UnderpantsWeevil

joined 2 years ago
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It's the same picture

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 16 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Okay, but all of those are evil countries corrupted by the insidious hand of the Marxist Antifa

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 21 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

BUT.

AT.

WHAT.

COST!

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You’re also blind if you just say “America bad” at every opportunity.

It's shooting fish in a barrel. You don't need to aim to carefully when you've got a target rich environment.

No, many of the things he’s doing are absolutely not in the interest of the billionaire class

Its not in the best long term interests of the country. But then neither is having a billionaire class to begin with. Trump's looting various cash-rich institutions and easily extorted organizations and individuals for the benefit of his cronies. That's necessarily bad for the targets of exploitation and good for his in-group, however you might project their futures over the long term.

And yes, he’s serving some of them, particularly Peter Thiel. But he’s mostly serving Putin and himself.

Nobody in Russia, least of all Vladimir Putin, is well-served by the US continuing to arm and instigate conflicts between Russia and Ukraine. And yet that's exactly what our foreign services continue to do. You can trace this right back to 2018, when Trump shoveled out a bunch of anti-aircraft missile systems and anti-tank weapons to Ukrainian Nationalists.

Trump's firmly in the pocket of the Military Industrial Complex. And that occasionally breaks for or against Russia, depending on who is buying. But it is always and forever a policy that favors more international conflicts and more arms sales because US exports of weapons is a GOP moneymaker.

And even Hillary isn’t the devil incarnate you think she is.

Hillary and Trump were friends. They've been political allies and social circle buddies since the 1990s. She egged him on to run in 2016 because she thought he'd be her cat's paw.

If you hate Trump, you should despise Hillary.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Hey now, if you hand everyone a "Hitler" card in Secret Hitler, it plays very strangely but in the end everyone wins.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Idk about "useless". But the way the article doesn't seem to want to mention the read/write speed is definitely indicative of some drawbacks to the medium. They repeatedly stress "cold storage" which could mean its a useful form of long term archive or backup for static data. Plenty of demand for that kind of information, especially in an era when real time overwriting by malicious actors and artificial engines has been fucking with historical data retention.

But its not going to replace your hard drive any time soon.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Anyone get the IO on this device? Cause I'm guessing its going to be less good than magnetic storage.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I assumed the Ghost of Christmas Imperative would just be shouting "CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS!" over and over again, while blowing an air horn that plays carols.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Because his brand of “politics” is dumb, destabilizing shit that’s bad for America and Americans.

We've had dumb, destabilizing policies in this country since its founding. That's got nothing to do with the politics of the civil services. Plenty of civil servants are full-on MAGA adherents (and have been even before his first election in '16). Plenty more are die-hard Hillarycrat Libs who have dragged the country in another direction. Trump's game is to stack his MAGA cronies above the Hillarycrats withint compromising the function of the civil service entirely, rendering it useless.

Trump only serves himself, Putin, and indirectly, Xi.

Jesus fuck dude. Have you really been watching US politics for this long and still not seen Trump acting in the explicit interests of the American billionaire class? Why do you think the Chinese President is closer to his heart than the people he pulled into his own cabinet - Lutnick, McMahon, Vought, and Loeffler? Nevermind Peter Thiel, a man who has become the nation's premiere military contractor over the last year.

Nevermind fucking Israel.

How are you liberals this fucking blind? Trump's CIA is systematically picking apart what's left of Russian industry. His Pentagon is fixated on purging Chinese businesses from the Western Hemisphere. His Treasury has made cryptocurrency speculation a central tenant of fiscal policy. But y'all can't stop saying "Foreign Men Did This" every time you look at your own decayed socio-economic system.

Also, did you just link me Trump admin propaganda

Go Lib Out to the WaPo if that's your poison of choice.

Or reference Congress.gov for an official definition.

Or just bury your head in the sand for another four years.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

Trump complained that a secret inner cabal of career bureaucrats would oppose him. And he wasn't wrong. The various federal agencies are a seven layer dip of careerist holdovers from prior administrations, many of who were hostile to his brand of politics for one reason or another.

Trump's framing of the existence and internal opposition by career bureaucrats was that of some insidious anti-American cabal. But the fundamental problem is one every new President faces. Namely, the Burrowing In of political appointees to civil service career roles.

This isn't a new problem, either. Thomas Jefferson was complaining about the problem hires left behind under the Adams administration. Burrowed-in Democrats plagued Lincoln for much of his tenure and were behind many of the smears aimed at Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion (an Eisenhower-era plot that cost Allen Dulles his job when it humiliated JFK).

How presidents deal with recalcitrant career staffers and opposition party moles can define their administrations. This isn't a problem Trump just made up. It's one he doesn't know how to deal with gracefully.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 17 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

So to ignore class and imperialism in your advocacy for trans rights means to effectively throw the majority of trans people under the bus.

I mean... this is literally what the liberals have said they want to do, re: 2024

Democrats Lost Voters on Transgender Rights. Winning Them Back Won’t Be Easy.

The number of policies liberals seem willing to support shrinks with every election cycle as reactionaries in national media flog them for speaking out. Police Brutality in 2014. Health care in 2016. Climate Change in 2018. Student Debt in 2020. Opposition to Genocide in 2022. It seems 2024 was the year we had to stop caring about LGBTQ.

I wonder what we'll be asked to give up next in our quest to win that "Moderate" voter.

 

A live map that tracks frontlines of the war in Ukraine was edited to show a fake Russian advance on the city of Myrnohrad on November. The edit coincided with the resolution of a bet on Polymarket, a site where users can bet on anything from basketball games to presidential election and ongoing conflicts.

If Russia captured Myrnohrad by the middle of November, then some gamblers would make money. According to the map that Polymarket relies on, they secured the town just before 10:48 UTC on November 15. The bet resolved and then, mysteriously, the map was edited again and the Russian advance vanished.

To adjudicate the real time exchange of territory in a complicated war, Polymarket uses a map generated by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a DC-based think tank that monitors conflict around the globe. The battle around Myrnohrad has dragged on for weeks and Polymarket has run bets on Russia capturing the site since September. News around the pending battle has generated more than $1 million in trading volume for the Polymarket bet "Will Russia capture Myrnohrad."

 

The deal would give Bukele possession of individuals who threatened to expose the alleged deals his government made with MS-13 to help achieve El Salvador’s historic drop in violence, officials said. For the Salvadoran president, a return of the informants was viewed as critical to preserving his tough-on-crime reputation. It was also a key step in hindering an ongoing U.S. investigation into his government’s relationship with MS-13, a gang famous for displays of excessive violence in the United States and elsewhere.

 

The alleged beating followed a prison visit to Marwan Barghouti by the Israeli national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir in August. Ben Gvir, a member of an extreme right party who has past convictions from Israeli courts for incitement to racism and support for a terrorist organisation, taunted Barghouti in a video clip published at the time.

According to Arab Barghouti, Ben Gvir also showed the 66-year-old prisoner a picture of an electric chair, and told him he deserved to be executed.

In a statement quoted in Maariv newspaper on Wednesday, Ben Gvir denied the assault allegations, but added that he was “proud that [Barghouti’s] situation has changed radically during my tenure – play time is over, holiday camps are over.

...

Barghouti consistently tops polls as the most popular leader among Palestinians. He has been in prison for more than 20 years after being convicted of planning attacks that led to five civilians being killed, and sentenced to five life sentences plus 40 years. The trial was criticised as deeply flawed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

As part of the US-brokered ceasefire deal that took effect over the weekend, 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences were released, and most of them deported to Egypt. The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu vetoed Barghouti’s inclusion on the list of prisoners to be freed as part of the deal.

 

The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.

The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation.

 

Last week, FactCheck revealed that Israel imported over £400,000 worth of arms from UK companies in June 2025 – the highest monthly amount since these records began in January 2022.

The exact nature of the items wasn’t specified in the data, but they were listed under a category that includes bombs, grenades, torpedoes, missiles, and ammunition.

And we can now exclusively reveal that September was the second highest value month on record, with over £310,000 worth of UK munitions under this same category arriving in Israel.

...

Israel dismissed the Commission’s report as “distorted and false” and said the expert panel were acting as “Hamas proxies”.

The UK government told us it does not “export bombs or ammunition for IDF use in military operations in Gaza or the West Bank”.

 

Italian unions proclaimed the strike after the Global Sumud Flotilla that was trying to break Israel’s naval blockade to deliver aid to Gaza was intercepted by Israeli naval forces Wednesday night. Protests and demonstrations have sprung up all over Europe and globally since then, but they have been particularly strong in Italy.

Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had sharply criticized the strike. She anticipated it would cause widespread disruption across the country and said it was politically motivated and targeted her right-wing government.

According to the CGIL union, 300,000 people marched through the streets of Rome alone, while the national average participation in the general strike stood at around 60%, halting all the main services in key sectors including transportation and schools.

In Florence, protesters approached the gates of the Italian national soccer team’s training center to demand its upcoming World Cup qualifier against Israel not be played because of the war in Gaza.

 

US merger and acquisition investment from China has totalled just $221mn so far this year, representing the slowest pace of investment since 2006, according to data from Dealogic. The total at this point last year was $3.4bn.

The figure contrasts with growing investment into mainland China and highlights the impact of geopolitics on a previously booming cross-border financial sector that for years provided a bridge for Chinese businesses into lucrative western markets.

...

Chinese outbound M&A has shown signs of growth in other parts of the world, such as in Peru, where Italian utility company Enel this year sold assets to China’s Southern Power Grid International for $2.9bn in the biggest outbound deal of the year. The next three largest deals were in Singapore.

But the total of just under $12.2bn invested so far this year contrasts with the tens of billions of dollars invested annually for the decade prior to the coronavirus pandemic. In 2016, China’s full-year outbound M&A peaked at $212bn, while in 2019 it was $54bn.

 

For Iran’s leadership, the West’s intransigence had given Israel the green light for another attack. But Pezeshkian noted that Iranian society was stronger following the 12-day war last June. “The last attack brought unity,” he insisted. “Iranians opposed regime change even if they disagreed with the revolution. Even people who criticize us, those people supported our military.”

Pointing to Israel’s brazen assault inside Qatar this September, where it tried and failed to assassinate the entire Hamas negotiating team, Pezeshkian predicted, “Cohesion will increase across the region because our neighbors recognize that nobody is safe now.”

During Israel’s assault on Iran, the president narrowly escaped an attempt on his life. “There are plans that if they take me out” when Israel attacks again, “we have prepared five to six steps down the line.

 

Earlier on Monday, ABC announced Kimmel’s return, after a backlash in the creative community and among others who said that The Walt Disney Co. was capitulating to the Trump administration

Earlier on Monday, ABC announced Kimmel’s return, after a backlash in the creative community and among others who said that The Walt Disney Co. was capitulating to the Trump administration

 

Grassroots unions across Italy called for a 24-hour general strike on Monday in solidarity with the people of Gaza, citing reasons that included the “inertia of the Italian and EU governments” to address the humanitarian crisis in the territory.

From Milan to Palermo, Italians poured on to the streets in at least 75 municipalities across the country. In Genoa and Livorno, dock workers blocked ports over concerns that Italy was being used as a staging post for the transfer of arms to Israel.

In Rome, more than 20,000 people gathered outside the Termini train station waving Palestinian flags and chanting “free Palestine”. Michelangelo, 17, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he had turned up to support “a population that is being exterminated”.

 

With Friday’s action, the total number of people killed in U.S. counter-narcotics operations since Trump ordered warships deployed to the Caribbean has risen to 17.

Trump did not specify the exact location of the strike, the name of the terrorist organization allegedly involved, or which branch of the U.S. military conducted the operation. He cited only Doral-based Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The president framed the strike as part of a broader effort to confront narcotrafficking and hold foreign actors accountable for what he described as threats to American communities.

 

With Friday’s action, the total number of people killed in U.S. counter-narcotics operations since Trump ordered warships deployed to the Caribbean has risen to 17.

Trump did not specify the exact location of the strike, the name of the terrorist organization allegedly involved, or which branch of the U.S. military conducted the operation. He cited only Doral-based Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The president framed the strike as part of a broader effort to confront narcotrafficking and hold foreign actors accountable for what he described as threats to American communities.

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