Israel needs to stop existing in the form it currently does.

If the only way you can stand up for men is by putting women down, you're just playing the same game as the people you oppose. — T Clark

This is great.

As it should be.

All the more reason 3rd Tri abortions are the most important kind to protect.

My 30+ years old position is, I suppose, the "extremist" one (as the old post exerpted shows): abortion on demand – as an inalienable Human Right – even in the third trimester. — 180 Proof

:up:

Yeah imagine taking into account foreign powers when conducting uh, foreign policy.

I quite liked the real life example of a bunch of NOSs who tried to live like libertarians only for things to go completely haywire, and that was before the bears arrived as started mauling people:

By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute.

So there were all sorts of negative consequences that started to crop up. And meanwhile, the town that would ordinarily want to address these things, say with a robust police force, instead found that it was hamstrung. So the town only had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldn’t put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didn’t have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle. Basically, Grafton became a Wild West, frontier-type town.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling

Although I imagine for libertarians the number of sex offenders going up is not a negative.

Russia: We will take retaliatory steps.

Finland: We are safer now!

--

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Aj5wnc3mI00J:https://newleftreview.org/issues/i234/articles/peter-gowan-the-nato-powers-and-the-balkan-tragedy+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&

Another fun read on how the West - that is to say, NATO under US leadership - effectively ensured that the Yugoslavian massacres would be as horrendous as they were:

There is a powerful impulse within the electorates of the nato states for their governments to give a lead to the world and really help the less fortunate overwhelming majority of humanity to improve their lives and strengthen their security and welfare. But we must bear in mind two unfortunate facts: first, that the nato states have been and are hell-bent on exacerbating the inequalities of power and wealth in the world, on destroying all challenges to their overwhelming military and economic power and on subordinating almost all other considerations to these goals; and second, the nato states are finding it extraordinarily easy to manipulate their domestic electorates into believing that these states are indeed leading the world’s population towards a more just and humane future when, in reality, they are doing no such thing.

The fate of Yugoslavia in the 1990s has been a classic case of this general story. nato electorates thought their states were trying to help in Yugoslavia, even if they were not ‘doing enough’. In reality, Western policies promoted the descent into barbaric wars. There are occasions when advanced capitalist countries will help the populations of other states. But these occasions are rare, namely when the welfare of the populations of these other states is a vital weapon in a struggle against another powerful enemy. This applied to us policy towards Western Europe when it was threatened by Communist triumph in the early post-war years. The welfare of the people of Yugoslavia has been irrelevant to the nato powers in the 1990s because these powers have faced no effective enemies whatever.

...It is surely right that institutions should be built that can put a stop to such acts of political violence and can punish their perpetrators. But we face an acute dilemma when we confront this task because we know enough about the dynamics of politics to be able to identify not only the perpetrators of atrocities, but the international actors who helped and continue to help create the conditions in which such perpetrators arise. And, in the Yugoslav case, the Western powers, by their deliberate acts of commission and omission, played a central role in creating the conditions in which barbaric acts were bound to flourish.

History repeats itself.

Anyway, this is a fun read about recent German cowardice, among other things:

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/return-of-the-king

If Germany had the courage to ask for a say on the American-Ukrainian strategy, nothing like this appears to have been on offer: the German tanks, it seems, will be handed over carte blanche. Rumours have it that the numerous wargames commissioned in recent years from military thinktanks by the American government involving Ukraine, NATO and Russia have one way or other all ended in nuclear Armageddon, at least in Europe.

...De-industrializing Russia, à la von der Leyen, will not be possible anyway as China will ultimately not allow it: not least because it needs a functioning Russian state for its New Silk Road project. Popular demands in the West for Putin and his camarilla to stand trial in the International Criminal Court in The Hague will, for these reasons alone, remain unfulfilled.

...Ukrainian politics apart, an American proxy war for Ukraine may force Russia into a close relationship of dependence on Beijing, securing China a captive Eurasian ally and giving it assured access to Russian resources, at bargain prices as the West would no longer compete for them. Russia, in turn, could benefit from Chinese technology, to the extent that it would be made available. At first glance, an alliance like this might appear to be contrary to the geostrategic interests of the United States. It would, however, come with an equally close, and equally asymmetrical, American-dominated alliance between the United States and Western Europe, one that would keep Germany under control and suppress French aspirations for ‘European sovereignty’.

This being a far more astute analysis than @Christoffer's completely naive and frankly delusional idea that "China won't dare to touch Russia after this".

The hubris is unbelievable. You come up with a load of armchair speculation ranging from the motives of leaders, the military tactics of armies, political strategies, economic repercussions... And then have the shameless ego to assume literally any other such guesswork is "nonsense". It just beggars belief. — Isaac

:up:

Anyway I'm sorry that your entire world view is supported by the existence of the state that must be hard for you.

Oh the poor baby hasn't heard of rhetorical questions either.

Is this what happens when you lick boots this much? Literal basic facts seem like 'projection' to you? Like, I'm sorry you don't know how contracts work, or what they are. Maybe you missed this bit in your grade school education which explains why you are so fucked up?

I worked for that money and acquired it through the voluntary consent of all parties involved... — NOS4A2

... enforced on pain of state intervention, as with every contact ever, on whom both parties rely.

To think that we and Finland would just bow down and kiss the US's ass is fucking moronic. — Christoffer

Yeah! Why would Finland do that when you can just argue for ... *checks notes* Finland bowing down and kissing US ass?

If Ukraine had joined NATO earlier — frank

If Ukraine had attempted to join NATO earlier Ukraine would have been invaded earlier.

I guess it makes sense if you like your dead Ukrainians with an earlier dead-by date.

Why do you think getting into a security alliance is important to be done now and not after Russia rebuilt its military capability? — Christoffer

That's the thing: I don't. Because believe it or not, I think sharpening antagonisms leads to - you'll never guess, ever ever - more antagonism. I realize this is really hard to understand for those conditioned to see anyone who does not fall into line with American interests as an enemy who must be destroyed or put down. But that's something for you to wrap your head around. The only reason Ukrainians are dying day-in and day-out is because of people like you who figured that 'security' meant continually making the world less safe. As it so happens, I think this is a bad idea. This has nothing to do with moralism and everything to do with not being a cheerleader for death.

Also I sometimes wonder what it is like to be a sociopath who cannot fathom the idea of holding views that do not follow from one's own direct interests, but it is nice to have people like Olivier around as specimens of such.

Last I checked the Russians were bogged down fighting on the corner of a fifth-rate tractor powered nation, with GPSs duct taped to the dashboard of their planes (probably UK pripaganda but the point stands), so maybe you shouldn't use your own pants-shitting to advance the interests of the most deadly power on Earth?

Joining a club of war criminals whose actions percipitated a deadly war for the sake of a third party seems like a bad way to defend yourself.

Oh go have a sop about it cry baby.

You're the one advocating the acceleration of Russian antagonism while wearing the hat of 'security'.

Or, you can just respect Finland and Sweden's will to seek security against Russia. — Christoffer

Or I could like, not. There is every reason to disrespect a bunch of morons propagandized by an American war machine gleefully parading dead Ukranians around to help secure its geopolitical primacy.

Scale that up to 20 years. Scale that up to multiple nations invaded by Russia. That's what we seek security against. — Christoffer

Scale that up since WWII and globalize it and you'll get roughly to where the US stands with things. But they tend to kill brown people instead of good ol Europeans so I'm sure you'll be fine.

And of course it's a great argument for security to think: Russia invaded because of concerns over NATO expansion. In respose, we should expand NATO more.

Also considering that NATO only continues to exist so that the US can commit mediterranian war crimes without UN sanction is probably also a good reason to not volunteer oneself to a club of war criminals.

You asked a question and I answered it. Now you seem very upset to have had it pointed out that your preferred murderers and rapists are nice enough to leave you alone on account of you benefitting from them.

It's simultaniously both entirely unsurprising and completely shocking that people have not yet recognized that the US is the greatest threat to world peace without compare.

We're not seeking security against the US because there's no risk of them murdering, raping, and killing our children. — Christoffer

Yeah because you benefit from them doing so elsewhere.

Did the US go through villages and towns to specifically loot, rape, execute and kill children? — Christoffer

Yes. At one point, a full 90% of drone strikes in Afghanistan targeted civilians. The person who leaked that figure is now in jail. The other person who exposed American war crimes is also languishing in jail, on the cusp of being extradited to the US to languish even more. The famous 'shock and awe' campaign at the start of the second Iraq war murdered more than 7000 Iraqi civilians. Guantanamo bay is still in operation, to this day. Afghanistan is in a famine after the US stole $7b USD from their state coffers. @Issac has mentioned more.

You're just bootlicking for your preferred war crime committer.

:up:

Russia will also shoot lazer beams from the moon and also make acid rain from the heavens and also whatever made up trash I can make my imagination conjure so Finland should totally join NATO.

Also the Russians are doing very very very very badly in this war, which can obviously be reconciled with the fact that they will expand this war into other countries, and this sentence does not in any way make anyone who utters it look like a fucking monkey.

--

Can't wait till the US sends Palestine weapons to fight Israel murdering its journalists.

The irony of people like NOS whining about the state monopolizing violence is that such violence is outsouced to states by corporations, who rely on the state to carry out violence on their behalf. Private property as such is a legislative formalism backed up and enforced by nothing other than the immense power of the state, which consistently exercises that power when called upon by corporations, who would not exist without it. What a state provides, which corporations cannot, is a semblance of legitimacy, even as the state works directly for such corporations.

And of course the violence of corporations manifest in a myriad of ways: the destruction of environments - oceans, forests and urban ones - the ruination of living standards though the suppression of worker's rights and safety, the continued commodification of basic living necessities which lock people out of things like housing, healthcare, and even baby food, cancerous monocultures of food that fuck up people's health, the global division of labour that prays on poorer nations and keeps them in poverty, etc.

Corporations don't exert violence on bodies (except of course in developing countries where they freely assasinate environmental activists and so on). They exert violence by destroying everything that allows those bodies to sustain themselves. The violence on bodies they leave to the state.

What a shithole country

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/amen-snorter-rotten-fish/

I know this is just preaching to a choir but the choir is allowed to enjoy every now and then:

For Morrison, words are just distracting noises that come out of a hole in his head. They are not connected to any logic or fact or principle. They are not constrained by anything he has said or done in the past, nor do they commit him to any future course of action. To expect otherwise is to make a categorical error. Morrison’s political career provides no grounds for believing that he will ever give a straight answer to any question, offer a cogent and consistent argument, explain himself in any way, or do anything he says he will do. He has never baulked at any hypocrisy, small or large. He speaks in order to make the very act of questioning him an exercise in futility, addressing no concrete reality beyond the immediate imperative to generate static. It is a form of anti-oratory: the rhetorical equivalent of avoiding an awkward conversation by starting up a leaf blower.

...Morrison is, according to Sheridan, ‘the prime minister for all Australians, for Australians of all faiths and none’. The only problem with this assertion is that it is demonstrably false in all but the most narrowly technical sense. Morrison has led what may well be the most indolent, nasty, bumbling, dishonest, cynical and corrupt federal government in Australian history. In his term as prime minister, he has failed to achieve a single lasting reform for the long-term betterment of Australian society. He failed even to propose one. He has proved himself, over and over again, to be an abuser of executive power, a substantive policy vacuum, and a legislator of surpassing ineptitude. His ideological stance is little better than a collection of antipathies pursued in a spirit of vindictiveness. He is as dogmatic as he is shallow. The keynotes of his time in office have been rampant cronyism, industrial scale rorting for partisan ends, the funnelling of vast sums of public money into the coffers of private vested interests, deliberate undermining of public institutions, and an evident distaste for the very thought that the federal government should use any of the vast resources at its disposal to help anyone who actually needs help.

On these points, Morrison has been absolutely consistent. The major catastrophes of bushfires, floods and the pandemic have done nothing to alter his basic stance. Faced with the spectacle of his fellow citizens in desperate need, Morrison has responded in ways that are belated, inadequate, grudging and skewed — every single time. The defining feature of his political career is that he always seeks to use his position of power to disadvantage and, in many cases, actively punish sections of the populace he regards with disfavour. These include but are not limited to academics and university students (those studying the humanities, in particular), public school students, aged-care residents, Indigenous Australians, women, people with disabilities, anyone who relies on the public health system, Muslims, the entire populations of Victoria and Western Australia, gay and transgender people, everyone who works in the arts sector, everyone who lives in a safe Labor seat, and everyone who understands that climate change is a serious problem. Hands down the most disgusting and shameful piece of maladministration in recent Australian history was the Robodebt debacle, which weaponised the federal bureaucracy against the citizens it was supposed to be serving, targeting the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. The scheme was a shakedown, carried out with such calculated menace that it drove a number of its victims to suicide. It was subsequently found to be illegal. Morrison was its chief instigator.

Why don’t you just admit that this is an accurate description, NOS? At least be honest. Put down the laissez faire and liberty bullshit. If you have no interest in democracy or liberty at work, you have no interest in democracy it liberty. — Xtrix

It's why libertarianism is essentially the ideology of bosses. Working people are well familiar with the everyday tyrannies of the workplace, from Amazon employees who pee in bottles or sick workers held hostage by employer issued insurance. Bosses, who are not labor, only ever feel their own freedom limited by the state in the form of regulation and taxes, and then take this as the model of opression that should be generalized to all of society. It reflects nothing other than an inability to excercize unlimited tyranny, which they will cry about because they can't willy nilly force labour to scramble for whatever scraps they deem worthy at throwing downwards.

I'm very tired of people putting down to ignorance what can be explained by the fact that some people are genuinely horrible people. I think it is a self-comforting move made to imagine that the world has some good arc or something. It doesn't, and NOS in particular is a fascist, so I will disagree. He does not need an education. He needs to be treated like the tumor he is.

NOS is (willfully?) confused — ZzzoneiroCosm

He is not confused. He likes corporate power. He sees no issue with it. Do not be charitable with fucks like him.

Cait J with the goods, as usual:

It's just a simple fact that the Biden administration is actually hindering diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to this war, and that it has refused to provide Ukraine with any kind of diplomatic negotiating power regarding the possible rollback of sanctions and other US measures to help secure peace. Washington's top diplomats have consistently been conspicuously absent from any kind of dialogue with their counterparts in Moscow. 

Statements from the administration in fact indicate that they expect this war to drag on for a long time, making it abundantly clear that a swift end to minimize the death and destruction is not just uninteresting but undesirable for the US empire. Ukrainian media report that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Zelensky on behalf of NATO powers that "even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not."

---

...The imperial political/media class are not even denying that this is a US proxy war anymore. In an alarmingly rapid pivot from the mass media's earlier position that calling this a proxy war is merely an "accusation" promoted solely by Russia, we're now seeing the use of that term becoming more and more common in authorized news outlets. The New Yorker came right out and declared that the US is in "a full proxy war with Russia" the other day, and US congressman Seth Moulton recently told Fox News that the US is at war with Russia through a proxy.

"At the end of the day, we've got to realize we're at war, and we're not just at war to support the Ukrainians," Moulton said. "We're fundamentally at war, although it's somewhat through proxy, with Russia. And it's important that we win."

---

...And it's not just a proxy war, it's a proxy war the US knowingly provoked. We know now that the US intelligence cartel had clear vision into Russia's plans to launch this invasion, which means they also knew how to prevent it. A few low-cost maneuvers like promising not to add Ukraine to NATO as well as promising Zelensky that the US would protect him and his government from the violent fascist factions who were threatening to kill him if he honored the Minsk agreements and made peace with Russia as Ukrainians elected him to do. That's all it would have taken.

Many, many western experts warned for many years that the actions of the US and NATO would lead to the confrontation we're now being menaced with. There was every opportunity to turn away from this war, and instead the US-centralized empire hit the accelerator and drove right into it. Knowingly.

The whole thing was premeditated. All with the goal of weakening Russia and effecting regime change in Moscow in order to secure US unipolar hegemony.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/ukraine-alone-makes-biden-the-worst?s=w

Recent US government votes:

Senate votes:
78-17 for a $10 billion bailout to Jeff Bezos
90-5 for a $125 billion corporate tax break
87-6 for $53 billion to corporate outsourcers
88-11 for $780 billion to war profiteers
58-42 against a $15 minimum wage

So yeah, there is absolutely a problem with taxes but that's what happens when a state is a corporate subentity with a military.

These fucking libertarians are totally, 100% OK with corporate tyranny that rules over when you can literally go to the bathroom between 9am and 5pm but will get mad about having to pay taxes.

I mean if I were American I would also think paying taxes is a rort because it all goes to builidng bombs to kill childen in Palestine or Ukraine anyway, but that is not the libertarian issue.

Yes - I mistook American excitement at another war for just another extention of the Russuophobic propaganda they had been peddling for years. I should have known better.

I got that wrong and still at least I didn't say something so fucking stupid like The West doesn't like war.

Their global reach is intact at the moment. — frank

Yeah so long as they keep pumping money and weapons in to produce dead Ukrainians.