson. You've finally figured it out. But you're a smart guy; you knew already, didn't you? Massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza was never about getting rid of Hamas, which of course is still there. It was, as Trump has said, about ethnic cleansing.
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  343.  @kevinw4267  Not necessarily. There's always a possibility Israel could decide to stop massacring Palestinians. But if not; YES. Collusion with fascism corrodes the soul.
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  344. 34:08 Talking about the Russians ... "The argument's gonna be that the US is a total hypocrite because we raise these concerns about war crimes in Ukraine but not in Gaza." Yep. Although doing everything it can to prolong the war in Ukraine other than risking American lives, while pretending to be concerned about Ukrainian lives, would rather tend to eclipse that.
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  345.  @allancarey2604  IMHO Australia forfeited its credibility when it attacked Iraq and is largely viewed on the world stage as a US lap dog.
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  346. Yes. The same double standards for Israel as for Trump. Both teflon.
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  347. At least Trump is going about expanding the American Empire openly and bringing its de-facto hegemony into the open. Meanwhile Biden, or whoever he's the front man for these days, is going out in Full Ethnic Cleansing mode while mumbling platitudes about how awful fascism is and what a Godd and Noble country the US is and how sacred its Democracy is. All things considered I prefer the Trump approach. I expect that all that will change with Trump is the rhetoric. He'll either keep the War against Russia going, but with different rhetoric around it, or he'll end it for a war that the oligarchs think will be more lucrative.
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  348. Biden's doing everything he can think of. To stop the electoral backlash I mean. Not to stop the G
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  349. 40:35 Talk about Biden getting to a ceasefire in Gaza and getting the (Israeli) hostages released. It was my understanding that Biden has a day job - President of the United States. A country that is within a hairsbreadth of RE-electing a Trump as its next President, which seems to indicate there is significant urgent and pressing work there. Should Biden know anyone with standing to negotiate the release of the hostages that would be a very great thing. Meanwhile, Biden should stop sending Israel weapons and intelligence and stick to his day job.
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  350. Er ... because the USA told them to? Thanks to extending this war as the long as it possibly can, the USA pretty much OWNS Ukraine now.
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  351. Ukraine will do whatever the US tells it to. By this stage of the war, the US effectively owns it.
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  352. Every week this war can be extended by Russia gets a bit weaker. What do you think the whole thing's been about? Because it sure as heck isn't about helping Ukraine.
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  353. The the US will find itself up against a country that can hit back for the first time in a very long time. When Zelensky said how the US is protected by a "nice ocean" he put his finger on one of the central pillars of the American Empire.
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  354.  @Marshall_Stacks  I couldn't agree more. I'm saying that blaming Kissinger doesn't exonerate the US government.
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  355. Not unless they're time travellers. The israelites were inhabitants of ancient Israel and Judah, which were destroyed around 600BC.
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  356. I think the term is ethnic cleansing. Israel wants the land the Palestinians are existing on, minus the Palestinians.
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  357. 49:30 Australia and NZ - Glib. Superficial. And really, if NZ wants a more conservative government that is for their own reasons. I don't know what they are. Neither do you.
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  358. Actually not a new perspective. However it appears to be some history that hasn't been included in US school lessons and somehow(!) gets overlooked by US politicians and newspapers.
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  359.  @KuriosDiogenesJar  Sounds like the whole of Europe for thousands of years.
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  360. It was clear from Day 1 of the response that Biden was not only willing but eager to support Israeli atrocities by all means possible. Financial support, armaments, American military intelligence and up to and including direct American military involvement to shield Israel from any country trying to prevent its attacks. At that point IMO the Pod needed to change horses in the Presidential race. That was the point that separates those who still care from those whose vision stops at the Republican/Democrat divide.
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  361. Actually you should be considering the wishes of the Palestinians who I dare say have a teensy bit more of an idea what they're talking about when it comes to their own welfare.
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  362. There were a couple of days after Biden renounced his candidacy and endorsed Kamala where her sex and ethnicity barely got a mention. Now they are the first and second things the press trots out. As a woman, I miss those first two days. Please. Just. Get. Over It. Move along and do your job reporting on what she says and does. We can figure out her sex for ourselves.
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  363. Yes, guys, the negotiations need to be between Russia and the USA. Because that's who the war is between. Ukraine is just the venue, the Ukrainian government the puppet, and the Ukrainian people the cannon fodder. The thing about Trump is, he says the quiet part out loud. Whereas the Biden government pretended that the war was between Russia and Ukraine and the US was just helping its ally.
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  364. I couldn't stop listening in horrified fascination to how these two Jews talk to one other about the ongoing massacre being perpetuated by Israel in Gaza, because I strongly suspect they aren't the only one. It's OK because a) there were Jews living in Palestine before the colony of Israel was established b) the Palestinians are describing the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians by Israeli military incorrectly c) the US would do the same to Mexicans if a group of Mexicans committed atrocities in the US d) US Muslims are too stupid to understand it's better for them if Trump doesn't get elected otherwise they'd elect the man who's arming and funding the killing Ugh. Now I know just how ugly fascism sounds in the mouths of the general population.
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  365. The real question isn't about demanding a ceasefire. So half-assed when you're supplying the missiles being fired. Not to mention military intelligence and backup. No need to for US to solve the problem - it just needs to stop causing it.
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  366. Let's be real here. Canada killed foreigners overseas, and imposed economic hardship on foreign countries, because it thought it was buying itself Protection. Protection from the US at least as much as protection by the US. Oh dear.
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  367.  @johnpatterson4770  How disgraceful. What had the Vietnamese ever done to Canada? Your politicians though they were buying Protection by killing people in other countries at the say-so of the USA. Now you're finding out they were mistaken.
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  368. "I'm beginning to think that the US just need constant enemies". Yes. George Orwell wrote a book about it once upon a time. How much difference is there in practice between a system where the government runs Big Business, and a system where Big Business runs the government? Capitalism and Communism might be at different ends of a piece of string, but that piece of string is shaped in a circle and the extremes of both systems blend into each other.
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  369. Ya think?! Biden is a hard-core American Exceptionalist. World beware.
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  370.  @kinngrimm  Vietnam.
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  371. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are the flip sides of the same coin.
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  372. 0:30 What an indictment on the US Media! Not only hadn't Jake Tapper bothered to pay attention to the facts (he is wrong about the prosecution not having previously brought this fact about the theft out), he didn't even bother checking before he commented. Neither did the lady in purple (sorry, I don't normally watch CNN) who repeated the same error. Nor did the man in the black suit with the striped tie. Basically, Cohen thought Trump had stolen from him so he he'd steal it back. Frankly, that's pretty common in NORMAL workplaces, let alone the world of Trump. In the world of Trump you are not going to get a non-criminal senior insider to turn State's evidence. Most, if not all, the senior insiders in Trump's world are/were convicted criminals. If past criminal behavior necessarily made a witness unusable then not many gangsters could ever be convicted, because the only people with the inside info are gang members.
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  373. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It's so sad when you find out your Country has feet of clay. So instead you don't find out. Sorry Kyle; the Democrats and the Republicans are both on the SAME side; that side is the American Empire and its oligarchs. A coup in Venezuela, crippling Cuba, and horrifically damaging Middle-Eastern countries that don't fall into line - that's just what the USA does. Why? Power and Money. Why the Middle-East? Oil. Why Venezuela? Oil. Why Cuba? Simply because of its geographic location. Kinda like Ukraine. Just as Russia was never going to stand back and watch a soft US-takeover (via money) of Ukraine or US controlled (via NATO) military bases being built there, the US will never allow Cuba to prosper except under a government that bows down to the US. That's the reality here. Democrats vs Republicans is just a smokescreen. Giving the general public a bigger share of the spoils is the Democrat's schtick. But they are a status-quo party and the status-quo is oligarchy.
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  374. Boo hoo hoo. And after we fell into line with the American proxy-war against Russia in Ukraine, too. It's all so unfair! When we boycotted cheap Russian energy, causing a world-wide shortage and consequent inflation, we thought we were buying Protection! Now we find out America wants to raise the price. Who ever could have seen that coming? We thought that Protection sellers were honorable.
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  375. What makes you think that Israel and the US aren't simply colluding? It makes far mor sense than the hypothesis that Israel is telling the US what to do.
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  376. Because Israel is American colony founded by Zionists with American military, political, and financial support.
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  377. 28:30 "The notion of an American oligarch trying to select the leadership of various democracies ..." Notable how you explicitly limit your concern to democracies. It implies that you have no problem with trying to select the leadership of non-democracies. Why not? Also notable that you limit your concern to direct interference by oligarchs. Because US oligarchs have been hand-in-glove with US governments for many decades. Over that time they have routinely interfered in the leadership of foreign governments, some democracies, some not, the only difference being that the oligarchs have been one-step-removed from the interference. However they have profited from it immensely. Mostly Trump is just removing the veneer or making it more transparent. It's almost as if you've been brainwashed not to think about what lies beneath the veneer - every time you get too close you kind of glide off it.
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  378.  @m.a.b.4104  OK I've never fully understood the left-right thing. So I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I were wrong. But surely, joining a post-WW2 overwhelmingly Euro-American colonization of land that was cleared for settlement by burning Palestinians out of their houses isn't "strong left leaning".
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  379. Immigration will either be controlled by reasonable people, or it will be controlled by unreasonable people. The majority of the population of any country will not stand for its society being swamped by residents from other countries and clashing cultures. Why hand the unreasonable people a surefire recruiting tool? Why push that majority only pushes them into the arms of people they'd never normally vote for? Instead of allocating negative labels to that majority and associating uncontrolled immigration with virtue, what should really be done is to address the root causes of mass emigration from other countries into the West. Many of those people are fleeing violence and chaos either caused by or egregiously exacerbated by the West pouring weapons into conflict zones and backing coups. Stop doing that. Stop pouring weapons into Israel. Stop pouring weapons into Ukraine. Stop invading and destabilizing other countries.
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  380. A US State Dept report says that Is* may (may!) have broken international law in Gaza. No kid. Of course, the State Dept can't really be sure ... By the time they decide to publicly report being pretty sure really all things considered ... presumably the recently paused (not, as some have reported, halted) shipment of 3,500 munitions to Is* will have been made. Although it makes little difference really since that is around 1 per cent of the munitions that Is* has already dropped on Gaza. Presumably I* also has large numbers of munitions stockpiled for further attacks, and still more for use in self defense. Although the pause will make no difference to the killing presumably Biden hopes it will make a very significant difference to voting in the upcoming Presidential election. Shame, USA, Shame.
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  381. I don't necessarily recommend viewing this, but if you want to know 1% of what it's like living in a fascist country, Al Jazeera is currently showing footage of an eight-year old boy being shot in the back and killed by Israeli troops. It also shows what the streets are like, and details how the fascists are sending drones into holes in the walls of Palestinian houses. It is absolutely horrific.
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  382. Oh come on. Saudi Arabia has behaved terribly for decades and the US has stuck with it. Because oil. Because money. Now the Saudis are using their money to buy influence around the world and THAT's the problem? It's not as if a country not all that far from the feet of the Pod crew would ever do that!
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  383. Just the data, please. I haven't seen a single attack on President Biden from other Democrats; at least not over this. Democrats haven't turned on Biden. On the contrary, they are complimentary of and grateful for his service. His past accomplishments are indeed worthy. However he no longer has anything close to the capability that he had when he made them. That became apparent when he tottered onto a platform and appeared mentally impaired for a full 90 minutes while being filmed during a widely broadcast event. Out of respect and maybe even love for Biden, many Dems chose to express their concerns privately within the Party, but Biden is just not aware that he has a problem. meidastouch seems to me to be backing itself into a corner over this. And again, just the data, please. We did see what we saw. We did hear what we heard.
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  384. At this point you really have to question Joe Biden's Muslim thing. Does he seriously intend to use the death of 3 American soldiers as an excuse to attack another country? Biden was in favour of the second American invasion of Iraq (by George Bush II, the first was by George Bush I). He continues to finance, arm, and provide political and military support for the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians. I've read that Biden believes the death of his son Beau might be attributable to toxic burn pits in Iraq. Could he blame Muslims for that? I mean, the burn pits were created by the US and presumably have killed far more Iraqis than US military. And the US invasions cause horrific damage in Iraq itself and the Middle East in general. However I doubt either of these things factor into Biden's world view.
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  385. Yes they came through the persecution on the moral high-ground but ceded it almost immediately by using using terrorist tactics to clear the land they wanted for their own of Palestinians.
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  386.  @alectictac  Oh. Well that's alright then. Collude away.
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  387.  @mkhedart0mt0avari  But most countries could care less about what or how much the US does to secure a ceasefire or prevent a wider conflict. All we want is for the US to stop enabling the wars and massacres.
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  388.  @Bvi9169  Maybe. I dunno. It depends how far back you go I suppose. The predominant theory is that humans as a species originated in Africa, so you could say we are all native to Africa, despite being prone to melanoma. However genetics wasn't really what I personally was referring to in this particular instance.
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  389.  @Bvi9169  You've completely lost me. I thought you were talking about genetics. And as I'm sure you are aware, Africa isn't a nation. You never even mentioned time period, and now you say that's your topic. What is it that you're getting at?
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  390.  @lupen_rein  Are they? I'd be surprised, because when the Zionists moved to Israel they used terrorist tactics to ethnically cleanse the area; I doubt the remainder would be that high a percentage of the population. Frankly, Israel's "democracy" is kinda dependent on ensuring that the colonists and their descendants are and remain the majority of the voting population.
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  391. Ultimately Obama was a weak President. He promised Hope and Change but then listened to people like Jason Furman when they told him he couldn't/shouldn't introduce changes such as squashing price gouging. The ultimate travesty being that those on Wall Street who caused the Global Financial Crisis by their insatiably greedy and completely illegal activity went scot-free while the brunt was borne by the have-nots. There went Change, and there for many went Hope.
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  392. How many American military bases are there in Canada? Why? because the countries are such great allies? Now ask yourself how many Canadian military bases there are the USA.
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  393. Yes, Hamas will not believe a cease fire would be anything other than temporary. They are crazy, not stupid. No, that's not due to faith in the integrity of the I*i justice system!
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  394. Hamas is crazy, not stupid. Of course they wouldn't believe this cease fire would be anything other than temporary. However there's zero reason to think that is because they have faith in Israel's justice system.
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  395.  @seanpatrick1243  Being the system that would put Netanyahu in jail - except I doubt it will and I doubt that Hamas would expect it to.
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  396. I think it more means that the US media has succeeded to convince everyone that the Democrats are Left.
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  397. Wow. Police state or what? The senator just had to point at the guy yelling criticism and police officers moved on him.
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  398. 16:10 J.D. Vance on Ukraine. Making absolute sense about ending the war in Ukraine because it's killing them and destroying their country. Well, as close as his offensively sick American-centred world view can ever GET to sense. His argument isn't that Ukrainian death and destruction is a bad thing in and of itself, but that it will eventually cost the US even MORE money in addition to that already poured into weapons for the war. And of course, just as in Gaza, it is NOT the responsibility of the US to end the death and destruction. Merely to stop facilitating and prolonging it. Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor have both been pushing this war as hard as they can since its commencement. Their response to Vance is a weird mixture of personal criticism sprinkled with admissions that his argument makes sense. I strongly object to ceasing to prolong the war indefinitely being characterized by Ben Rhodes as "cutting off Ukraine". I also object to his idea that the US should be deciding the terms on which Ukraine gets to end the war.
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  399. So it's essentially a $200 billion dollar donation to the real rulers of the US - its Military Industrial Complex? That would be unsurprising. Talk about privatizing the profits and socializing the costs!
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  400. Unfortunately I think you might be talking about last year wrt sending Musk broke. THIS year Musk is directly attached to the mother lode - US government money. But hey ... if you don't try, failure is guaranteed. So go for it.
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  401. ... another deal ...
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  402. A lot of people are beginning to think. Trump may be doing the world a huge favour there, opening a window on the workings of the American Empire.
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  403. One area or another of Europe has also been in conflict for centuries. Millenia even. However most people wouldn't condone ethnic cleansing there. I dare say, no decent people at all.
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  404.  @miltonthegreat6520  Hi. I appreciate your post even though I don't understand it. As I see it, the US uses three basic methods of intervening in other countries. One is military, including direct force, training, intelligence, weapons supply, etc. Another is financial, including embargos or the threat thereof, boycotts, buying its leaders either with personal bribes or by flooding the country with money, etc. Another is by disseminating propganda. The objective is always to increase American power and/or wealth.
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  405. Perhaps a more important question is when does the US government admit that BB is a terrorist.
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  406. You've got to be kidding. When have you known the Americans (and Europeans for that matter) to pass up an opportunity created by the overthrow of one government to get a puppet regime to replace it?
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  407. Oh look! Over there! Iran. Meanwhile, back in Gaza ...
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  408. Well that depends on your definition of anti-Semitic. It used to mean anti-Jewish. (Although I never understood that, since many Semitic people are neither Jewish by religion nor by cultural background.) Then its meaning got extended to include anyone who was anti-Zionist. Now it includes anyone who strongly criticizes any Israeli action. The weird thing is that while being anti-Jewish is reprehensible, I would argue that NOT vehemently criticizing Israel's actions in Gaza is reprehensible. Yet the word anti-Semitic, even with its latest definition, is still used pejoratively. Let's just use anti_Jewish to mean anti-Jewish, and stop using the elastically defined word anti-Semitic altogether. It tends to muddy the waters.
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  409. CNN also forgot to add that the democratically elected secular government the US overthrew to reinstall the dictator did far more to advance women. For example they made veils optional in university. The dictator made them illegal. Result: Far more women attended university before the dictator was reinstalled. Bottom line: You really shouldn't cling to the disinformation you grew up with. You've been conned.
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  410. Ware paying too much attention to the sycophants. Mr Cohen.
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  411. Don't forget Bush and Biden.
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  412. Amazing the number of people who assume that Israel's attacks have been made despite the US, rather than in collusion with it. There's absolutely no reason to believe this, other than wishful thinking or "let's pretend"ism, and several reasons to disbelieve it, the most obvious being the continued flow of weapons and money from the US pouring towards Israel.
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  413. No, Canada wouldn't be 10 states. Because it wouldn't be conquered by the US.
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  414. Yep. That's what the American Empire has been moving towards ever since WW2. Of course, they leave local governments in place or replace them with a more pliant local government, because that is needed for practical reasons. However the US tells them what to do.
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  415. "Age" is just shorthand for insufficient physical stamina, inability to project strength, and doubtful cognitive outlook in the next five years. It in no way implies disrespect; it's a case of "horses for courses."
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  416. You're kidding aren't you? Europe has its own military-industrial complex that wants it own share of the loot. And in any case it currently has no particular need for weapons.
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  417. Big tip: I wouldn't be hosting US bases on my land if I were Canada.
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  418.  @danmarshall5895  Nothing at all. In particular, not providing Israel with money and weapons.
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  419.  @icaroicaro5711  Nope. Not Biden's job. His job is to manage the USA, not Netanyahu. In particular in this case, to ensure that countries engaged in civilian massacres do not receive arms shipments and financial aid from the USA.
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  420. I just heard an American politician on the radio saying they can't support an offensive in Rafah unless there are credible plans to protect civilians in Rafah. However he is out and out lying. Because they are continuing to supply arms and money for the offensive.
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  421. Why? The war against Vietnam by the US was as shameful as its collaboration in the current ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It was originally a war of independence from the French - pretty much par for the course all over the world for countries freeing themselves from European rule post-WWII. Only the US decided it was in their interest for the French to remain in control. So they threw their weight into the conflict in the form of weapons, finances, political subversion etc. Then when the Vietnamese finally kicked the French out regardless, but several horrific years of war longer than it would have taken without US involvement, the US then intervened in the subsequent civil war to unite the country under a single government. 4 MILLION Vietnamese civilians were killed. Even today there are people dying there or maimed for life as a result of the tetragenic poison the Americans rained down on them from the sky. How could anyone have a hard time with protesting THAT.
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  422. Frankly, talk about America "bringing world peace" is, well, ... asinine. And sickening. And yes, Orwellian.
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  423. Dan Schufetan is a racist bigot of the worst kind.
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  424.  @magicthegatheringlover4277  Ethnic cleansing, genocide ... it's much of a muchness. Those committing either have been known to waver between the two. And it's crystal clear that the Israeli behaviour in Gaza meets the definition of both.
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  425. IMHO someone who can't tell the difference between a person positioning themself in the middle ground and a person taking a reasoned position shouldn't be commenting in the first place. Hint: Jon Stewart takes a reasoned position. Furthermore, IMHO, taking a reasoned position will never and can never go out of date. That, BTW, was the main point of Stewart's criticism of the old TV program Crossfire. It wasn't that Tucker Carlson is disgusting (That was a secondary point).
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  426. Better for Ezra Klein to drop the buzzwords and buzz-phrases ; they just say "I'm pretentious" and he doesn't really need to be.
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  427. I disagree. I think you lost your democracy to some very smart people. For democracy to function in practice require the public to be informed, and the smart people figured out how to stop that. Instead of censoring information as they do in Russia and China, but which is illegal in the USA, they flooded the country with disinformation. Information remains available but widely un-accessed. The beauty of it is that this de facto censorship is actually protected by anti-censorship laws. It was simply a matter of packaging the disinformation in a way that made it attractive, then gradually introducing the idea of avoiding information.
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  428. 0:55 Schiff expresses faux shock and outrage about Trump supporting a country that invaded its neighbour, massacred tens of thousands of people, kidnapped children and tortured POWs. But it's only three weeks since Trump did the same thing in the same place with the leader of another foreign country - Israel.
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  429. Look. The whole idea of framing the war in Ukraine as "support for Ukraine" is absurd. It is first and foremost a Pentagon proxy war fighter's wet dream. Russia gets weaker every day the war can be extended for and not a single life is being lost. No lives that matter in domestic American politics, that is to say. Meanwhile Ukraine, the venue for this current iteration of Russia-America conflict, is getting pummeled and its people are getting killed.
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  430. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvu_5Ajho2A 6:15 The US government will consider whether or not it serves US government interests to continue to arm and fund Israeli attacks on Gazans. If they decide it doesn't there's some possibility it will stop doing so. The logical corollary being that the US government is enabling the attacks because it puts its interests well above considerations of obscene human suffering on a large scale.
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  431.  @jackied962  I rather think that will be the USA, via its proxy Israel.
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  432. Oh come on. He came to power on the back of the assassination of a man whose death he had overtly and explicitly incited. Expanding the borders of Israel was his reason for having called for Rabin's death. The Israelis who knew they were getting when they voted for him. And other Israeli leaders are appearing in interviews talking about how superior Israelis are to Arabs, and why it's OK to massacre Gazans. "Bibi" is not the base problem with Israel, any more than Trump is the base problem with the US.
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  433. Who knows why the US is colluding with genocide? It could be guilt. Personally I believe that Israel is a foundation block in its strategy to control Middle-Eastern oil. So far the death toll has been infinitesimal. Unless you count people who are not US citizens. Which the US never has and never will.
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  434. Don't tell me Trump's helping ANOTHER war criminal. And Biden also helped a war criminal. It seems to be what the US does these days.
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  435. Wikileaks was a great idea; a platform for whistle-blowers. Instead it became a platform for airing stolen information. Not at all the same thing. Julian Assange himself is a self-obsessed weirdo who used his powerful connections to avoid trial for rape. That the US Administration had to confer credibility on his despicable obfuscations by charging him with espionage is highly regrettable.
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  436. On the contrary, the whole world is desperately waiting for the US to START doing nothing. Specifically when it comes to sending arms, providing military intelligence, and providing protection from international political consequences
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  437. Huh? Of course immigration is causing the housing problem. Because the root cause is population growth, and the root cause of that is immigration. Sure, you could increase the housing supply. But there is a shortage of land where people want to live. Sure, you could replace houses with apartments. But Tim Walx just said that SF is the most beautiful city he's ever seen. That will no longer be the case when the houses are replace by apartments. Tim Walz just said he comes home and gives his "good old boy" a pat but people living in high-rise don't have a dog, or if they do its a regulated size and doesn't have a backyard. Of course, that's different from blaming the immigrants. I blame the people who run the country..
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  438. Well ... enabling ethnic cleansing isn't problematic for him so I'd say his morals count for little
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  439. No, you don't stand with Canada and Denmark. The UK is a vassal state of America that does whatever America tells it to.
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  440. Either free or effectively a vassal state of the West.
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  441. I believe he got right royally done over by Meghan, and betrayed his own family, so have little sympathy for him. However now he's the target of an ongoing negative campaign by The Sun I might just revisit that.
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  442. You're effing kidding me! Australia's resources are already subject to claims by China and by the US; in fact many of them have already been claimed. American oil companies control huge amounts of Australian oil.
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  443. It's complete and utter nonsense to say that Israel is ignoring what the US says. The US is pouring weapons into Israel so presumably what the US is telling them is how to use them. What IS true is that Israel's actions are inconsistent with what the US government is saying publicly. But that's of zero interest except to someone desperate to lend credence to the American government. Even then, that would only be someone who thinks it's better to be known as stupid than as evil. It's also utter nonsense to say that Israel disregards the damage to the civilian population. Damage to the civilian population is the short-term objective, not the accidental by-product. The longer term objective is to take the land that those civilians are living on. Duh.
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  444. Devastating, predictable, and a steady continuation of the policies of the Biden government.
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  445. Possibly because the previous Holocaust happened during WW2. And because the People who suffered it are committing the current one.
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  446. Ignored by who? Not the part of the mainstream media that I follow. As for the perp - the media is taking the line that they want to stop people blaming his parents ... after first having cornered and obtained statements from these people who I very much doubt have any experience in dealing with the media who will turn on them at the drop of a hat.
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  447. At least they aren't air dropping napalm. That's about all you can say in its favor - it's just a propaganda exercise.
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  448.  @OneTheBlue  Oh you poor dear. Yes, I suppose we could put Democracy on a sliding scale and the US system would technically fall somewhere on it. But not close to modern western democracies. The US needs to democratise. What's the deal with voting on a weekday? (I don't mean why was it started. I mean it hasn't been fixed to meet current needs.) What's the deal with long, long, voting queues that many people have to travel a significant distance to get to? It is against the law to eat in some of those queues! Vigilantes hovering about voting areas? Rampant gerrymandering. But above all, a system where the President is above the law.
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  449. I don't think they're ceding the election. They're doing everything they can about Gaza. Everything they can to reduce its electoral impact that is. Zilch to stop the killing, which in fact they have enabled.
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  450. Why on earth would Palestinians be more angry about a propaganda exercise than they are about the US arming, financing, and providing political and military cover for the country that's massacring them?
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  451. Israel itself is a Euro-American colony; I'm pretty sure the only European colony established after WWII - at least the trend since WWII was very much in the opposite direction. Also hard to see why the US would be more hated for a propaganda exercise than for arming and funding the actual massacres that continue to increase the desperately urgent need for aid.
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  452. So I have absolutely no idea why Kamala isn't fronting the public but here are a few thoughts. After living and breathing the campaign for 3 solid months, terminated by a severe shock, anyone would need to take time to recharge. If she's doing that, good on her for being sensible and protecting her future effectiveness. The current President is infirm and she's the Vice-President. She's been mostly out of the loop for 3 months and has a sworn duty to come up to speed asap in order to be able to handle whatever might arise in the next two months. Finally - she can exercise a lot of power now in terms of gathering information that she won't be able to access in two months time. Those who believe this is a crisis should want her to be planning and preparing while she can in this crucial period, not squandering it on providing them emotional support.
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  453. 13:20 The guest says that Russia and China are now inextricably linked together. She may well be right. Those countries are not natural allies and they weren't linked like that 3 years ago. However when Europe decided to try and crush Russia by not importing its gas, Russia turned to China to buy it. There's now been a huge infrastructure investment to deliver to China. It was obvious right at the start that one of results of this iteration America's war against Russia would be to throw Russia and China together.
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  454. Huh? Bibi is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is the people of Israel, who elected him multiple times.
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  455. ... a dictator that wants to dominate huge parts of the world by force, espionage, by corrupting public officials . Substitute the word "country" for "dictator" and you've just described the USA. How does Russia being EVEN LESS of a democracy than the USA make it OK for the USA to use Ukraine as a venue for a long, drawn-out proxy war against Russia? Zelensky knew that Russia COULD not and WOULD not stand by when he talked about having American controlled military bases in Ukraine. He knew it meant war. He knew Putin is a ruthless, cold-blooded, killer. If he HAD to have a war with Russia, he could at least have waited until Putin was no longer the Russian leader.
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  456. Anderson Cooper's observations of Hamas brutality towards other Palestinians when he was reporting from Gaza was an eye-opener. However I seriously doubt he observed anything the Israeli government wasn't already aware of. Which is yet another reason to question the Israeli government's close cooperation with, including funding of, Hamas. The TImes of Israel says Netanyahu propped up Hamas for years. Hareetz characterizes his relationship with Hamas as an alliance. It seems that some of the darkest happenings in Palestine can not just be seen on the streets.
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  457. A question that's never been asked on the Pod. Why the massacre in Gaza? Particularly strange when it has been noted on the Pod that no sane person believes that massacring a civilian population is going to reduce the numbers of that population who commit atrocities against your own population. So why IS Israel massacring those people? Answer: Land. Israel wants more Land. Specifically, Gaza and the West Bank. Without a bunch of pesky people on it who don't want the same things Israel does.
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  458. Does Anderson Cooper know any parents of massacred Palestinians? If not, why not? There are 40,000 dead, and presumably hundreders of thousand have been injured, many of whom are children who will be maimed for life. Anderson is supposed to be a reporter. Hasn't he been involved in that story? And for decades before that, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank every year, some by Israeli soldiers, more by Jewish settlers with soldiers turning a blind eye. Did he cover that story at any time?
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  459. Duh.
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  460. You've got it back to front. Americans are paying huge money for recreational and destructive drugs and that is funding absolute misery in the countries whose drug lords only exist because of that money.
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  461. @ What difference does it make? Provided absolutely enormous amounts of money are available to buy recreational drugs, they will be provided from somewhere. It might be possible to change the type of drug and where it's manufactured, but so what? The only real solution is to stop buying those drugs. The supply will dry up overnight. It's not rocket science.
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  462. 2:10 Wow! Bill Maher believes the Democratic Party should have instructed the US Department of Justice to expedite Trump's indictment. I mean, yeah, Merick Garland, who is a Democrat and a Democrat appointee, was woeful, but that's different from saying that the Democrats blew it as they always do. Doesn't really have a great grasp of the concept of separation of powers, the old Bill.
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  463. Not to mention that when Bolsinaro, the ex-President of Brazil who led a Trumpian insurrection there, has been banned from office until 2030. that's without a civil war constitution clause. Furthermore, Brzil has tightened up its gun control laws. Yes ... Brazil. Perhaps some of these legal and history experts might tootle on down there to see how it's done.
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  464. So what have the Americans got for their money in Ukraine? Quite a lot, really. First and foremost it has bought them not only a distant venue for a military phase of their ongoing war against Russia, but also canon fodder. It's the ultimate proxy warrior's dream. Not a single life is being lost - that matters domestically within the US anyway. The war is weakening Russia every day the Americans can keep it going. And seriously, who believes that access to high value Ukrainian mineral resources wasn't part of the deal the Biden administration made with Zelensky? All that's changing wrt to America threatening its way into getting cheap access to resources around the world (not just Ukraine) is that Trump has been saying the quiet part out loud. Before the US picked off countries one by one in semi-privateand covered it with a veneer of words about good friends and allies and partners. So why would Trump be wanting the war to end now? It's about timing. Trump doesn't take the long view for America's wealth. He wants those minerals NOW for domestic political reasons. Biden was prepared to wait because he takes the long view on expanding the American Empire.
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  465. Define mistake. The US has been steadily consolidating its control of Middle East oil, hasn't it? Unless you ACTUALLY BELIEVE the US government rhetoric about a "war against terror" I see no mistake.
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  466. America isn't do any of this stuff because it means well.
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  467. As for the US holding Israel accountable - who cares? Just stop backing their massacres.
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  468. The effective declaration by the American government that if a single hostage out of the hundreds taken by Hamas has dual citizenship with the US it justifies their future participation in an Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians is sickening. As if Hamas could have vetted the hostages they took in advance to eliminate those with multiple citizenship, and as if most Israelis were not either foreigners themselves in Palestine or descendants of foreigners. The American government shows no such concerns about dual citizens among the far larger numbers of Palestinian hostages that Israel has barricaded into the Gaza strip.
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  469. But ... but ... wouldn't that be ethnic cleansing? Isn't it impossible/forbidden to think that the ethno-religious group that suffered the most famous case of ethnic cleansing in modern history would perpetuate the same against another group that was in their way?
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  470. Yeah. It's just like if your Mum served dinner an hour late. Nothing to see here.
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  471. Who knows? The past 4 years she's been a kind of wind-up doll saying whatever the Party tells her to. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot more to her, but then I wouldn't be surprised the other way either.
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  472. Huh? What are you talking about? No-one who cares about humanity in general or the Palestinians in particular EVER cared less about how forcefully or how much Kamala talked about a ceasefire. Pretending otherwise is dishonest in the extreme. What decent people cared about is that the US stopped shipping weapons to Israel for them to use against the Palestinians. All that has changed with Trump is the rhetoric.
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  473. I blame Barack Obama. He was president at a Moment Of Time, the GFC of 2007 onwards, on a platform of Hope and Change. The cause of the GFC was unfettered Wall St greed. Plain and simple. Not just greed - unfettered greed. The particularities of how the greed manifested the problem just don't matter to %99.9 of people. What mattered was the extent of the damage and the fact that the people who caused it had to break rules, and laws, to do so, yet got off scot-free and are still running things to this day. That is down to Obama. Those people needed to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, their assets seized and re-distributed, and publicly Held Accountable. Instead Obama got bamboozled into playing along with them. Sure, it's complex. However, this human aspect of it is not. Obama rejected Change, and people many lost Hope.
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  474. That's nonsense. There are plenty of countries that still have monarchs and it's arguably the opposite situation - people mean far more to the monarchs than they do to many politicians, and fealty is only an issue for close personal relationships, not for deciding who receives their support
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  475. The categorization of European politics into Left/Right actually says far more about American politics. Which is so far to the Right that even Bernie Sanders thinks he's a socialist. And the Dems think they are Left.
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  476. As concerns your point about not having a holocaust again, Bill Kristol. I have sad new for you. It's already happened. This time perpetrated by the group who were the target of the WWII holocaust. Who ever could have thought.
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  477.  @mkfd4571  I have no direct beef with Tommy. For someone who's been swimming in US and Zionist propaganda and obfuscation since forever, which applies to most US citizens, he's doing well indeed in the task of actually listening and processing. Although he has the additional handicap of wanting to get Biden elected and is avoiding any mention of the bottom-line facts there. And of course -a core cause of the situation is the US involvement itself. Discussion about how/whether the US can "solve the problem" avoids the discussion everyone SHOULD be happening, which is how fast can the US get out. Pretty fast I'd think. It's not a question of withdrawing a large number of troops, merely stop funding Israeli terrorism and sending it munitions and military intelligence.
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  478. Nope. It's business as usual chez Dems. They're preaching the sacred nature of the current Constitution, rather than admitting that it has permitted the US to function as an oligarchy for many decades, and sitting around waiting for the population to come around to the view that the current Republican Party is so dreadful that they have no choice but to go along with the Dems and hence with that oligarchy.
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  479.  @Bvi9169  Israel was established by terrorists who burned out Palestinian houses to make way for Jewish settlers. Of course it wouldn't be true of everyone, but the people who subsequently settled there anyway could be expected on the average to be pretty bloody minded.
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  480. To be equivalent the first question should be "Do you condemn the Hamas action of October 7?" Any decent human being should be able to answer both questions in the affirmative.
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  481.  @SilverSprings1997  So ... condemn Oct 7 SECOND. Apart from that, I take your point.
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  482. It's got to be that. Or could Israel have something on the US? That is to say; blackmail. Or else, the powers that be in the US just hate Muslims. Or does it all boil down to US domestic politics and the strength of the Zionist lobby? Hard to know which really. It's not as if they're going to tell us.
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  483. Good old Biden. Desperately trying to give the appearance of wanting to avoid the terrible destruction of the Palestinians. While delivering over weapons and money to his partner country in crime. At the same time trying to give the appearance of wanting to avoid war with China. While building up American military forces in countries near it. I predict he'll invade withing a few years. If there's enough cash over from the war against Russia.
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  484. Blinken is a Democrat. The Pod doesn't hide all the terrible things happening, but their background narrative is always that Biden, Blinken, and the Democrats are trying their hardest to make things better but "Bibi" and Hamas keep getting in the way and making things hard for the poor old long-suffering Biden administration.
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  485.  @fuku35  Yep, him too. But don't worry - America is still feared and that's what it cares about.
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  486. Oh for goodness sake. The economic strategy should be screamingly familiar to a New Yorker. It's called "Protection Racket". And Give Us A Break! America has been a hegemonic power ever since WW2, albeit with a neo-liberal veneer. Or to drop the upper-middle class language - business as usual but with the lies about "American values" and "allies" and "partners" stripped from the rhetoric. Also the next time the US invades a country or subverts its government it won't pretend to be setting it free or some such nonsense.
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  487. I used to cringe for Zelensky when he allowed himself to be paraded around the world as an American puppet by the Biden administration. The grovelling in his twitter message is consistent with that - his behaviour at the White House (which I find no fault with) was an aberration. That is not meant to disrespect Zelensky. While the only two reasons I find plausible for him to have provoked a Russian invasion are American manipulation and/or the kind of extreme Nationalism that derives from some kind of historic grudge, he's clearly very smart and very committed to his cause.
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  488. Seriously? An entire segment of Anderson Cooper doing his vaguely concerned and puzzled look, interviewees talking about how mean Trump and Vance are, and attempts from both Party's to prove the other is anti-Semitic. Doesn't the American public ever get tired of having divisive propaganda broadcast at it? The media have always profited from being divisive but now it's 24/7 everywhere.
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  489. The hypocrisy of Keir Starmer is sickening. The one positive thing about Donald Trump, and it's a big one, is that he says the quiet part out loud. Whereas the British government has the absolute gall to pretend it didn't know that Israel's recent repeated massacres in Gaza have been about fast-tracking its plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank.
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  490. This narrative about an aggressive Russia is just insane. It is NATO that has been inexorably movin towards Russia, not the other way around. Now you're talking about sending European troops to the border of Russia. WHY does Britain have to send troops against Russia and match France in military power? It's certainly not about defending Britain. Neither Europe nor Russia is going to attack Britain militarily. Probably not the USA either, unless Britain discovers some minerals it wants.
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  491. Yeah. Because that's the norm in criminal prosecutions. You only prosecute the less bad criminals after the prosecution of the worst one is over. That's why Donald Trump is being prosecuted before members of the the January 6 mob. Oh hang on, wait a minute ...
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  492. Which is true for Just About Anybody. All the Democrats have to do to win the next Presidential Election is to nominate one of them - provided it is someone actually fit to stand.
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  493. 8:00 Mary is unhappy with Jon Stewart calling out Joe Biden's age. Behind this is her unspoken assumption that the next US President will either be Biden or Trump. Biden is at high risk of being significantly affected by dementia before the next Presidency ends in 2029. Jon Stewart is right to bring attention to this. Also "The Emperor has no clothes" is kind of Stewart's schtick and there is no more widespread current example of this in the US than pretending Biden's age is not a problem, except for the pretenses about Donald Trump. What Mary (somewhat imitatively) calls both-sides-ism is just Stewart calling it as it is regardless of the side; something quite different in important ways. The US needs the Democrats to pick a more competent candidate. Biden has done a great job but he is falling at the final hurdle, which is to retire gracefully and endorse a successor.
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  494. The USA cannot endure a simultaneous trade war with everybody else. The time has come for the rest of the world to choose. Continue to capitulate to the US one by one? Whether the face-saving way, under a pretense of vassal states being allies (as Anders puts it "friendly" to America), or the up-front way, under a public "or else" threat. Or make a united stand for self-determination and sovereignty? Does the EU serve any real practical purpose or will it hang Denmark out to dry? And what about Canada, Panama, and, really, everyone else? Because whatever country you are ... chances are you're next. In fact you've probably already had a turn, or several turns. I hadn't noticed that Denmark was one of the EU countries involved in the 21st century invasion of Iraq - a small country thousands of kilometres away that had never done anything to Denmark or to the USA, except to defend itself from previous military attack on its own soil. Denmark has also been closely following the American line against Russia. Countries that think repeated "how high"ing to America will save them from American attacks, both military and economic, should be sitting up and taking notice.
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  495. Turns out the Israelis have no problem with Nazi ideology per se, only the details about which group constitutes the Master Race, which groups are broadly tolerated provided they collaborate with the Master Race, and which group constitutes the Untermensch (sub-humans.)
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  496. Ukraine is the only proxy in that war. A proxy for the country that's doing the most to fund, arm, and provide intelligence and political support for it, so long as they can make the war last.
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  497. I
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  498.  @involuntarysoul3867  Why do you beat your mother?
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  499.  @delta5297  It isn't possible to support it more than all the way. Biden kept sending weapons, military intelligence, and providing political cover as the massacres continued and continued. As the Israelis murdered clearly identified journalists in the area (and then floated the line that nobody really knew what was happening since no reports from western journalists were getting out). As the Israelis murdered international health workers and then terrorized later international health workers. Biden broke US law that says the government must not send money to countries that blockade aid from getting through to other countries. One of Biden's last acts was to send Israel more weapons. --------- (FWIW I don't believe it was actually Biden making actual informed decisions, because I don't believe he was capable. What was left of him was just wheeled to act as front-man occasionally.)
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  500. Zelensky is puppet. He goes where the US tells him to when the US tells him to go there and says what the US tells him to say. He looks good in a uniform though.
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  501. So if anyone did eat Biden's uncle, technically they were Australian?
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  502. Oh for goodness sake! WHOSE security? The people of Taiwan will be secure from war provided the US does not invade or alternatively send massive funds and weapons to dissidents. What do you expect the US government would do if Trump established a government in Alabama with popular democratic support and another country sent him money and weapons and pleaded his case to the UN on the basis of support for self-determination? For that matter, what did the US do to the Confederacy, which had strong democratic support? Give. Me. A. Break. It's all about US power and money.
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  503. It made me cringe to watch Zelensky popping up like a puppet wherever the Biden administration told him to go. What an idiot allowing the country that promoted him from popular actor to President to be the venue for an American war with Russia using Ukrainians as canon fodder.
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  504. When Zelensky was duped by the US into threatening to join NATO, he KNEW that Russia would never allow it. And he KNEW who was, and still is, in control of Russia, and that he is a cold-blooded, ruthless killer. Once the Ukraine moved towards allowing Us controlled (via NATO) military bases to be established at Russia's backdoor is was inevitable that Russia would invade no matter was was in powere there, but at least if Ukraine really wanted war with Russia they should have waited for Putin to be gone.
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  505. It's scary as hell listening to how Cohen and Dave talk about the Palestinians while Israel commits atrocities against them. Because I suspect that is how many ordinary people in their faith community talk about the Palestinians. And really, it doesn't feel any different to how ordinary Germans talked about the Jews while the Germans were committing atrocities against them.
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  506. Seriously? You want a guy who enabled ethnic cleansing to be your next President? What the heck kind of a country ARE you?
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  507. I think you're right. Ship without a Captain. However I doubt it's rudderless. It's just a question of who's setting the course. My guess about why Biden is making so few public appearances is that whoever is wielding the Presidential power prefers to preserve the illusion that it's Biden, as thin and tattered as that veil is.
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  508. No. What Biden needs to say is "I support Israel, but will not supply it with munitions and money while it continues to use them for the purpose of ethnic cleansing".
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  509. Simpler to just leave Palestine to the Palestinians and relocated the Israelis back to the US and Europe. Or allocate part of the US for them to establish a Jewish State.
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