Obama’s mom was CIA.

This may be true for the World Cup, but the MLS broadcast I think is much more aligned with how the sport is shown across the world.

Meta is funding age verification efforts, not social media bans. Those do two different things. Meta doesn’t want to prevent young people from accessing social media, they just want cover for when they get sued for allowing minors to access certain things, so age verification laws pass the buck to the government.

I’m convinced social media bans are primarily driven by the Zionist lobby, as well as others who want to see access to information limited (the rich and powerful writ large, as they have much harder time controlling social media than they do traditional media). An entire generation across the globe despises Israel as they watched a genocide live-streamed to them via social media. So they want to cut off the youth’s access to information to prevent that from ever happening again.

FYI HP (and Dell, but not Lenovo) are priority targets on the BDS list. Please do not support them even if they support Linux.

OP’s photo is my favorite, so I will have to mention my second favorite (though calling it a “favorite” feels off).

This photo was taken in 2003 in Iraq. This man is comforting his son. They are being held in an American camp. IIRC to this day we don’t know what happened to these two.

I think if I had to explain the last 25 years to a time-traveler, this would be the one photo I would choose.

I think the whole “we’re taking over Venezuela” is just your typical Trump bravado. I believe user xiaohongshu on Hexbear has the correct angle:

I think everyone is too fixated on the empire getting into a long war but I don’t think that’s the goal here.

Just like Trump’s B-2 stunt on Iran’s Fordow back in June, the US operation was a quick in, quick out operation. Nothing seems to have significantly changed on the surface, but the message has been sent. The US is sowing political instability in the region, and it scares away foreign investments especially China’s.

Just look at China-Iran trade numbers, it’s plunging by 20% this year. Chinese investors are pulling away because they cannot see profitable return in Iran and the surrounding regions. This worsens the economic condition in Iran, and months later, we see the Iranians protesting as a result.

The same play is being replicated in Venezuela here against Latin America. The US has no interest in getting dragged into a long war. It wants to demonstrate how easily it can upset the political balance in Latin America. Do you seriously think that Chinese investors will still want to invest billions on Venezuela seeing how easily the leadership can be kidnapped?

The investment’s gone, and the US simply has to sit back and wait for the situation to deteriorate even further, and the regime change opportunity will present itself. But it’s not even about Venezuela, it’s about the US dominance over Latin America.

I will be honest, I was expecting the US to do IOF / Palantir type actions and try to take out government and civilian leadership several levels deep. While taking out a single leader rarely does anything, removing an entire leadership structure in an already unstable situation can be devastating. The fact that, for now, the US is stopping at “just” Maduro encourages me that the Bolivarian Revolution will continue on, now with even more support from the people.

I think now it will be a battle of how much the Trump admin can do in the face of international condemnation (outside of US vassal states, that is) and likely increased support of Venezuela from its neighbors. Trump will almost certainly dig in on sanctions until Venezuela hands over their oil. But I don’t see that happening, so I don’t know what happens.

America is truly an evil country.

But when you dig into the history of the US in the 20th and 21st centuries, you start to notice this isn’t just a “Trump” thing. Outside of WW1 and WW2 (though the US had spurious reasons for joining WW1), the US has been the bad guys in every other instance.

The US is the imperialist hegemon, Trump has just been more open about it.

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

Americans look around at all the cheap commodities around them and think “yes, capitalism is the best system for organizing an economy”. What they don’t realize is just how much this lifestyle has been the direct result of exploitation of workers and resources in the global south, destruction of the environment, consuming at a level ~5x what the earth can sustain, not to mention US dollar hegemony and a military with 800+ bases around the world that can impose the will of capital (which realizes cheap stuff is needed to pay off the working class in the global north. When capital is no longer able to maintain this, I genuine believe workers will question this whole “capitalism is the best system ever” thing.

The DPRK is showing that, despite global condemnation, they were 1,000% correct to pursue a nuclear programme.

Trump keeps pointing to “their navy is gone their air force is gone” as proof the US is winning.

Years ago Iran evaluated what kind of a war they might face, and determined that their best shot was through massive amounts of ballistic missiles, drones, and small watercraft. This meant significantly de-prioritizing a traditional air force and navy. So yeah, they don’t have really any capital ships or fighter jets, but they never had much of those in the first place and haven’t been prioritizing that part of their military. But their missile and drone stocks - to say nothing of actual soldiers in their army btw - are all still doing pretty great actually. Destroyers and interceptor jets aren’t going to win the war for Iran and that was never their plan anyway.

The US is absolutely NOT winning this war, and they will not be able win this war.

I for one am very thankful for our beautiful Democratic Party, which while all this craziness has entered a fever pitch, they have been loudly and boldly speaking out against this every minute of the day and not focusing on unimportant matters like trying to trash talk Hasan Piker and taking personal vacations to the beach.

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella wrote in a rambling post flagged by Windows Central, arguing that humanity needs to learn to accept AI as the “new equilibrium” of human nature.

I’m starting to notice a recent trend in tech CEOs. They seem to be saying “yes, we know you hate it but too bad get used to it”.

https://bdsmovement.net/

Schumer is a hardcore Zionist and always has been. He won’t publicly express it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s delighted to see what Trump is trying to do to Iran.

Reading about Google’s proactive involvement with the IOF in Gaza is truly sickening.

Unclear what he means at this point, my hunch is it means allowing for a larger US military presence in Greenland but no transfer of ownership, watching a live interview with Trump now and he’s definitely avoiding any implication that Greenland will be “owned” by the US.

from the producers of Homeland

That explains a lot (Homeland was an incredibly Islamophobic show even by post-9/11 US standards).

I think this is something that’s not being considered enough. This really struck me a few months ago when Trump was talking about Portland being some lawless, smoldering ruin when everything there was just fine (except for the ICE presence ofc). Obviously Trump lies about everything but the way he talked about Portland was odd, like he really believed it. Also just a weird thing to lie about, when it’s so obviously not only not true but incredibly not true.

I think the people around Trump were feeding him false info about Portland. Probably telling him things like “sir Portland is literally burning to the ground and crime is out of control”. I honestly think they are probably feeding him a steady diet of AI slop videos and telling him it’s what’s actually happening in the world.