Trump is not serving the ends of American oligarchs. He’s serving the ends of Russian oligarchs.

He would honestly be dead if that was the case. He’s in the white house celebrating how his friends made out like bandits out of the stock dips. Again, allegiances shift, it’s a balancing game. He’s serving oligarchs in general, the nationality barely matters these days, he’s not supporting some Russian/Israeli/American local bourgeoisie, those are extinct. I don’t know why you guys think nationality matters at all, they’re allied to money. Imperialism is the current order, and modern capitalists are greater internationalists than your average commie.

I really don’t see the need to try to see some dark unilateral control, when it’s across the board the exact same thing we’ve identified for literal centuries: The shifting alliances of powers whose interests are aligned.

The sad irony of conspiracy theorists is that it’s not paranoia (alone) that leads them into those rabbit holes, it’s naivety. They think that there are dark forces that hijacked their otherwise fine institutions, but refuse to recognize that those institutions were never meant to serve them in the first place. Trump and his entourage aren’t a cancer on a previously healthy organ, they are a healthy part of a parasite.

No, but they helped get him elected

Sure, I mean people made the argument with Russia too for his first term. I still think it’s absolutely insane to conclude that Russia controls western governments.

Any argument that the genocide in Palestine didn’t impact our election is not being honest

Of course, and I never made that argument. I can’t give an educated estimate, but folks more knowledgeable than me on US sentiment and voting habits say that this one issue could have massively shifted the election. You could probably even made a case that the democrats would have been a better ally to Israel in the grand scheme of things.

AIPAC: We control Western governments.

They are coping, trying to project their own power when they see very clearly that they’re on the brink. I don’t remember AIPAC saying that outright in english, but I wouldn’t exactly put it past those psychos either.

Enlightened Liberals: “no this is a strategic partnership”

I’m neither enlightened nor a liberal, but this is broadly a strategic partnership (in defense of the empire). Liberals still believe that an apartheid ethnostate is a completely acceptable thing, and that they should just kill a little bit less children. When exactly did the US need to convinced to lay waste to the middle-east for their own profit? If Israel sounds like a perfect unsinkable aircraft carrier in the area, it’s because that’s exactly what it is, and the kind of things they have never shied away from.

I don’t deny that they most likely have dirt on some politician, Israeli intelligence is on record trying to pull the grossest shameless stunts, and of course they try their hardest to impact policies abroad, they’re not even trying to hide it. But saying “they control western government” as if the entire western world is a collection of Israeli puppet states is legitimately insane. The US military budget alone eclipses their whole GDP.

What Israel is currently doing is speedrunning the reputation of the entire Western world into the ground

We can do that ourselves tyvm, Israel isn’t responsible for Trump remarkable attempts at destroying the US economy, USD, and the entirety of their softpower. Israel has decided to completely overextend in a way where western governments, despite their ardent zionism, haven’t been able to reign in antizionist sentiment. But do you think that Israelis mind controlled Trump into destroying their lifeline and tariffing their own fucking selves? Everyone knows that Israel is only held afloat by the uninterrupted stream of weaponry from the US, and that’s a sacrifice profit the military-industrial complex is willing to make.

You cannot in any way explain to me how this is a strategically sound plan

No I cannot, it’s a fascist state eating itself, many such examples. They are desperate, and they’re very clearly running straight into a wall. I’d like you, however, to explain to me how this is a strategically sound plan even IF you assume their total supposed control of western governments when they inevitably crash and burn, as they’ve been working overtime towards. It’s not sound. They’re not sound. It’s a fascist ethnostate.

• Actual conspiracies and manipulation (leading to probably most imperial wars of the 20th century till today)
• A justified distrust in the government, who people identify readily as not defending their interests in the slightest
• Conspiracy theories straight up cooked up by states to misdirect, or propagated heavily from media that are either state aligned or conveniently left unsanctioned
• The manufacturing of a climate of anti-science (in the US specifically)

Are the main reasons I can identify for why it’s become such a norm. When things like MK Ultra, Cointelpro, Operation Gladio…etc are all declassified, the bar gets puts pretty fucking high for what states are willing and able to do.

Israel doesn’t control western governments, it’s just a very valuable tool of the US, for which they are ready to make a lot of concessions. Western governments in turn are broadly servile to the US. I’m not sure how you expect a small broadly hated state like Israel to control the whole west. Lobby and intelligence can get you far, but not that far.

I can’t say that I’m surprised, but kudos to them for running this! To be honest 0 out of 584 sales is still impressive.

My biasphobic brain can’t help but wonder if the radio button defaulted to the “Made in Asia” position though 🙃

And for added pedantry, unless I’m mistaken this isn’t A/B testing 😁

I don’t know, thinking more about it, I frankly don’t understand both why on earth you would feel responsible for this, and why do you think that this would ultimately be a lesser harm. It really sounds to me like you are not putting anyone at risk and ALSO that this change of license wouldn’t actually help anyone.

I even understand the argument that copyleft might be detrimental to some projects because of big for-profits contributions, but this reads like a cop-out “for free”. I would understand a change of license to protect your own ass (without advocating for others to do the same), but this is saying “I don’t do copyleft because someone, somewhere, might be hurt by an abusive corporation or state for reasons vaguely related to my choice of license”.

By this logic, knowing that your project benefits the interests of those who jailed innocent workers, shouldn’t you just take your project offline altogether? Aren’t you worried that you’re actually taking agency away from both those workers AND from people trying to offer an alternative to those clearly evil corporations?

I’m sorry it’s not even your decision that’s driving me a bit nuts, it’s your work and you license it however the fuck you want, it’s the logic behind it.

I think the notion of “choice” or “fault” here is a little questionable, I understand your argument broadly (that’s what I tried to do in the last paragraph), so maybe it’s mostly just a language issue (I don’t think saying it is your “fault” or “choice” really means the same thing as saying that it’s “up to you”).

But I believe you’re contradicting yourself when you say that you both have to act and get out of situation such as abuse (not be defeatist) and but also learn to be fine with the situation (which reads like admitting defeat to me). I think this confusion between an actionable scenario (you can change things around you) and a non-actionable scenario (you can only change your outlook) is at the core of it.

Regardless I agree that self-pity is an absolute poison, but I’d tend to believe the way you put it is perhaps more controversial (because of what it implies or leaves out) than the point itself. Choosing not to suffer can also be a form of defeatism.

Purely as a thought experiment, this is mostly just vacuous logic. Sure, you can kill yourself, or kill everything you love or hate, or make sacrifices that are probably infinitely greater than the suffering itself (you could choose to stop caring about human suffering, most would much rather suffer than do that).

In practice however this is even worse than vacuous, it’s just wrong and insane. You can’t choose to not be schizophrenic, physical and psychological pain aren’t two neatly distinct categories, saying it’s “a choice” is just drawing a completely arbitrary border on where choice starts, and no shit people get angry at you because unless you heavily qualify this kind of statement further, anyone would think you’re doing the purest form of bootstrap victim blaming argument possible. Anyone would think of that one time they suffered the most in their lives and you’re saying “you chose that, that’s on you”.

If I try to be as charitable as I possibly can, I would assume this is an attempt at criticizing self-pity, highlighting that we are often our biggest obstacles to healing and that will plays a greater part in our agency than we recognize. I’d agree with all of that, but that’s being really charitable, I don’t think your statement makes that case at all.

I think people are freaking out about very low reproduction rate and aging population in rich countries more than anything, since that’s the demographic trend right now. Also factory farming is not like an inevitability of high population density, that’s just profit and lobbying. (I put the usual land use per kcal graph at the end, it’s not perfect because of the reality of arable land…etc, but still a very good reference)

Also to be fair, one country did try to handle overpopulation (and more broadly the risks of a sudden boom in population) and have been dragged through the mud for it for like 40 years.

That really sucks, but it does seem like just giving this company the win. I imagine it didn’t break those guys out of jail either. Regardless, do you have an article or something on this subject? I’ve never heard of such a case but I’m interested!