MolotovHalfEmpty

joined 5 years ago
[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 7 points 11 hours ago

Exactly. Plus it's a red meat political issue for the kind of reactionary gammons they're exclusively chasing for votes now in the way that a private company isn't (even though the RAF planes were owned by a hedge fund).

 

The harrowing, infuriating, heartbreaking documentary that the BBC commissioned but then tried to bury & refused to air because of their ties with / pressure from the Israeli government was broadcast on Channel 4 here in the UK last night. It seems to have had good audience numbers and powerful reaction judging by the lib discourse this morning. But it might be tricky for comrades outside of the UK to watch via Channel 4's on demand service.

Luckily Zeteo has done a deal to put the whole thing on their website so anyone can watch it (and it is worth a watch, even if you know the information contained within it).

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 26 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Not yet. It'll be debated in the Lords later today & likely come into effect at Midnight on Friday night.

There's also an online action meeting about next steps at 7pm UK time on Friday and if people are new to direct action there's still a crash course online at 7pm UK time (but for international audiences) you can signup for tonight.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 39 points 13 hours ago

Here in the UK the Co-Op supermarket has dropped Israeli products entirely after it won a vote in their AGM. The banking & insurance side of the business already doesn't do business with Israel.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 9 points 13 hours ago

Dino grabber emoji when?

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know why the Dino grabber is wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat but this is really cute.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 23 points 14 hours ago

Somehow there's something even sadder (and just as disgusting) about these centrist melts doing the nostalgia 'Return' thing for an era as recent as the 90s. I have zero tolerance for the fascist longing for an imaginary 1950s that didn't exist but at least it feels far enough away and there's a lack of media of ordinary life that you can make it into kind of fantasy themepark of nostalgia. Somehow this shit is even more pathetic.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 8 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

He was the Health Spokesman for them up until 2021. I don't know what if anything he does now. He tried to become a Green MP candidate at one point but did pretty badly. He was like the sixth choice or something.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 12 points 14 hours ago

Yeah, they are better than most but there is only 4 of them.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Exactly. Even here in the UK we recently agreed to meet Trump's demand for 5% of GDP on military spending and stalking about building a war economy, but even then we're doing it by fudging the budgets to include not only traditional military spending as per NATO request but things like 'border security' and domestic surveillance. Lots of which won't be used in service of Ukraine or missions abroad, but repression at home.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 8 points 23 hours ago

The timeline of the process over the next few days:

There's also an online action meeting at 7pm (UK time) this Friday about broader resistance next steps and direct action introduction workshops online every evening this week before the process is finalised.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 43 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I hope she chains herself to the gates of an alligator farm & live streams herself crying because the gators didn't obey her commands. croc-pog

 

They're based in Georgia and do other stuff too, but I just thought these were neat.

 

Since according to Bill Ackman the presence of a place you can buy eggs without a 100% markup is going to plunge NYC instantly into a Mad Max / Escape from New York style hellscape, what gangs are we all joining?

Personally I'm thinking the one of slightly sexy cultists who worship bodega cats.

How about you comrades?

 

One of the actionists who shut down and Israeli arms supplier has written an article that's at once a defense of their actions and a call to action.

It's a good read and comes as the government is trying to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group, which would allow the state to imprison people for up to 14 years for supporting the group.

 

A silly (but biting) sketch for a dark time.

Also, Hexbears have taken the Amerikkkan moonbase:

 

Hexbear salutes our bee comrades for their praxis and sacrifice!

rat-salute kim-salute chavez-salute deng-salute sankara-salute fidel-salute-big fidel-salute maduro-salute rosa-salute rat-salute-2

 

There's an enormous media and social media push at the moment to lionize the two Israeli embassy 'diplomats' killed. Everything from tearjerking jagoff stories about how he'd just proposed to the more prominent and seemingly constructed narrative that he was at this event trying to 'help' the situation in Gaza and 'talk about how to get aid to Palestinians'.

That's a fucking lie. He was exactly the sort of fucking ghoul you'd expect. And we can tell this in part because they haven't scrubbed his Twitter or all of his articles yet (although Google results state that a number of results for him have been removed under the EU 'right to be forgotten' law, so no doubt it's underway).

First of all, he was a German-Israeli citizen who volunteered who seems to have volunteered for the IDF.

Secondly, according to people he'd worked with and studied under, he was a Christian Zionist with a rabid love for the Israeli political project in particular.

His views were as you'd expect. A vile, smug, hasbara operative who spent both his personal and professional time spreading genocide apologia, barefaced Israeli lies, conspiracy theories about the UN, attacked & vilified aid organisations before & after Israel killed their workers, and rejected international law when the ICC & ICJ didn't tow the line.

Right up to the final hours before he was killed, he was retweeting statements denying starvation Gaza and calling it 'blood libel'.

Was he fuck working on aid solutions. He was an ideological Zionist fascist and a genocidal freak who had fun helping to perpetuate it. He should be remembered as such.

 

Wait, we are?

Looks at my Friday (almost) clocking-off time bottle of 0% alcohol beer, uncooly.

columbo-donk

 

I have no idea why this tweet appeared at the top of my feed today, but since it did I thought I'd share.

(CW! Ableism/R-slur in Tweet)

Angelica Oung is a Taiwanese neoliberal "China Watcher" online who churns out anti-China content and was apparently embarrassingly starstruck by the Halo mask YouTube guy. Only she (and others judging by the responses) are now saddened by the fact that Noah Smith has turned out just to be a racist idiot who publicly accuses them of having been turned by Chinese spies if they suggest a source that has anything to do with China, even on other subjects, and who'd get mad and bullying if they didn't support his completely made up conclusions.

Full tweet below:

SMH, Noah, I thought we were friends.

Let’s rewind: the year was 2020 and I was a little no-name business reporter from the Taipei Times tweeting out my articles and takes. Noah Smith reached out on DMs to chat. Followed me a retweeted a few times. I was star struck! Wow! Noah Smith noticed lil ol me! I just about doubled my follower count!

My friends in LA were so excited I was noticed by public intellectual Noah Smith. Wow, Angelica! You really made it! Do you think you’ll get to meet him? Oh sure, I replied. He’s very interested in Taiwan. When he comes to visit and I think he will, I’ll be his one-woman welcoming committee.

Noah did reach out frequently to ask questions on Taiwan, but increasingly it seemed to me that he was asking for confirmations for his pet theories and would be vaguely annoyed if I don’t affirm them. Importing massive quantities of Vietnamese mercenaries to defend Taiwan? I dunno Noah. Are Vietnamese mercenaries a thing? What about the language barrier?

There’s a Peter Zeihan-like quality about Noah. He seems really smart on things I knew nothing about and gradually became more ignorant as he approaches my area of expertise (Taiwan and energy). Still…I was astonished that he blocked me when I pushed back in public on the idea that all you need for a modern grid is solar and batteries.

That’s fine. At some point he unblocked me cuz we were invited to the same conference. And I was always careful not to get blocked again until he was asking for good sources on India/Pakistan last week and I said a lot of the sinosphere accounts have been good and early.

His responded with “I’m going to go back through your tweets to find out exactly when you got turned.” And then I got blocked…again.

I’m sure Noah wasn’t the only one who blocked me or I lost credibility with because I’ve compromised my integrity by passing on “Chinese propaganda.” I don’t know to what extent I’m cancelled, but I do notice a very different lineup of regular commenters under my post these days. And that makes me sad.

Because the people who used to follow me and boost me when I was enthusiastically participating in Taiwan’s vapid COVID-era aura farming online are the ones who needs to read me now the most, or they’ll keep getting China wrong. But they won’t.

Hey! Peter Zeihan and Gordon Chang are still at it so I’m sure being chronically wrong on China won’t hurt Noah’s career either!

In a way, they’re more pathetic than grifters because at least grifters have agency. These guys don’t even know that they’re wrong…I think. Their natural removedation just so happens to fill the spiritual need of an anxious and arrogant west as they look to China’s rise.

 

Former guerrilla, teacher, philosopher, and President of Uruguay José ‘Pepe’ Mujica, has died aged 89. In musical memorium, here's 13 minutes of afrobeat featuring one of his speeches (excuse the automated translation):

We promise a life of waste and waste. Deep down, it is a countdown to nature and humanity. Civilization against simplicity, against sobriety, against all natural cycles, against all natural cycles

But worse

"civilization" against the freedom of having time to live from human relations the only thing transcendent: love, friendship, adventure, solidarity, family...

Today is the time to start fighting to prepare a world without borders

The globalized economy has no other drive than the private interest of very few

The great task for our peoples, in our humble way of seeing... is the whole

It would be imperative to achieve planetary consensus

To unleash solidarity towards the most oppressed

Tax-catching waste

And the speculation

Mobilize the great savings

Not to create disposable

With calculated obsoleence

But useful goods, no frivolities

To help lift the world's poorest

Yes, the high politics intertwined with wisdom

Our time is potentiously revolutionary

As you have not known the history of humanity

But he has no conscious driving.

Or less driving simply instinctive

Much less still

Organized political driving

Because we haven't even had precursor philosophies

We need to govern ourselves, or we succumb

This is our dilemma

Let's think about the underlying causes.

In the civilization of waste

In the civilization of insisting that what you are throwing away is time for wasted human life

Squandering on useless issues

Think of human life as a miracle

That we are alive by miracle

And nothing is worth more than life

And that it is our biological duty, and above all things

Respect life and drive it."

He certainly did.

 

Solidarity in finality that has lived in my head since their first record.

(Grumble: what is the point of prioritising yewtube if any yewtube URL gets flagged as invalid and unpostable by Hexbear?)

 

I did a silly thing while stuck on hold for over an hour at work.

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