• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • It’s funny that Walz is preaching nuance and critical thinking, and yet the people who purport to agree with him in this thread apparently can’t synthesize your point. The Holocaust is a stark reminder that genocide will not only continue, but will be improved and augmented by new technologies and ideologies. Like you said, though, that doesn’t make it worse than others. I think the issue you’re running into is that the point here is Walz is being subjected to ad hominem to distract from a broader discussion on the nature of genocide because such discussions are bad for Israel and their conservative benefactors in the US. Folks ITT probably have it in their heads that you agree that Tim Walz is an antisemite, but as it turns out, two things can be true. The Holocaust is unique in a particular sense, but that is not what Walz is talking about; in the context he is speaking, the Holocaust is not unique. Essentially, the Holocaust, as a vivid and well-documented case study, can and should be a window into the broader history of genocide and human rights abuse.


  • I agree with Walz here, the Holocaust was not unique in the sense that genocide is an ongoing feature of human history and events. I also agree with the dude elsewhere in this thread that the Holocaust was unique among genocides, because it was the first industrial genocide. That doesn’t make it worse; we don’t need to play victim olympics. In the grand scheme of things, Walz certainly should not be called antisemitic for saying that we shouldn’t hyperfocus on the Holocaust at the expense of understanding the prevalence of genocide in general, and we should realize the reason he’s being called antisemitic is because, right now, it benefits Israel to derail any broader discussion on the nature of genocide.




  • I have worked hard to remind some of the Trump-voting Massholes I have the pleasure of interacting with on a regular basis of this. I think I’ve made inroads with at least one of them. I also make sure to bring this up:

    “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”

    Trump committed negligent homicide in blue states for political gain.



  • Most recent social security trustees report says the trust fund will run out in 2035. What happens in 2035? Benefits are still funded at 83% in perpetuity. By the way, last year it was going to run out in 2033, and the year before that it was going to run out in 2031. And also by the way, the trust fund was specifically set up because they knew the baby boomers were going to stress the system, so it’s supposed to get depleted as the boomers use it.

    Everything is working mostly as intended, and yet there’s all this anxiety around Social Security. Why? Because Republicans want you to think Social Security is fucked all on its own so that you don’t question it when they ratfuck it. That and they want to constantly frame the conversation as such so that the conversation doesn’t turn to “how do we make social security more robust and generous?” or some other radical socialist nonsense.




  • Code mods are great, maps and assets are in there but not officially, so compatibility going forward probably isn’t great for those. Full modding support is being worked on and is one of their highest priorities, so I’m not surprised there wasn’t much discussion about it. Asset mod support is “before summer” so they’ve got another month according to their last statement on it. PDX Mods has some bugs but overall it’s actually pretty slick and functional, and they’ve made a few highly requested improvements to it already.






  • If you read the full article, it seems as if the Saudi religious establishment was infiltrated by Egyptian extremists fleeing a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of Sadat. Their ideology meshed with Wahhabism and Bin Laden’s religious vendetta against the United States. The Saudi state apparatus did not have effective oversight over the religious establishment and so this all happened under the House of Saud’s nose. The countries in red are (at the time) places with either US puppet regimes or some form of Arab Revolt descended, nominally secular/socialist regimes. The religious extremists pushing Islamic rule operated in these countries under various militias and terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, backed by the newly radicalized Saudi Wahhabi establishment, and of course, Iran.

    From that perspective, the US was waging war against militias and terrorist groups with roots and support in Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud was not considered to be complicit. The article goes on to say…

    Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.

    Interesting stuff, to be sure.