The McCarthy Hearings. It is my opinion that Hollywood became enraged they had to prove they weren’t Communists (some where, but some like Lucille Ball certainly were not). A lot of people cooperated and snitched on their colleagues. Vietnam didn’t help, either.

I remember how people used to think the same about Bob Mugabe. He made 95. And that was then.

Mugabe was an empty shell, running on pure hate. I dont think he was alive in the traditional sense for a very very long time before his quote "death". There was so much hope for many there when he died, but that quickly evaporated as the system he built was of course relativly unaffected. The morons at Chatham House, describe his tenure as: "with all its stunning successes and grievous failures." I suppose half right is better than entirely wrong.

In 1969, the number one song in the USA was made by a band that never existed, The Archies.

Macron just fired a missile that only exists because France refuses to do what Britain does. Britain's nuclear missiles are stored at a US Navy base in Georgia. The UK leases its Trident missiles from a shared pool of 58 kept at Kings Bay. They're American-built, American-maintained, and British submarines cross the Atlantic to re-arm. The warheads are British, but the delivery system runs through the Pentagon's supply chain. France looked at that arrangement decades ago and refused it. The M51.3 that broke the surface near Le Vigilant weighs 52 tons, stands 12 meters tall, and carries its warheads 10,000 km at Mach 25. ArianeGroup built the missile, and no other company in Europe can build one at all. CEA made the warhead. The submarine that fired it came out of Naval Group's yards. Every link in that chain sits on French soil, under French control. Independence at that level costs over €7 billion a year, roughly 13% of the entire French defense budget, to maintain about 290 warheads. Britain gets its deterrent far cheaper by riding on American logistics. The cost structure hides the real asymmetry though. If Washington ever stopped servicing the Kings Bay pool, Britain's deterrent would start aging out with no domestic way to replace the missiles. France's wouldn't change at all. That's what "to be free, one must be feared" means in budget terms. France has spent 60 years paying a premium for the one insurance policy that doesn't depend on anyone else honoring it.

@MarkRuffalo is known to be one of the nicest guys in Hollywood - and beyond. Takes a lot for him to call anyone a bad word. So when he calls Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken "war criminals" - based on his interactions with them throughout the Gaza genocide - take it seriously.

Where is my extra sack of nopes? I don’t have enough for this.

I watched a long and difficult but worthwhile movie recently called "Silence," by Martin Scorsese. 17th-century Portuguese missionaries in Japan found themselves in an impossible predicament: renounce God, or possibly pay a greater cost. The local Tokugawa Shogunate was determined to stamp out Christianity. However, just killing the priests simply made martyrs out of them and caused more conversions. So they made the padres watch as their parishioners were tortured to death with ever-increasing creativity until they finally agreed to renounce their faith. The priests were ready to be martyred themselves but couldn't stand watching the suffering of their flock. And once the priests were broken, it was only a matter of time before faith died. How horrible, right? But then you reflect that the Japanese knew about the vast Portuguese empire of the 17th century. Christianity was a national security threat. Once people start believing in a foreign faith, how long can it be before Japan gets subverted by outsiders? The fact that the religious justification just so happens to be so useful to empires doesn’t mean it’s not sincere, though. In fact, it has to be sincere. Without the true faith of the padres, who would be inspired to believe? It occurs to me that today's human rights activists and pro-democracy NGOs are the missionary class of today's American empire. Or call it the rules-based international order, if you will. Since my own apostasy away from liberalism, I've found it almost impossible to just have a conversation with Westerners from that class. Because with them you are no longer arguing facts; you're arguing faith. They literally believe that the only political system with legitimacy is liberal democracy, and they believe it as fervently as the padres believe in Jesus. Well, I have an idea for them if they truly want to promote democracy around the world: go home and convince the American government to stop messing with other people's elections. This is the way the world works right now: the more open your society, the more free speech, right of assembly, and multi-party free and fair elections you have, the easier it is for the US government to rifle through your politics like an open box of chocolates and take what they fancy. Ever heard of NED? If not, look it up. The problem with the padres was never that their faith in Jesus was disingenuous. It's that once everybody got baptized, the conquistadors' pointy swords wouldn't be far behind.

.@rep4robbo. 1/2 It's a completey false analogy. Nbody s trying to excuse Russia, certainly not I. I think the invasion ws both stupid and wrong. I think the best response to provocation is to ignore it. But if you saw a man in a pub trying for an hour to provoke his neighbour at the bar, you'd hardly be surprised if the object of the provocation eventually hit him. .

2/3 .@memckenist. Thatcher and Mitterand dreaded reunification, but the USA was fine with it, and so London and Paris were powerless to stop it. Since then EU and NATO expansion have followed the directions - Balkan, Baltic, Caucausus, Ukraine, which Wilhelm II pursued in 1914.

It’s so strange that you can oppose WWl, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or pretty much any war from this century or the last as a complete disaster that never should have been fought and it’s a complete safe position. In fact, it seems almost no one can even attempt to offer a rationale for any of them. But, it is radioactive to even question the wisdom of fighting the Second World War. On its face, that’s just weird.

Small thing called the Holocaust might have something to do with it. One of the most documented atrocities in recorded history. Perpetrated by one of the most evil figures in history who had widespread support not in a Third World country full of tribes in caves or jungles, but in a first world, esteemed, technologically advanced and educated country. With a Nazi ideology that captured a population to believe that annihilating the Jews of Europe and the world was a moral virtue. Plus the Allied forces liberation of the camps who witnessed the horror firsthand, and the concerted efforts of the survivors and their family members to testify and bear witness to ensure it did not happen again. Given all that, sounds perfectly reasonable that people who question whether or not we should’ve fought and defeated such evil forces that threatened the world order might raise an eyebrow or two. Not weird.

Queer ( correct), sock you in your goddam face ( rude).

Arab Jews lived in Palestine and throughout the Middle East without issue until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The wars you speak of were the result of European Jewish settlers aligning with Britain to help them kill Arabs.

Sad. Seems like Latin America is getting one-shotted by evangelical Christianity. It truly is the crack to Catholicism’s cocaine, as far as opiates of the masses go.

The average wait time in the UK, for the record, is about 3 months. In the US, it’s 32.7 days, which took 30 seconds to Google. This guy is not fit to hold office and that’s setting aside that he is totally Muslim Brotherhood.

Do you have any evidence he's "totally Muslim Brotherhood"? Just curious. It seems like a pretty weird charge to lob against someone without evidence

A floating monster…

Woke Right guru Curtis Yarvin and Tucker now both openly lamenting that Hitler didn’t win WWII. These people are nuts. (And, ironically, they’re also cheering on the invasion of Islamists, while simultaneously arguing Nazis would be better.)

What happens when we settle Mars?

Just a decade ago, the very phrase « Starbucks in Xinjiang » would have made no sense whatsoever. Around that time Xinjiang, was in the throes of jihadi terrorism. In 2014 just 3-4 km away from the new Starbucks at the Grand Bazaar, five assailants ploughed 2 SUVs into the crowds, hurling dozens of explosives along the way. 43 people were killed, including 4 attackers. 90 or so were injured. They were morning shoppers and old ppl taking their exercise at the North Gongyuan st market. The attackers were identified by Chinese authorities as a part of ETIM/TIP and deeply embedded in within the global Salafi-Jihadist movement. They have a multi-decadal alliance with Al Qaeda, operates in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban and have deployed thousands of fighters into the Syrian civil war fighting with jihadi coalitions like HTS. The goal: to promote the concept of violent Jihad as religious duty to every Muslim and to build a global caliphate. This is not a homegrown movement, but the same transnational jihadi networks the US battled in the Global War on Terror. Some Uyghur fighters even joined ISIS because Al Qaeda was too soft and accommodationist…they are not satisfied fighting for Xinjiang province, they want total, borderless, global jihad. There are about 12 million Uyghurs. Traditionally they are of the Sufi tradition. These ETIM/TIP guys are a fraction of a fraction, but they messed everyone’s shit up. 74-year-old moderate cleric Jume Tahir, the Uyghur head imam of China’s biggest mosque, was stabbed to death by young radicals after condemning separatist violence. Any Muslim that did not support their salafist-jihadi vision was a legitimate target. A decade and change later, Xinjiang is totally safe. Open for business, open for tourists. And people are complaining the baristas are dancing in the Starbucks? Just the fact that there is a Starbucks where you can go and get an overpriced bullshit latte in Xinjiang is a fucking miracle. For Han and Uyghur (and Kazakh, Tajik etc etc) alike.

If I were a whistleblower, I would just say everything there is to say all in one go. Total data dump. Just seems like the game theory optimal way to max survival.

I'm Irish and I stand with Ukraine.