did you ever notice that all the nations that pursue this course of action are labeled as “rogue nations”?

it’s like they’ve successfully convinced their people with their own propaganda that whomever doesn’t toe the american/western hegemony narrative is a “rogue nation”. lol

very early and i’m hope i’m just a bitter old man that wants to see the world change for the better during my lifetime. lol

there was a mural of this nearby where i lived in austin, but i could never find out who did it because my google searches just showed seemingly random results when i searched for “hi, how are you”

adding in “daniel johnston” into the search terms has finally made me aware of it’s background and the wikipedia article about it is bizarre considering that i first became of aware of it when i witnessed the austin police beat up and harass homeless and clearly mentally unwell people nearby an advertisement version saying “thai how are you” and the wiki article says this:

In 2018, the Mayor of Austin, Texas, declared January 22 (Johnston’s birthday) to be “Hi, How Are You Day”, a day dedicated to mental health awareness funded by the non-profit organisation of the same name.

now knowing that it gained widespread popularity due to kurt cobain makes it feel like a formerly niche cultural reference has been co-opted by the mainstream and now its original intention is so far gone that it has become an advertisement vehicle where basic civil rights can be seen abused by an authority that pretended to embraced it less than a decade ago.

The willful ignorance displayed by the pro-capitalist political groups (eg liberals, conservatives, most libertarians, and some anarchists) make it clear to me that bothering w the mask of “international law” is meaningless now as exemplified by statements like “quit talking about Gaza” or “Ukraine didn’t provoke Russia” being embraced wholesale despite proof to the contrary easily available w a single 30 second Google search away.

People make up their minds based on repetition of talking points that they get from both legacy and social media and the people who take any efforts to investigate beyond these taking points are labeled as malcontents at best and tankies at worst and doomed to watch society repeat history.

this leaves trump to do as he pleases with venezuel, gaza, iran, etc. and only the people who pay attention; whether through personal interest or a desire to dig beyond the talking points; will be the only ones aware of what’s actually happening and willfully ignored by a huge majority of people, including international bodies like the UN.

this part from the article probably says it better:

Joe Biden justified bombing Yemen to the public by saying it needed to preserve “product shipping times.” Trump justifies bombing Venezuela because “300 million people died of drug overdoses last year,” a number that no one finds credible, but it’s just as well, a blatantly false claim no one is perturbed by any longer.

these kinds of actions make it clear that BRICS is nowhere near strong enough to stand up the G7.

my old managers used to call it “being productive” and i’ve been catching myself saying it lately.

it makes me feel like it need to wash our my mouth with soap. :p

when i delete a post or comment, it’s usually because i realized that i responded to the wrong comment or that i posted in the wrong community; will it still show in such circumstances?

pure grade colOmbian shit! lol

the rape thing was the story that opened by eyes to intense level of propaganda that i saw from guardian; new york times; washington post; etc.

i have difficulty reconciling how people regard them as trustworthy while automatically disregarding other sources like al jazeera or telesur as propaganda.

why wait; i’m doing them now. lol

i go with how bluesky’s inventor felt about it when he decided to abandon it.

i suspect that “messaging” only works if you’re sufficiently conservative.

liberals and leftists alike agree (to different levels) that conservatives; especially maga; are less educated and entitled and that’s why easy messaging slogans like “stop the steal” and “there are only 2 genders” works so well for them since it doesn’t require them to get off their asses to do sufficientlyvigorous research to educate themselves on how that messaging oversimplifies the issue.

also, liberals complain that the democratic party needs to improve it’s messaging to broaden their appeal to american voters. the problem with this seems to be that that american voters share some degree of academic laziness when it comes to understanding the issues, but they’re still generally more educated than maga so slogans don’t work as well. you can see examples of this over and over again on social media when people complain that nobody “reads beyond the headlines.”

i’m learning that one of the key differences between leftists and liberals is the effort to self-educate with ANY kind of academic rigor (ie more than google searches) and doing so enables them to see past any sort of messaging and that most of the messaging that has been successfully adopted has been created by people with with a political agenda in mind.

i think that pushing the democrats to improve their messaging is a misdirection because any messaging for liberals is going to automatically contradict the education any better educated crowd (compared to maga) has received.

i also think that the biggest barrier for any liberal to understand why they’re stuck in neo-liberal fascist late-stage capitalist world is doing their own research with SOME kind of academic rigor since it take A LOT of effort to not only change the way most of us have been taught to live, but also been educated and inculcated since birth.

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.

— Gore Vidal

part of me wishes i hadn’t read through this because the way you’re taught to read-between-the-lines in any literature in the west combined with the american narrative of chinese authoritarianism that all of us have been swallowing since birth makes some of the wording read like copy-pastes from some propaganda that you would expect to encounter from a dystopian novel like 1984.

these in particular are cringe worthy::

Nearly 60,000 participants attended the sessions, including … susceptible individuals aged 16-45 …

Director Abduwaiiti actively guided them to bear in mind the General Secretary’s instructions, focusing on the overarching goal of social stability and lasting peace. He emphasized taking the lead in four areas: loving the country and its people, enhancing religious knowledge, abiding by laws and regulations, and resisting extremism.

Subsequently, two inmates took the stage to share their personal stories of repentance, recounting their journey of remorse.

the entire basis of 60,000 people willing taking in a lecture from government officials also sounds suspicious AF to westerners. we popular regard anyone willingly doing so as subversively intellectual or socially bizarre in some way because it’s assumed that any “normal person” would naturally rather pursue something more entertaining if they’re not coerced to do so otherwise.

this is a bit of cultural double standard because all western cultures universally regard these sorts of lectures as fundamental and important; but at the same time we popularly only expect people with an agenda or “odd balls” to engage with it willingly.

it’s pretty clear to me that there’s a cultural disconnect between westerners and the chinese; with the latter exhibiting cultural norms so lofty that westerners regard it as unrealistic or unachievable and that makes the entire episode seem suspicious to us and now i think i can now understand how the “Uyghur genocide” propaganda took root.

it’s missing the words “authoritarian” and “dictator” lol

this is why i stopped driving out of necessity; i learned i’m prone to road rage.

now i only drive to go visit a fuck buddies who live in the suburbs and it puts me in a fantastic mood back and forth. lol

Likewise for Mexico, but they finally went third party almost 10 years ago and things are finally getting better.

That is until the United States invades them… Again.

cockney; such wonderfully bizarre sounds.

and now you spend all day penned up and eating feed and wondering what happened to your favorite being who disspeared yesterday. lol

i stopped buying hardware intended for windows a few years back with none of them having a windows key and now it’s a nice reminder to me of my “sacrifice” every time i actually do see a windows key. lol