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It’s the
elephanthorse in the room, and it’s braying.
Offered him a tower and a plane. They’re trolling the US.
Next they’ll offer him another very similar tower, perhaps twin-like.
The UK is offering steel beams.
Well it was US who backed them in the first place.
Corruption is a hell of a drug!
I hate corruption in all forms, but I love the fact that Israel is freaking the fuck out right now because the Middle East just realized all they have to do is bribe Trump.
Israeli government is pissed right now, and that’s awesome….
But also, stop pretending like just about every politician in Washington doesn’t also take legalized bribes
I hate corruption in all forms, but I love the fact that Israel is freaking the fuck out right now because the Middle East just realized all they have to do is bribe Trump.
Hey, maybe netanyahu being upset will cause democrats to actually oppose something trump is doing.
This is bad. And these same people the Republicans where trying to find anything on Biden about bribery. But are silent on this stuff that Trump is doing in the open.
israel can have their mountain but they must leave the buffer zone
All of those January 6th people who were freaking out about losing their country… where are they now? Hmmmm.
Fucking hypocrites.
Yes, I’m sure that the thing that will finally get Jan 6’ers to turn on Trump is checks notes lifting sanctions on Syria.
I find in endlessly funny that we’ve been screaming at the democrats to leverage Israel more to end hostilities in the ME without any real movement from them, but suddenly Trump is willing to say ‘fuck it’ just because the right people happen to be bribing him.
If the right people keep trump’s palms greased for long enough we might actually end up on the right side of history by accident, and if that’s not comedy I don’t know what is.
Someone posted a good picture of the locking mechanism called the “ratchet effect” that democrats/neo-liberals provide for the ruling class.
Essentially, Republicans get to do whatever they want to enrich our rulers, and democrats are there to stop the workers from reversing any of the gains.
By siding with al qaeda?
Tell me you don’t know who Ahmed al-Sharaa is without telling me you don’t know who Ahmed al-Sharaa is.
Ahmed al-Sharaa is the guy whose dogs are massacring Alawites right now, mostly done with that.
Can I have my A for this answer?
You get partial credit for vocabulary but an F for misrepresentation
What he says is less important that what he does.
I agree, which is why I find it significant that he split ties from al-Qaeda despite the significant internal pressures not to.
I guess we’d have to wait longer than a month to see if he makes good on seeking justice for acts of brutality against Alawites, but I don’t think you can say al-Sharaa isn’t a massive step in the right direction and deserving of positive diplomatic response to his reforms.
Edit: as long as we’re condemning associations with al-Qeada, here’s an interesting related report
I am just going by the meme, you caught me.
Props for owning up to it.
My new conspiracy theory: Vance is a made man for the Technate, and the plan has always been to get him into the Presidency. Trump will be enabled to act as corruptly as he wants, until an impeachment succeeds. Vance will step in and fulfill Thiel’s program. Trump lands softly, and the Matrix is built.
He did quid pro quo with Ukraine his first term and he got away with it so why not keep doing it.
The crowd that went on about a laptop for 5 years suddenly don’t care about The President getting a whole ass jet and tower as a gift. But they aren’t a cult. Only decorum and the law matters when Dems are in power.
I am not arguing with the obvious corruption, but to provide a counterpoint to the second part of the argument: if we aren’t allowed to make peace with former terrorists, then we can never stop fighting each other, and if we keep fighting each other, then we will keep creating the next generation of terrorists.
Its the same neocons who wanted Biden to stay in Afghanistan. Anyone who thinks neocons have a popular base is a gigantic moron. The amount of neocon voters is roughly equivalent to Americans with a transatlantic accent.
Excuse you, Tom Lehrer is far from a neocon.
I may also be biased because I grew up in Seattle so I learned English by watching Frasier. I got bullied a lot.
My first thoughts of Al-Sharaa was that he was serious about reform from the Assad regime. I realized I haven’t followed up much on how things are going though, so if y’all wanna correct me go for it.
Yes but the deal almost certainly has nothing to do with peace.
Maybe they’re hoping for a yemen type deal, where syrians will only get murdered by zios and not by zios plus USA.
Broken clocks…
The really ugly thing here is, al-Sharaa is the best thing to happen to Syria in decades. Most people have been urging recognition of his government and the relaxation of sanctions because he’s about as good we can expect a leader of Syria to be.
And he is still bribing Trump.
This isn’t merely corruption. This is the *normalization * of corruption. Even countries that abide by democratic norms and international law are going to need to grease palms to conduct regular diplomatic relations. The EU and UK and Canada might be able to weather his bullshit until he folds like he always does, but developing nations will be stuck trying to bid for American favor.
Welcome to the Chinese century.
al-Sharaa is the best thing to happen to Syria in decades
Could we please stop? He’s a jihadist saying pleasant things to Europeans and Americans with nobody caring whether they are true.
Everyone in Syria is facing their own personal jihad - best of luck to them.
The louder the west screams about him being a Jihadist, the more I trust him to do the right thing in Syria
Good instincts and all but he always been a hard core salafist. Leftists were calling him that all last year. Its just now that Trump’s in power liberals can pretend that they were always against him.
The west doesn’t scream. The west condemned Alawites for not liking to be massacred.
And this is stupid. Inverted signal is the same signal, just inverted. It’s not independence of thought.
The west condemned Alawites for not liking to be massacred
Hmmm, are you sure about that? I feel like there was a notable party using that event as justification for crossing over the Syrian boarder but maybe that was a fever dream
I feel like your last paragraph ignores my last paragraph.
One of the reasons Israel is so fucking hated by all ME smaller groups is because it casually pretends to maybe this time possibly protect them, and usually does nothing of the sort, causing more ruin.
I feel like your last paragraph ignores my last paragraph.
Your last paragraph was kind of meaningless
One of the reasons Israel is so fucking hated by all ME smaller groups is because it casually pretends to maybe this time possibly protect them, and usually does nothing of the sort, causing more ruin.
… I mean kinda? Israel has been a belligerent anti-arab neighbor since 1948 and has caused nothing but ruin. There’s a hell of a lot more reason for their distrust of Israel than their choices of proxy militant groups.
He’s at least trying to put on a facade of meaning them, which is about as good as Syria has had it in my life time.
No, he isn’t. He’s worse than Assad, the reason nobody says Assad was better is because Assad directly caused this by killing opponents, disarming strong parties (which could have resisted jihadists) and in general destroying the country. So he’s worse than Assad, but a direct consequence of Assad.
I’m certain he’s more consistent than Assad and eventually this leads to a more stable and economically viable Syria. Note how I’m not saying anything about human rights and civilization.
It’s pretty hard to be worse than the guy whose used nerve has on his own people and turned his country into a major producer for the international drug trade.
You just have to be the guy who turned a half-Sunni, half-Alawi city on the coast into half-Sunni, half-dead. Then after calls for stopping the murders and loads of videos with dead men, women and children he … forbid filming that.
Ok comment until the random sinophobic punchline. Imagine blaming this on chinese people. jfc.
I’m not. I’m saying this will lead to China becoming the premier world power instead of us.
Imagine having reading comprehension skills. jfc
I don’t know if that’s blame, or just acknowledging that USA’s general direction leads to China becoming ‘the’ world power by USA forfeitting their soft power around the world.
It’s not sinophobic to recognize who will be filling the power vacuum
I believe they meant that China will become the dominant power after the US finishes torpedoing itself.
I’m not sure if this is blaming it on China, but acknowledging that China might be picking up after the downfall of the USA.
… and no one should put all the blame on one man … he isn’t that powerful or persuasive
It’s a complicit government that had decided to allow this orange menace to do as he pleases because it benefits some wealthy owners.
It’s a lot easier to blame one man because it would remove the complicity of a large organization of people that are driving all this.
So they just SAY they will build this tower, not they are building it. What’s the chances they aren’t building shit but told our dumb fuck president this to get this done? I think pretty high. They can strimg him along, because they know he will be gone in four years either by end of presidency or death.
And that is what I don’t get. He is so easily wooed by stuff. The UK trade agreement is not great, but he flounts the high tariffs that the importers will have to pay. Someone dangles a picture of something shiny and he jumps. This is so weird
The UK trade deal is great because over here it was basically just reported as “the status quo has been maintained”, and then they just moved on to other news items. No one really cares about it.
Trump was going on and on about how America “has the best beef”, and how it’s unfair that we won’t take it, and this trade deal essentially means that farms will have to follow UK food standards in order to send beef (or whatever) to the UK. Since none of them will, essentially nothing has changed.
Right? Nothing has changed except the tariffs that are still in place and will cost the americans money. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
I mean. Empty promises for things to be paid for by somebody else are kind of his Thing. Walls, Tariffs. It makes perfect sense.
It’s easy to just blame the government. When the reality is there is an entire complicit class of voters voting them in
Agreed. But when critical thinking is systematically being removed from the education system, well, you see what happens.
we do nothing to stop it. we are a cooperative society. if we allow this to happen, then the blame is on all of us.
What about those that have only recently learning about the anti-education trajectory from the Right? Or those that are oblivious but would oppose such trajectory if aware?
Am I complicit if I don’t know it’s happening?
if you don’t know it’s happening, you’ve had your head in the sand or spent too much time watching tik tok. there are no excuses.
there is also the rest of us who don’t do anything to stop him and his regime.
Blame lies on the judicial branch for not putting him on the chair for his coup attempt and instead telling before elections he can do whatever he wants, legally.
the blame lies on every one of us. we know exactly what is going on, that the government is broken, and yet we do nothing. we are the last guardrails of this democracy. if we don’t do something, this is the people’s fault.
I ran out of outrage about two months ago.
That was likely the plan. Gl
you have to find balance. the holocaust survivors who taught me how to resist an authoritarian taught me you absolutely must rest, take time to take care of yourself and your family, and mourn your losses. but that period of rest must never be forever. you can’t survive if you simply choose to wait it out. but you also can’t survive if you break yourself fighting back early in the fight
This message should be sent to every US resident each morning.
everyone everymorning everywhere, tbh. even if your world does not feel authoritarian today, it can tomorrow with just one charismatic power hungry sicko. they export their allies when their form of fascism dies off in a place. the nazis survived via operation paperclip. the neoliberal fascists that defined the last era of the century in our country were sent to Ukraine to “help” them. when the era of MAGA ends, their mid ranking terrorists will go to some other humanitarian disaster inflicted by one of the imperial powers that exists as their neighbor. always the host country welcomes them gladly because they’re on the brink of total devastation, but always these exports are snakes waiting to bite.
when we the people are finally free, it will be because our inheritors figured out what we could not: there is no useful nazi. war is how they survive. they convince you you must give them some amount of power to thwart their allies at your gates. the only true cure for nazism comes from rejecting them from society entirely and never allowing them to form their own elsewhere.
nazism is too dangerous to let survive.
You’re right. Scarily. I can’t forget that despite a recent (relative) win I can’t stay complacent even as Canadian.
Letters at the beginning of a sentence get capitalized and this makes it easier to read. You must have missed that day in school; it is like the fucking plague with you.
If semi-poor grammar in an interlocutor’s message is enough to distract you from said message’s meaning, then you are a miserable person, both alone and around others.
Let’s not be grammar Nazis when conversing about real Nazis, maybe?
it’s my personal style. i’m not going to change it. i do it to honor someone
I’m a stickler but jfc
who cares
of all the issues with how people type online, this is the one you take enough issue with to comment?
Not cool man. It’s the Internet
Nah, the problem with the residents of the US is most think they can rest forever and someone else will do thework.
i call it sleepwalking. the worst part is the most dangerous sleepwalkers think they’re awake
It’s like running an engine at redline forever. It’s not sustainable. Something’s gotta give.
That’s his exact plan. At some point you have to tune out and focus on your own life, and he’ll still be there, just less visible and thus more dangerous.
As if there’s any way to escape his stupid ass. The least political things in the world are talking about him. He’s unavoidable and he likes it that way.
It’s more like the earpieces in Harrison Bergeron that keep you from having a complete thought.
Okay, now that you’re past the initial outrage stage and able to think with a clear, focused head about this emergency, what action are you going to take?
(Unless you’re not from the USA in which case my apologies)
This post reeks of Israeli propaganda. Ahmed al-Sharaa renounced al-Qaeda many years ago and has a lengthy, demonstrated record as a moderate, inclusive leader who fought both the Assad regime and ISIS at the same time. A moderate Arab leader who protects ethnic minorities is a threat to the Israeli narrative about their neighbors.
It’s still corruption tho. Whether or not they misrepresent that dude I know nothing about doesn’t take away from the fact that Trump is as easily bribed as a toddler.
No argument here about Trump, but I think the misrepresentation is problematic
Agreed, so far I prefer this guy over Bashar al-asshat.
If we are denouncing Guerilla/insurgent/rebel leaders offhand for basically fighting against imperialists and dictators, even if their methods aren’t bloodless or ethical, then we would also need to denounce José Mujica, former president of Uruguay who died today, one of the most progressive and honest leftist leaders the world has known.
Are you really going to compare the fight to restore democracy from a military coup as the same as trying to install a theocratic dictatorship
Congratulations! You have earned the “Fell for Israeli Propaganda Award!”
Or maybe saying Al Qaeda is bad shouldn’t be a hot take…
You totally read my mind. The campaigners against Trump for aligning a little bit with some Arab countries (through bribes of course) totally normalize the infiltration of the Israelis into the western governments. AIPAC literally bribes politicians and boasts about it continuously and of course the politicians return the favor by funneling more taxpayer money to Israel.
Also, remember how Israel rigged theatrical disputes with Biden administration, only for us to discover later there was zero pressure from the Biden administration on the Israelis whatsoever. The Biden administration literally was in on the genocide as much as the Israelis. The Israelis like to play along and pretend they lack enough support so they can suck even more western resources.
Also, remember how Israel rigged theatrical disputes with Biden administration, only for us to discover later there was zero pressure from the Biden administration on the Israelis whatsoever. The Biden administration literally was in on the genocide as much as the Israelis. The Israelis like to play along and pretend they lack enough support so they can suck even more western resources.
source please
So you see that big ole thing at the top that says “opinion”? That means you should be a little more wary of what you’re reading. Clicking through to the Twitter “source” it says Netanyahu tanked the negotiations, not that Biden wasn’t pressuring Israel.
Here is a source, stating the obvious, which everyone knew and saw.
Tbf the fact that the Israelis are putting out propaganda in this issue is, in my opinion, a tiny bit of a good thing. If a wedge is driven between Trump and Bibi over this it is a good thing.
It is terrible in every way, shape or form, but if this turns out to make Trump shift policy in the middle east, whatever the reason, might have a sliver of good in it.
Syrians deserve peace and stability, but that is not at all what is being offered here. Sanctions are cruel, and it’s worth celebrating that they’ve been lifted, but the cost looks like it’s going to be an international effort to pillage and exploit Syria.
These puppets did nothing while israel systematically bombed most of Assad’s leftover military infrastructure, stockpiles, and vehicles. Literally hundreds of airstrikes without any meaningful response. They’re barely disputing occupied territories, even as they expand. Instead they’ve gotten into border skirmishes with Lebanon, attacked the Syrian Druze, and killed thousands of Alawites.
The testimonies of coastal massacre escapees are harrowing. There are more widely publicized stories of door to door executions, but there’s another pattern I heard described several times by people that lived in smaller villages.
Security forces would show up in uniform during the day, ask around about locals and their backgrounds, and disarm the population while assuring them that they would be protected. Then at night, there would be a brutal attack, and what I heard again and again is that the groups doing this are one and the same.
CW: descriptions of horrific NSFL videos:
I’ve seen them laughing as they took turns beating an old man to death. I watched one execute a teenage boy mid-conversation. I’ve seen mass graves full of children, women, elders. I’ve seen dozens of civilians of all ages and identities in lines along roadsides, against walls, some with bound wrists, some clearly mutilated. I’ve seen military vehicles spray entire apartment buildings with machine gun fire.
It’s ludicrous to describe this demon as protecting ethnic minorities while his forces have systematically killed thousands in an ethnic cleansing campaign. There were a few scattered clashes with Assad loyalist forces, but Alawite civilians were then described as such in order to justify liquidating entire villages.
Just because this monster puts on a suit, gets some official uniforms for his dogs to wear for the public, it does not change who he is and what he does. Don’t be fooled by the hollow condemnation of what he dismisses as the actions of extremist elements. This entire regime change operation has been undertaken not by Syrians seeking liberation, but by foreign powers conspiring to strip the country and its people for parts.
Thousands of Syrians trusted this new regime, believed it could be a step in the right direction, and were instead brutalized and exterminated. al-Jolani is an implant and a foreign instrument, and he’s given himself 4-5 years in power. Syrians did not choose him, other states did.
Afaik there’s no evidence that al-Sharaa ordered those attacks on Alawites.
One thing to understand is that Syria is in an extremely unstable situation at the moment. Al-Sharaa is leader of an already fragile group of militants/terrorists that’s barely held together. He can’t afford war with Israel, because the resulting counter-attack might shatter his government. He’s not fully in control either, leading to these horrible attacks on minorities by certain wings of the armed forces. Militants he has less control over still seek revenge against the Alawites for their support of Assad.
He basically needs to stabilize the country, centralize control and demonstrate that Syria will rapidly improve under his rule. That is no easy task, and it’s imo not surprising that the civil war is not over yet in certain parts of the country.
IIRC the EU put as precondition of sanction relief that he gets the militants under control and stops the attacks on minorities. I don’t know for certain that he will or even wants to (he might be a moderate amongst militant Islamists but that’s still fairly extreme), but I also don’t have conclusive evidence that he won’t.
