I wouldn’t recommend trying to trick people into caring about their privacy: it’s not good for your reputation or your long-term relationship with them.

I simply ask them if they would be OK with a company taking money out their bank account.

This is as unconvincing an analogy as , and for the same reason.

Some guy in reference to the Canadian govt’s “Canadian Heritage”
https://xcancel.com/TaylorNoakes/status/1852106344851214782

The same people pushing flawed IHRA definition:

• celebrate Holocaust denial (Black Ribbon Day)

• refuse to commit to removing names of Nazi collaborators from Victims of Communism memorial

• protect monuments to war criminals with funds meant to protect synagogues

I’m not familiar with the IHRA, but it seems clear to me already that it exists to run cover for Zionism as a Western settler-colonial project.

Stanford. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/books/malcolm-harris-palo-alto.html

It’s a trap vote designed to split the left.

It’s a very, very low bar for whether one is on the left at all, and ya ain’t. But we’ve known that for nearly two years.

Then why are all of your censorships by .world, half of which were you bıtching about .ml 😂 https://discuss.online/modlog?userId=10481436

Not only no-name garbage: the whole gamut of quality all the way up to the high-end brand names.

I guess there are still trace amounts of Kennedy rattling around in there, which just makes him a sadder sack. Poor rich grandpa.

Sanders is better than AOC, but still too little too late on Gaza/Palestine.

Michael Parenti gave up on him 25 years ago, over his vote that resulted in the destruction of the city of Belgrade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLNQEHbusSA&t=31s

I’d be leery of saying that neoliberal capitalism is a failure and just leave it at that, because…

Capitalism was always going to reach a late monopoly stage, which was always going to be a failure. What comes next is socialism or barbarism, and frankly, signs point to barbarism. Fascism isn’t on the rise in Western capitalist states for no reason. The reason is grinding neoliberalism, which is negatively affecting even the petit bourgeoisie.

Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs

But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that “the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median. Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute 
bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.”

Calling American politicians Israeli puppets is firstly way too oversimplified and secondly leaves you open to being labelled antisemitic. There are even more gentiles in the Zionist project than Israelis & other Zionist Jews. Two of the largest, most powerful such groups are the Christian nationalists and the military-industrial complex.

AOC scabbing for the rail industry two years ago was the nail in the coffin.

• Kshama Sawant, Dec. 2022: Rail Workers Betrayed By Biden & The “Squad”
• Freddie deBoer, Jul. 2023: AOC Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now

I don’t know, but if good smart TVs are cheaper than good dumb ones, you might consider ignoring/disabling the smart bits. I might go so far as to sever the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth antennas.

Tom’s Guide: Dumb TVs — here’s why you can’t find them anymore

That’s because, for a number of reasons, it’s cheaper and more profitable for TV makers to simply include a smart platform with every TV they ship out. It’s actually a major reason why TVs have become so much cheaper in the last decade — with a smart platform, TV makers can sell the hardware at cost or even take a small loss, but in the end make money through the advertising that shows up on the homescreen.

Don’t put the cart before the horse. There’s a gaping chasm between a proposal getting written up and Google actually getting broken up.

I’m sure the talking heads will still say and some Lemmitors will still repeat that Biden is doing everything he can to reign in that cantankerous Bibi.

agree to might makes right

I see, we’re playing word games.

I will never “agree”—in the sense of “accept as a moral truth”—that “might makes right;” I will only acknowledge that it in fact can and often does make “right.” But not “right” as in “moral” or “reasonable” or “desirable,” but “right” as in “what actually ends up happening.”

What a weird non sequitur. The US does whatever it wants to, and everything it does is definitionally valid. The rules-based international order is: the US makes up rules and orders everyone around. Which is why the US is the greatest pariah to actual international law, and to world peace.

It does insomuch as they are operated by US personnel.

They aren’t.

If you say so, boss. We’ve had troops on the ground since even before the war started.

• US DoD, 2018: U.S. Troops Training Ukrainian Soldiers, Mattis Says
• BBC, 2023: Ukraine war: Leak shows Western special forces on the ground

The US no longer owns those missiles.

It does insomuch as they are operated by US personnel. From what I’ve heard, Ukrainians haven’t even been given training on operating them, and they rely on US-operated targeting infrastructure to even function.

Even if it were to pass an audit, it would still be bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget#United_States

And the DoD doesn’t encompass the whole of the MIC. The CIA’s money flow is a black hole unto itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair