Just riffing on a popular concept. I totally agree.

How paradoxical.

So I read your the other guy’s edit on the original post, too, and I agree. HOWEVER, now is a time for us to stand up for principles and speak clearly about what we believe. Playing the devil’s advocate is fun, but counterproductive in a world with so many devils willing to advocate for themselves.

Since I just realized you’re not the guy I originally responded too, I guess it all comes down to this:

(And I won’t give you my opinion on it.)

I’m sharing my opinion. If your opinion is the same as mine, then let’s join our voices instead of engaging in relativist masturbation. If your opinion is different, then you’re wrong and we can talk about why if you’d like.

And to be clear, I’m a relativist, to an extent anyway.

Sure, but freedom of speech should be protected from government prosecution or suppression to the extent possible - a simple concept that seems to be fading from our collective memory more and more with each passing year.

It’s cool bro, we’re going super hard on opsec.

Strengthening cooperation among our adversaries…✅

A huge amount of highway funding is tied to “alternative mode choice” - specifically bike infrastructure. If they revoke these grants, state DOTs and municipalities are going to have to cancel a lot of road paving projects that include bike lanes.

Well, I assumed constant thickness, so if that’s true, you might be right.

Fun fact, a taller, narrower can uses more aluminum!

Basically anything off of Idles’ 2020 masterpiece, Ultra Mono. Grounds is probably the most direct fight song. My other favorites are War, Mr. Motivator, and Carcinogenic.

I couldn’t help myself…

Edit - probably should have left “Reality:” in. See revised meme below.

I would also like to know, lol.

Look, I left something unsaid, certainly. I can’t say that this particular incident would have happened or not if Israel were not currently engaged in genocidal acts on a daily basis. What I can say is that Israel clearly uses antisemitism as a shield and a pretense for those genocidal acts, and in less dire times, for the decades of lower level but equally unjust and horrific oppression that has characterized the occupation of Palestine from the beginning.

The ONLY time I experienced targeted antisemitism (graffiti & threats at my synagogue) as an American Jew growing up in a liberal area, was in the lead up to the second intifada as the Camp David Accords fell apart. So yes, antisemites are responsible for their own antisemitism, and antisemitism like any kind of prejudice is fundamentally unjustifiable - of course. And no, by that token, of course nothing Israel could do would justify antisemitism. What a moralistic statement like that misses, however, is the reality that antisemitism ebbs and flows with the state of the conflict in the holy land, and that Israel uses it as a self-reinforcing narrative to justify their ongoing crimes against humanity, paradoxically reinforcing the very thing they claim to be fighting against, and making the world less safe for the people they claim to fight for.

And to make it all very clear. I am blaming antisemites for antisemitism. Conflating Jewish identity with the state of Israel is antisemitic. Zionists are antisemitic.

Israel is not only less safe for Jews than anywhere else in the world they live, but it also makes Jews in those other places less safe as a result of its belligerence. As a born, raised, bar mitzvah’d and confirmed Jew, fuck Israel.

Hey, it’s my god given right to take it up the ass from corporations. I’m voting for Trump so he can reverse this radical marxist fascist rule on day one.

Is CNBC blocking VPN access? I get an “access denied” error when trying to visit this link.

Okay, but only if these guys show up to arrest me.

At this point, what doesn’t crash the Texas power grid?

If you read the full article, it seems as if the Saudi religious establishment was infiltrated by Egyptian extremists fleeing a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of Sadat. Their ideology meshed with Wahhabism and Bin Laden’s religious vendetta against the United States. The Saudi state apparatus did not have effective oversight over the religious establishment and so this all happened under the House of Saud’s nose. The countries in red are (at the time) places with either US puppet regimes or some form of Arab Revolt descended, nominally secular/socialist regimes. The religious extremists pushing Islamic rule operated in these countries under various militias and terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, backed by the newly radicalized Saudi Wahhabi establishment, and of course, Iran.

From that perspective, the US was waging war against militias and terrorist groups with roots and support in Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud was not considered to be complicit. The article goes on to say…

Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.

Interesting stuff, to be sure.

He was more than a hero. He was a union man.