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Reposted by flyingrodent

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 6h

Yglesias of all people had a real insightful post on this 15 years ago, probably because he is prone to the same exact behavior archive.thinkprogress.org/four-reasons...

So that’s that. You can, however, always get more psychological. I was 21 years old and kind of a jerk. Being for the war was a way to simultaneously be a free-thinking dissident in the context of a college campus and also be on the side of the country’s power elite. My observation is that this kind of fake-dissident posture is one that always has a lot of appeal to people. The point is that this wasn’t really a series of erroneous judgments about Iraq, it was a series of erroneous judgments about how to think about the world and who deserves to be taken seriously and under which circumstances.

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Reposted by flyingrodent

HK @hkesvani.bsky.social · 9h

Really funny to see people critique the left for not giving Trump more praise for "bringing peace to the middle east" while ignoring the fact that the ease to which America could stop Israel bombing every child they could see does sort of beg the question as to why it didn't happen sooner

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Reposted by flyingrodent

FOREVER WARS @foreverwars.bsky.social · 13h

“If Israel wants to actually prevent the next October 7, in whatever form it will take, it must free Palestine,” writes @attackerman.bsky.social. “The rest is commentary. Or avoidance.”

‘The Barbarism of The Enemy’

Notes on the third ceasefire, and prayers that there won't have to be a fourth. Free Marwan Barghouti. Free Palestine

www.forever-wars.com

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Reposted by flyingrodent

pickwick @pickwick.bsky.social · 19h

Fucking BBC reporter reading the headline "the SNP deputy leader says they want MORE immigration??!" as if they've said they want to move Scotland to the moon rather than reiterated their long-time stance on immigration

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 20h

It seems like sorry really is the hardest word

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 20h

The irony here is that everyone who wilfully collaborated in turning politics into this disastrous, idiotic shitshow really does deserve to be clamped into stocks and pelted with rotten fruit.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 20h

Put it this way: I am every bit as worried that Labour are threatening Reform with violence as I was concerned that e.g. Stonewall are bigots, the Labour left are Hitlerian racists or the National Trust are anti-British traitors. These are the stupid prizes we have won for playing stupid games.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 20h

Where might the arsehole Farage have got the idea he can profit by throwing himself down in the street and rolling about gargling in fake terror, screeching about how the left are bullying him

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 22h

They set him pretty straight when he announced they could all fuck off, because he was PM by merit with a personal mandate. Wrecked that in about six weeks.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 22h

The crankier fascists in Israel’s government came out right away saying that the aim was to drastically cull the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, flatten as much as possible to make it unliveable, then herd the survivors into a much smaller happy camp. And that is precisely what they have done

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 22h

When the system stops paying out, the people who run it start flailing desperately, revealing what they really are.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 22h

Faith in the system depends upon people believing it is basically legit, and it has been impossible to believe that ever since we watched all of these clowns indulging that oaf, then ridding themselves of him when he became too embarrassing to tolerate.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 22h

Bluntly, you cannot have senior political correspondents reading out obvious bullshit they’ve been sent by Dominic Cummings live on the ten o’clock news, and maintain the pretence that Britain is a functional democracy. It breaks the whole thing, makes it plain what it is and always was.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 22h

In Britain specifically, “Prime Minister Boris Johnson” was the moment it was made very clear that everyone was lying and the whole system is a fraud, and what followed is not better, but somehow even worse. All of this stuff is also very bad, but right there is the core issue.

Alex von Tunzelmann
@alexvont.bsky.social
I bang on about this a lot: I think the combination of a global pandemic, underregulated internet/SM, collapse/ corruption of trustworthy media, plus now unregulated genAl, is a wildly toxic environment for radicalisation & mental health. We see the results of that in our politics & lives every day

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

A test: can you stop embarrassing the fuck out of everyone by baying for genocide, for five fucking minutes, is that possible

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

Watch how quickly everyone will switch to “time to go” when they get destroyed next year. Everyone will always have been saying he was a no-hoper.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

They’re going to have to go at it hard as fuck too, because it’s bent as hell, entirely their fault and absolutely disastrous

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

All of the Sensible Moderates can see the train coming down the tracks and they’re in charge of whether we decide to move or not. And their decision, right up to the last minute, is going to be: absolutely not.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

Everyone fully understands this government is a catastrophe and that it’s setting us up for much worse. There will be an attempt to roll it in glitter next year, after they get annihilated in several elections, but the horrible politics are mandatory and non-negotiable, and they will not change.

Kathy O'Donnell @kathyodonnell.... • 22m
That energy and those skills are mostly coming from what Labour might consider its hinterland - and they won't be coming back.
Polanski has been in place a month.
In Scotland, Labour has collapsed.
At council level, Reform are a disaster.
Four years ahead, the McSweeney folly will be clear.
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刀企…
Kathy O'Donnell @kathyodonnell.bs... • 4m
Then there's the eleven trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party. There's widespread dissatisfaction and criticism from union grassroots and leadership over the rightwards lurch of the Parliamentary party.
What if they decide Starmer's Labour does not represent their interests and ethics?

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

This bit in particular: what, our leaders just decided that the UN aid agency were terrorists, then replaced them with mercenaries firing machine guns at starving civilians? Everyone involved needs to be tried for war crimes then sent to prison for decades.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

Anyone in this government or military should be afraid to travel to another country for the rest of their lives, because they know they’ll be arrested straight off the plane.

A Test Now for Israel: Can It Repair Its Ties to Americans?
Israel's advocates fear that its conduct of the war has cost it the support of an entire generation of U.S. voters.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

It really is infuriating that our politics has been mutilated to accommodate these crimes and ensure no negative consequences for the people who facilitated it. If the system won’t punish these people then the public has to instead, at every election for the rest of their lives, if necessary.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23h

Sheer banality of evil stuff here

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 1d

While the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland | Nesrine Malik

Western leaders attending the Sharm el-Sheikh summit have enabled and sponsored this slaughter. They are in no position to build a Palestinian future, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by flyingrodent

Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 1d

Capitalism reduced to its purest essence - a huge wad of rich people’s money, circling the globe looking for opportunities to manipulate financial systems into generating more money out of thin air, hanging the liability to repay it round someone else’s neck, and running away with the loot.

Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 1d

Private equity wrecked UK high street, says Iceland Foods boss

PE model - low wages, cut staff/investment, high debt, profiteering, tax abuse.

PE devoured Debenhams, Maplin, Byron Burger, Cath Kidson, Comet, Flybe, Poundworld, Toys R Us.

Controls care homes, vets, supermarkets.
archive.ph/tJVkV

Private equity has wrecked the high street, says Iceland boss

Richard Walker says private buyers take out costs and fail to invest then sell to the highest bidder in a cycle that makes retailers steadily worse

www.thetimes.com

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 1d

Grimly amusing that Tony Blair might be too dirty and disreputable for *Donald Trump*. Huge congrats to everyone who loudly ignored the Iraq report then cheered for this guy being knighted, we have shown the world exactly what we are.

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