Sudan, Venezuela, And Other Notes

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The Guardian has a report out which says that at least 60,000 people were murdered by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) when they captured El Fasher in October, which would be the largest single massacre since Rwanda in 1994. Just in the last few days the RSF have reportedly killed 46 children and scores of adults in suicide drone attacks.

These massacres are made possible by the United Arab Emirates, who have been funneling weapons to the RSF through a complex international supply chain. Much like the Saudi-led genocide in Yemen from 2015 to 2022 (which the UAE also participated in), this is yet another instance of a tyrannical Gulf state monarchy committing unfathomable atrocities while its friends in Washington look the other way.

In 2017 a leaked State Department memo explained that it is internal US policy to tolerate human rights abuses of US-aligned nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt while making a big deal about alleged humanitarian abuses in places like Iran. The UAE is a regional partner of the United States, so its genocidal crimes are overlooked.

President Trump has made a few noises about making peace in Sudan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has obliquely wagged his finger at the UAE for its role in the genocide, but meanwhile these mass atrocities are taking place completely unimpeded.

It’s cute how the western empire artificially props up these genocidal Gulf state dictatorships and then bangs on about the importance of supporting Israel and its genocidal atrocities because it’s “the only democracy in the middle east”. It’s like, YOU killed the democracy in the middle east, bitch.

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As the US war machine escalates in Venezuela I’m seeing more and more online accounts claiming to be Venezuelans urging Trump to attack Caracas and remove Maduro by military force.

As a general rule you should always be skeptical of anyone saying “Please invade/bomb/sanction my country,” because it means they either (A) aren’t living in that country, or (B) have some socioeconomic reason to believe they’ll be safe from the repercussions of what they’re asking for which everyone else will suffer from.

But honestly it doesn’t even matter if they are 100 percent legit. I don’t care if you really are an impoverished Venezuelan civilian living in Venezuela, it’s still an indisputable fact that US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous. Your position isn’t made any less stupid and crazy by where you happen to live; anyone who supports US regime change interventionism is still always wrong.

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If Maduro really was a monstrous tyrannical dictator the US would be selling him F-35s.

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What’s funny about Trump supporters who justify war with Venezuela because it’s “in our hemisphere” is that they don’t mean it’s in the same hemisphere as the United States. They mean it’s theirs. They see half the planet as a direct US territory.

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The Washington Post has published two separate articles in the last few days admonishing Americans for complaining about being unable to afford groceries, one titled “Actually, today’s food prices are a bargain” and the other titled “Why you may not want lower prices as much as you think you do”.

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post to yell at the poors to quit whining and work harder.

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After genocidal war criminal Joe Biden was elected in 2020 I wrote an article titled “Biden Will Have The Most Diverse, Intersectional Cabinet Of Mass Murderers Ever Assembled”.

On Friday the Hague fugitive former president was presented with an award at the International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference for running “the most inclusive administration in US history.”

The US empire is impossible to satirize.

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I’m good with so-called “extreme” pro-Palestine positions like saying every Israeli family who wasn’t there pre-Balfour Declaration needs to leave, because you never come to the negotiating table with your compromise. If you come to the Israelis saying “Perhaps we might one day have two small pieces of land with no military?” if you’re lucky you might wind up getting a pat on the ass and a slice of land the size of a Walmart parking lot. If you begin from the position of “This entire state is illegitimate, all of you get the fuck out” you’re starting from somewhere that might actually end in a positive outcome for Palestinians.

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I saw an account I follow on social media talking about their “relationship” with a chatbot the other day. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone doing this. For some reason people feel compelled to not only engage in this behavior but also to ask for support and validation about it from their online community, like they’re coming out of the closet about a sexual orientation or something.

It’s weird because obviously I’m not going to go pick on someone who’s plainly suffering from crushing loneliness and probably some mental health struggles, but also it’s so painfully dystopian. This is a really dark thing that’s happening.

I mean, what does it say about people that they can feel like they’re having a loving relationship with something that has no subjective experience? An essential component of any real loving relationship is an acute curiosity about what your partner’s experience is like, what they’re feeling and thinking and what it’s like to be them from moment to moment. If you’re not having that, then obviously you can’t really say you care about them. But some people obviously don’t experience interpersonal relationships with others in this way, because if they did they wouldn’t think that what they were having with these chatbots was a relationship.

But then again I’ve definitely interacted with people who relate to others in that way. If you’ve ever been trapped in a corner at some social event by someone who monologues at you about their own thoughts and interests without taking any interest in yours, that’s pretty much the vibe you get. They’re not relating to you as a real person with your own thoughts and interests and subjective experience; to them you’re just a sounding board for their own thoughts they want to hear themselves saying out loud. In such situations I’ve literally found myself thinking “I don’t need to be here for this conversation. I could replace myself with a nodding animatronic replica and they’d never know.”

So maybe it’s better that some of these people aren’t in real relationships, I dunno. If you’re emotionally incapable of seeing your partner as a real person like yourself, maybe it is better if you’re not roping a real human being into an emotional relationship with you and just spending your time verbally masturbating into a mechanical ear instead. At least that way you’re not hurting anyone else.

So I’m not quite sure how I feel about this just yet. Hell of a time to be alive.

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