Candace Owens is definitely using anti-zionism as a cover for antisemitism.

killing and/or ostracizing everyone on it who isn’t a Jew Israeli

Palestinians live in Israel and the Israel government does not care about Palestinian citizens of Israel. They claim to care about Jewish Israelis and Jews more broadly. A fascist makes a hierarchy not for the people at the top the hierarchy, but for the fascists. My only point was that Jews are at the top of the Zionist hierarchy, not that the Zionists in control of Israel care about Jews, because they do not.

Of course Israel and Russia, for that matter, do not really care about Jews or Russians respectively or people at all for that matter. Israel’s fascist government targets Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians because they are the other. A scope goat to misdirect class resentment from the owner class to minorities and foreigners.

Israel does not care about the safety of Jewish people. Their constant deflection about how their military actions are in the name of protecting Jewish people, and the intentional conflation of anti-zionism and antisemitism, has only increased genuine antisemitism at the expense of Jewish people worldwide

No kidding and well said. I, as a Jew, am less safe now than before Israel’s genocide. The point is the genocide is being carried out in the name of Israeli Jews and Jews more broadly, which sucks. To be clear, I am anti-zionist and anti-fascist, but not antisemtic. Anti-zionism and anti-fascism should always go hand in hand because zionism is a form of fascism.

Also, as long as I’m dancing around using the word, I don’t particularly like the term diaspora Jew. I am not living in diaspora. I live in the US where I am full citizen. I have rights and freedoms here that are not preconditioned on whether or not I am Jewish. edit: typo

These dictatorships, and Israel with this current cabinet is effectively a fascist dictatorship, want to expand their sphere of influence and territory. They are willing to disregard the rules based order and risk WWIII even if that isn’t the goal.

The Middle East seems to be in this three way power struggle now between Turkey, Saudi Arabia backed by the US, and Iran backed by Russia. Iran is part of this axis with China, North Korea, and Russia. Turkey is in NATO and wants to be a EU member, but is an enemy of the Kurds a US ally.

The US wants Israel and Saudi Arabia to join in a defense pact so our two allies will help us maintain peace in the region. Saudi Arabia wants to be the leaders of a new caliphate in the Middle East that unites the countries and Muslims living there. Defense pacts with the US and Israel would help them do that. But the Middle East is united in their support of Palestine which means Israel needs to make concessions on Palestine or Saudi Arabia will never be seen as a legitimate leader of the Middle East.

So Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is not only destabilizing the region and making Israel a pariah, it’s also knee capping Saudi Arabia’s ambitions. Saudi Arabia needs US support but they can’t be seen as an ally to a genocidal Israel.

At the same time Israel has undermined Iran’s proxy network which allowed Syrian rebels to win the civil war. Iran and Russia are now on the back foot in the region.

Rather than swoop in and be a uniter, Turkey is wasting time fighting the Kurds in Syria.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey all want to be the leaders of a future caliphate, but thanks to Israel none of them are in a position to get it. This is a terrible situation for the people living in the Middle East and in the long run can only lead to Israel getting more land, influence, and resources in the region.

At this point a country without strong foreign ties that emphasizes the idea of self-determination for countries in the Middle East is more likely to unite the Middle East than Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Turkey. If Syria could recover from the war quickly enough, they could be in an excellent position to do this, given the HTS leader’s talking points. HTS and the Kurds need to double down on an alliance and kick out ISIS and Turkey asap.

Peace in the Middle East is what is good for everyone in the long run, even if some people argue it could theoretically hurt US interests in the short run. A united Europe has benefited that region and the world tremendously. A new Middle Eastern super power might scare some policy people, but it would be an important counter balance to Russia, China, India, and Israel. Those four countries especially would happily carve up the Middle East into bits if they can as the US becomes isolationist under Trump. edit: typo

It depends how far Israel goes with this. Syria isn’t in a position to to pick fights or hold grudges. But Syrian rebel groups aren’t going to let Israel conquer them or leave them so debilitated someone else can conquer them. If Israel keeps it’s attacks to abandoned regime military equipment and the land grabs to the Golan Heights then Syrian rebel groups are probably going to let it slide for the foreseeable future.

Responding to Jolani, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said: “We aren’t intervening in what is happening in Syria. We have no intention of administering Syria.”

It’s also important to remember that when Israel says they don’t want to administer other people or countries they mean they don’t want to rule other people, they want the land and resources. That’s why they are killing everyone in the Gaza strip and refusing to leave despite saying they don’t want to administer Palestinians. Forming a greater Israel means taking as much land as they can get away with and killing and/or ostracizing everyone on it who isn’t a Jew. edit: typo

They are all Abrahamic Religions. But that hasn’t stopped nearly a thousand years of conflict since the First Crusade.

They’re the same god in the sense that those religions claim they are the same god. But they are different in the sense that they are part of different religions that have long lasting disagreements. Abraham =/= Jesus =/= Muhammad. So they are different gods in the sense of what people kill each other over.

Hopefully this kind of attitude will lead to peace between these groups in the future. However, I think we shouldn’t uncritically take what religion tells us at face value. Of course it’s all made up, but the reasons it was made up are important.

Jews decided there was only one real god so they could invalidate other religions. Christians decided that god had a son so they could both benefit from the religion Jews started while also invalidating those same Jews. Muslims decided that a guy got an update from god so they could invalidate Christians and Jews while still benefiting from those religions and the idea of a single god. It’s about using religion as a source of legitimacy for power.

Monotheism, or least pretending to be monotheist, has benefited religions, so no group wants to give that up. And it was probably seen as way to convert people from older religions. Again, hopefully ‘they are all the same god’ will be used to unite people in the future, but it’s important to understand ‘they are all the same god’ was about leveraging existing beliefs for power. edit: word choice

This is a presidential action worth celebrating and defending. Great work! More please!

He is also the first President ever to issue categorical pardons to individuals convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana, and to former LGBTQI+ service members convicted of private conduct because of their sexual orientation.

Excellent!

It’s automating the enshittification. A large language model doesn’t need to sleep and doesn’t have a conscience.

AI as we know it now is, in a nut shell, the automation of “I was just following orders”. Or a digital factory line of evil. Either way, this is about removing the human element from as many decisions as possible.

It would be tricky, unethical, and in some cases illegal to get people to do the sort of things the owner class and fascists want to do to society. But it’s easy to let an AI program go nuts. The cruelty is the point in the case of the fascists. And in the case of the owner class it clears out anyone who couldn’t afford a lawyer.

Neoliberals are anti-union.

Neoliberals are institutionalists. Unions are institutions. So no one should be surprised when a neoliberal like Joe Biden incrementally improves things for unions and their members.

i see you and raise you the actual unions involved

My argument is not that Biden did nothing, but that he could and should have done more. The president should leverage the full power of the executive branch to benefit workers. There is no need to capitulate to the owner class and break strikes. Incremental changes will not correct the fifty trillion dollar transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

screw your kiddie-pool-depth faux-leftism.

The incremental changes your argument is unsuccessfully attempting to justify are neoliberal policies. The fact neoliberal policies benefit unions does not change the fact that they are incremental changes. Your argument is not a leftist argument, but a neoliberal argument pretending to be a leftist argument. Your argument relies on name-calling and ad hominem attacks in an attempt to distract from this deception.

that situation was a complex one and a reminder to not view the world in black and white.

https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/

There is little evidence that the current administration has any interest in dealing with this crisis. Our hope is that a Biden administration would be historically bold. But make no mistake that both our political and economic systems will collapse absent solutions that scale to the enormous size of the problem. The central goal of our nation’s economic policy must be nothing less than the doubling of median income. We must dramatically narrow inequality between distributions while eliminating racial and gender inequalities within them. This is the standard to which we should hold leaders from both parties. To advocate for anything less would be cowardly or dishonest or both.

The 1% have extracted 50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90%. It’s time we side with labor in no uncertain terms.

the reason the strike was killed was because it was “thousands of working people vs millions of working people”.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/more-than-500-labor-historians-condemn-bidens-intervention-in-freight-rail-dispute/

The second reason Phillips-Fein finds the labor fight compelling is because of the way Biden framed it, as a choice between the interests of railway workers and the economy as a whole. But he didn’t have to do that. “The president could also embrace a sensibility that more explicitly identifies the interests of the country as a whole with those of the workers and their unions, rather than seeing them in opposition,” she said.

Biden is a pro-union neoliberal. We need pro-union progressives and socialists with a populist narrative to campaign on.

The main allegations in the report are:

• The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;
• Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as Israeli recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;
• Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and
• Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90% of the population to unsuitable areas.

I had fun with it. I haven’t finished all the bonus bosses after beating the game. The graphics were well done and the game play was as enjoyable as ever. They added some new super moves which was cool.

This was one of my first games as a kid and was a defining experience for my childhood. I’ve replayed the original a lot over the years.

The remake did not disappoint. Highly recommend. =D

Also the Super Mario Guy RPG series. From what I recall they didn’t finish. But, what they did finish was really well done. The Family Guy voices are spot on. And it’s really funny.

Oh and the puzzles in Bowser’s Castle are now playable. Like, the ball clearing puzzle is actually a lot of fun when the inputs work.

Looks like it.

The unethical CEO of the Umbrella Health, William Easton, and his team are abducted and William is forced to play a game and choose who will live or die to save his family and him.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233227/plotsummary/

🤯

Belome wants more faces!

“While cannabis is now legal in Minnesota and many states across America, thousands remain behind bars in federal prisons for the same substance – a reminder of the work still ahead,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said on the Capitol steps on November 20. “President Biden still has time to build on his initial pardons and take decisive action. He can extend clemency to every person still serving time for federal cannabis offenses, many of whom have already spent decades behind bars. In Minnesota, we’ve shown that cannabis legalization and expungement can move hand in hand. Now it’s time for federal action to match this progress.”

That’s a quote from representative Ilhan Omar, not LPP. Regardless, it’s evident that she meant people who are in federal prison for cannabis offenses only. She was not referring to the intersection of people with cannabis offenses and every other possible crime.

The phrases “While cannabis is now legal in Minnesota and many states across America, thousands remain behind bars in federal prisons for the same substance” and “cannabis legalization and expungement can move hand in hand” make it clear what she meant.

No one can seriously look at this and reasonably conclude she meant something like serial killers who were also convicted of cannabis offenses. That’s not a position anyone is taking. That’s a bizarre interpretation given what was explicitly said.

Or he could gather double the amount of lawyers and they could all sleep at night. Either way.

If you release every single person with cannabis related offense

the president’s clemency actions did not address the approximately 3,000 individuals serving time in federal prisons for cannabis related offenses.

These are the not the same statements. No one is arguing for releasing every single person with cannabis offenses no matter what other crime they also committed. These are people with cannabis related offenses and nothing else.

It’s clear because they specified a number, 3000. Your argument isn’t being critical because it doesn’t address what they actually wrote.

The quoted section in particular is referring to people with cannabis related offenses. It doesn’t say anything about releasing people with more serious offenses in addition to cannabis related offenses.

That isn’t nuance it’s just putting words in their mouth.

You realize the money printing department and the releasing people from prison department aren’t the same, right?

I’m trying to guess what your reason for thinking the US can’t do something is because you wont say.

Having a lot of people and having a lot of people qualified to individually examine 135k federal cases are two different things.

There are plenty of qualified people.

You say it can be done, I disagree. It doesn’t seem like there’s much more to be said.

Why do you disagree?

Regardless, in case you didn’t know, the US can do this. There is no reason we can’t and your argument doesn’t provide any. edit: typo

Something about their wording kind of turns me off.

Is your argument that their tone is wrong?