I’m being a bit defensive and self-referential with this one. My Marc Maron video actually got some views on YouTube and I posted it on a few Reddit subs. But the issue I had — as I did with a few other videos — is people who may have otherwise liked the video dismissed it as AI slop because of the voice over. That’s frustrating to make a high effort video but have it called low effort. Oh well, it’s my karma to get some negative comments on YouTube after all the ones I have posted! LOLZ!

So this video is me talking to myself about how to deal with this problem. Should I change how the videos are produced, embrace it or something else?

Please enjoy.

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Greetings Substackers and Comedy Fans!

Funny thing about YouTube — or the world of content creation in general — is I can download parts of my mind and the AI will suck it up for it’s hive mind. And this one thing about Marc Maron that has bugged me since 2011 can now be turned into “content,” and may someday be quoted in AI summaries.

It’s hardly the hot button issue people are talking about, but since Maron has been in the news lately for retiring his podcast and having a viral Theo Von impression it’s the right time to release this 15-year-old hot take onto the world.

Marc Maron fans will be interested, but likely will disagree with me as they think Gallagher got what he deserved. I just think this video needed to be made because everything Maron has been saying against anti-woke comedians is true tenfold about his idols Dice and Sam Kinnison. If he liked those guys then Maron was yucking it up to a lot of homophobic material back in the day.

So who is he to be so righteous?

Please enjoy this video. This is a different edit to what I will post on YouTube due to copyright claims.

Until my next old hot-take becomes content . . .

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I’m just a simpleton who really loved the Matrix sequels when I saw them in theatres’ in 2003. I thought this was the best action I’ve ever seen brilliantly coupled with ideas doubling down on philosophy, computer coding concepts and the engineered control of society. I re-watched the movies several times and they always held up. At the times there were some bad reviews but I just disregarded them. Why would the critics think such great forward momentum that are entertaining from start to finish bad?

But many years later when I got into watching video essays I was told that no actually I was wrong to like these movies because . . . too much exposition . . . conventional script writing concepts not followed. Jarad Baur’s video essay for the channel Wisecrack made the most persuasive argument for this. And after exposition was pointed out to me I couldn’t unsee it in any movie I saw. And exposition is often done in a clunky and obvious way that decreases the viewer’s enjoyment of the movie. But even after acknowledging the points Beaur made — and I guess he succeeded in lowering my esteem for the films for the time — eventually I came back to them.

But the Matrix trilogy are comfort movies that I can watch over and over as they are for many people. You could have them on in the background as you clean your apartment and never say to yourself: oh there’s the boring part.

The way Matrix Reloaded had agent Smith downloading his mind into a human for a cliff-hanger ending was golden. This was just non-stop gripping shit.

When it comes to fodder for on-line content creators the films you see analyzed over and over again are The Matrix and the Dark Knight Returns. The analysis of their greatness as films and relevancy to current political and social trends never ends. It almost becomes a cliché. Like come on bro, can’t you think of any other movies to talk about?

This is just my reactionary take to that. I am a contrarian bravely defending exposition when know one will. I am to exposition what Micheal Tracey is to the Epstein files.

My thoughts on this have been consistent the whole time, I didn’t like the characters above when I saw the movie 23 years ago and that is still my opinion.

No other criticisms.

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It was truly a magical concert.

A singer who had shown bravery that few could. She risked incineration by airstrike or molestation by prison guard for humanity’s most pressing cause: to feed the starving genocide victims of Gaza. Along with Greta Thunburg and hundreds of other daring souls she had attempted to deliver food to the beaches of Gaza, only to be intercepted by IDF Parademons.

San Francisco’s finest motley crew of tatted green hair genderqueer commies – and some that could pass for normies – experienced a pinnacle most baby boomers only pretend to remember: an authentic moment of politically charged folk that was simultaneously sorrowful and heartening.

Every element of what you would want in a concert was there: musicians at their peak in skill and relevancy and a dedicated audience who knew and joined in for every song. The Chapel, located in San Francisco’s Mission district is a jewel of a club that is ideal for the folk music or stripped-down-rock experience. The perfect acoustics garnered a closeness with the performer that even extended to the barfly at the back of the room.

And what could be more cathartic than to connect in-person with the anti-war commoners just as the monstrosity of U.S./Israel hegemony’s dragon tail drenches Persia’s magic carpet with oozing odoriferous slime.

And while you are there why not stop by the booth of the Peace & Freedom party and officially sign up as a socialist? Blanton never stops intertwining her music with activism. Lol!

More clips from the concert:

A video of Blanton aboard the Flotilla:

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The anti-war movement got an unlikely voice in February 2022: Tucker Carlson, a blue blood FOX news host who had been a cable news hack most of his career. He had a been a promoter of the Iraq war in 2003 and now did routine segments about the “crisis on the border” as FOX programming dictates. If someone tuned into FOX news in 2002 they would see Bill O’Reilly doing nearly the same crisis at the border story as Carlson in 2022. When open borders became a genuine problem under the Biden administration liberals didn’t take it seriously at first because FOX had been crying wolf for decades.

But something had changed in his worldview by 2022 and he had adopted libertarian ideas that America should be a non-interventionist country. He, like many conservatives, realized he had been wrong about Iraq and he did not want to see America become involved in another quagmire conflict. And he saw America’s massive funding of military bases and military actions abroad as wasteful spending, while the American quality of life continues to degrade due to America not investing properly in its infrastructure and inflation making home ownership by the middle class almost impossible to achieve. These are core beliefs of the Make America Great Again movement.

Which brings us to Ukraine. The propaganda leading up to the Ukraine war was relentless and the narrative of “we have to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s aggressions” was believed by the majority of Americans. This was pushed by MSNBC, CNN and most of the newscasters at FOX like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Carlson was the dissenting voice on the networks, exposing how this was a fraud and the Ukraine conflict is really America’s proxy war against Russia. The massive amounts of taxpayer money going to fund the war was really a gift to the military industrial complex and the Ukrainian politicians who would later steal it. Eventually the “if we send money to Ukraine this helps armament factories are home,” became one of the arguments to support war with Russia.

His voice alone gave rise to the mainstreaming of the “anti-war” right (anti-war has to be in quotations because given Trump’s recent Iran bombing most people will laugh you out of the room if you call the right anti-war). This was the red-pilled MAGA crowd who – like babies born yesterday -- just figured out the media was lying to them, war is bad and the working class are getting screwed. Right-wing podcasters were starting to talk about the media and foreign policy with Noam Chomsky lingo even though they had never read Chomsky. But frequent guests Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore had, and they repeated ideas from Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent to Tucker Carlson, who repeated them to his audience and then suddenly the right had an anti-war movement overnight.

Republicans like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not great thinkers with original ideas. They were just Tucker Carlson fans who were able to turn his ideas into legislative action. Marco Rubio was a big supporter of the Ukraine war in the beginning, but he read the tea leaves on MAGA’s opinion on Ukraine and later changed his position – in rhetoric anyway.

And the most important mind he influenced was Donald Trump. Trump was interviewed by Carlson and told him what he wanted to hear, about how much he hated neocons like Liz Cheney and how he never wanted to repeat the warmongering Bush years. Trump promised to end the Ukraine war on day one because of Carlson. But Tucker neglected to ask Trump how he would handle it if Israel wanted him to get into a war. Like most commentors we avoided that subject entirely until over a year after October 7^th.

But before that we did have the satisfaction of Carlson calling out Zelenskyy for being the shifty-eyed track suit wearing dictator puppet that he is. And for being honest about Ukraine he got fired from FOX news. They didn’t fire him for times when he had gotten it wrong or been dishonest about other subjects – they fired him for telling the truth about Ukraine because the media must always support foreign wars no matter what.

This led to him having his own successful podcast show, and on one infamous occasion he interviewed Vladimir Putin himself. The western media cried out that he was Putin’s puppet and he should be punished for this treasonous action. It seemed like America had forgotten that major network broadcasters used to routinely interview leaders who were seen as enemies of the west. This was not treason, it was getting the other side’s perspective so you would have a more well-rounded view.

Let’s look back anti-war actions Republicans took, as compared to the capitulation to the war machine shown by liberals (see link below)

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS AGAINST WAR WITH RUSSIA

In May 2022 Senator Rand Paul stalled a $40 billion aide package to Ukraine. Paul pointed out that prior to the March invasion the U.S. had already sent Ukraine six billion in military aide since 2014, and as this was the second aid package in two months it summed to $60 billion. This would make Ukraine the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the past two decades. The aid would be equal to the entire military budget of Russia, he said. It exceeded the amount collected on the gas tax to build roads and bridges, equals the entire state department budget and exceeds the budget for homeland security. And America does not have this cash, he added, it will have to borrow it from China, increasing the deficit.

But if the bill were to go through, he wanted it to include an inspector general who would scrutinize and track the spending. This was an addition war hawks Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell could not abide. But why couldn’t they? With the massive amount of $40 billion you would want to track where the arms and money ended up, right? That sounds like common sense.

But no -- an inspector general clause was non-negotiable. If the money was tracked, how would the Ukrainians be able to steal the cash or sell the weapons on the black market? Ukraine is known as the most corrupt nation in Europe, and this is the biggest opportunity for thievery in the nation’s history. The Senators knew they must quietly look away because Ukrainian’s skimming off the top is just an operational cost of this particular neocon endeavor.

Proof that an inspector general was needed came in August 2022 when CBS were about to run a special titled “Arming Ukraine” about how arms sent to Ukraine were falling off the truck, so to speak, along the way. In the documentary the founder of Blue-Yellow NPO Jonas Ohman estimated “only 30%” of the arms shipped reached the front lines. Reaction to this bombshell was swift and severe. By this point Ukraine now had the power to censor American journalists, and they demanded the story be suppressed. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba called on CBS to do an internal investigation. The special was pulled and CBS posted a retraction saying distribution had been improved.

It would have been extremely interesting to have follow-ups on this story so we could have answers to questions like what is the accurate and updated percentage of what is being stolen? Who is doing the stealing? Where do the weapons end up after they are sold on the black market? How big of a taste of the action goes to Zelenskyy himself? But no -- journalists who would accurately report this would be not allowed in Ukraine, and Ukraine no longer allows a free press.

The need for financial tracking and proof of corruption was finally exposed by the New York Times in 2025 when they reported that a former business partner of Zelenskyy had siphoned off $100 million dollars from a nuclear power plant and laundered the money to other countries. Meanwhile Zelenskyy asserted control over state run companies and sabotaged oversight so the government could spend without scrutiny. Officials were accused of embezzling funds meant for weapons purchases and buying food at inflated prices so they could pocket the difference. The most shocking thing in this article was the revelation that Ukraine has an agency empowered to fight corruption at all. The New York Times have had reporters embedded in Ukraine for the war’s entirety and yet sat on this corruption story until they were given the go-ahead to report the truth by Trump’s state department.

In March 2022 Zelenskyy declared martial law, nationalizing all TV news and banning any opposition political parties. Leaders of opposition parties were accused of treason and forced to leave the country. In December 2022 Zelenskyy passed a bill that expanded the power of Ukraine’s broadcasting council, giving it the power to regulate all media in Ukraine. The council can withdraw licenses, issues orders, inspect media facilities and sanction them for dissident speech. All media outlets must register with the government and any news organization not registered can be shut down. It can also restrict content from search engines. Criticizing the Zelenskyy government in the media can lead to jail time. Ukraine was not a safe place to be a journalist even before Zelenskyy gained power, as there were 300 cases of violence against journalists during the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2014. Now the silencing of journalists has been codified into law.

GONZALO LIRA

A memorable example of Ukrainian suppression of free speech is the case of Gonzaro Lira. Lira was a Chilean American YouTuber who had been living in Ukraine since 2014. If you look him up you will find smear pieces on him on Wikipedia and Daily Beast characterizing him as a misogynist right-wing influencer who became a delusional Russian shill. In truth he was reporting first-hand accounts of what was happening in Ukraine during the invasion on his YouTube channel. He was repeating information like death toll rates, NATO aggression, the US sabotaging peace talks, etc, as well as his opinions. There is nothing that was said on his channel -- other than some speculations -- that couldn’t be verified elsewhere. And even if he was wrong in any of his videos, people are free to be wrong if they live in a country that has free speech – which Ukraine doesn’t. In one of his videos Lira blames The Daily Beast for trying to kill him. After The Daily Beast ran a hit piece on him, they called the Ukrainian government to make them aware of his existence so something could be done about him. In April 2022 he was detained for a week by the Ukrainian SBU (Security Service of Ukraine). On May 1^st 2023 he was arrested for the crime of “justification of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” He was released on bail and placed under house arrest. He went back on YouTube with stories of how he had been tortured. Fearing for his life he ran to the Hungarian border to seek asylum. During his flight he posted videos saying this may be the last time the world ever heard from him. And it was. He later died in a Ukrainian prison, reportedly from pneumonia. The prison ignored his illness and left him to die. Upon his death, The Daily Beast ran an article celebrating his demise.

One would think that the U.S. government would attempt to release an American citizen from its ally nation. But the Biden administration did nothing. This story was only reported on by right-wing media, with Tucker Carlson calling him a political prisoner. At the same time, American journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia on charges of espionage. The Gershkovich story was given widespread attention by mainstream media, while the Lira case was ignored.

FORCED CONSCRIPTIONS

The number one victim of this war is the working-class Ukrainian male. These men cannot get bogus exemptions and steal money while in positions of power like the Ukrainian elite. Due to high causality rates and the fact they are outnumbered six to one by the Russians, many Ukrainian men would rather not die for a U.S. backed war of attrition against Russia. This has led to high numbers fleeing to other countries or hiding indoors to avoid forced conscriptions. The territorial recruitment officers (TCK) have employed brutal tactics to conscript men, assaulting them in public and torturing them behind closed doors. They are known as people snatchers, grabbing young Ukrainian men and forcing them into black vans, only to be seen again on the front lines, and later in a coffin. This has led to a public backlash in Ukraine, demoralizing the citizenry and causing them to see the TCK as their enemies.

MATT GAETZ IS AN ANTI-WAR CRUSADER?

As was described in part II of this Ukraine series, the progressive “Squad” (also known as the capitulation caucus) quickly backed down to pressure on Ukraine peace talks and never took any meaningful steps to reach a diplomatic solution. The real peace movement in congress came from the populist right led by Rep. Matt Gaetz. Gaetz and this minority of Republicans were informed from a libertarian perspective and from watching Tucker Carlson. Now there was a split in the Republican party between traditional neoconservatives like Lindsey Graham and MAGA populists like Matt Gaetz.

In February 2023 Gaetz and ten co-sponsors, including Majorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, submitted the “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” which called to “end its military and financial aid to Ukraine and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement.” Some of these Republicans had been against funding since the war began. Thomas Massie, Paul Gosar and Matt Rosendale voted against Ukraine funding in March 2022. The fatigue resolution was attacked by war supporters on both sides of the aisle and ultimately failed. But at least it was a real legal resolution focused on peace. Gaetz and MTG put forth additional bill amendments in July 2023 that were voted down.

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In October 2023 Gaetz boldly moved to block the election of house speaker Kevin McCarthy. Because the Republicans held a slim majority in congress, he could block the election of McCarthy with a small number of hold outs, meaning he could use his leverage to make demands. Gaetz was able to hold the speakership vote up for a week. Democrats mocked this move, saying it showed the Republicans were chaotic, divided and undisciplined -- and the move was blocking important legislation from being passed. Establishment Republicans complained bitterly on Fox News: something democratic is happening and it’s not fair!

Leftists who had been a part of the Force the Vote movement in 2021 felt vindicated that their movement would have worked if “the squad” had not chickened out at the last moment. The plan of Force the Vote was to use the progressive caucus to hold up the election of Nancy Pelosi’s speakership so they could leverage a vote on universal healthcare. The Squad eventually backed off on this plan and it never came to pass. AOC and Co. continue to be useless when it comes to getting votes on the floor for progressive policies to this day.

One of Gaetz’s top demands was related to funding for Ukraine. Gaetz accused McCarthy of making a “secret deal” with Biden to pass Ukraine funding in a separate bill. Gaetz eventually had his demands met and was able to delay Ukraine funding. He was the only U.S. politician able to do something of substance on this issue. In April 2024 he proposed an amendment to a Ukraine funding bill that would ask Ukraine to repay funds given to them so the money could be used to help build a border wall.

In the end the bipartisan war machine was able to get its many spending bills passed. But at least Gaetz had led a valiant effort to end funding and therefore push for peace. However, this is not a celebration of Gaetz as a person who, since his battles over Ukraine, has shown that he is not consistently anti-war. All reporters assigned to the Pentagon recently left in protest after they were told they must obey new restrictive reporting rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. They were replaced by a trove of right-wing influencers who would work as stenographers for whatever propaganda the Pentagon tells them and Gaetz is part of that crew. Gaetz says he supports Hegsworth’s attempts to muzzle the press and recently supported the War Department’s military and regime change actions against Venezuela.

RAGE AGAINST THE WAR MACHINE EVENT

In February 2023 an event that was mixed in attendance between people on the left and right – but more on the right – was the Rage Against the War Machine event. The event was sponsored by the libertarian party and speakers included Scott Ritter, Ron Paul, Garland Nixon, Caleb Maupin, Daniel McAdams, Nick Brana, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Wyatt Reed, Roger Waters, Scott Horton, Tara Reade, Tulsi Gabbard and Jackson Hinkle.

A thought about Jackson Hinkle: Everybody on this list has been smeared as being a pro-Russian shill. But in Jackson Hinkle’s case it’s true – he is a Russian shill. Because Hinkle goes beyond advocating for peace over war, he thinks Russia is justified to commit acts of war and supports actions that have killed tens of thousands of people. People like Hinkle give ammunition to war mongers who want to interpret the term pro-peace as pro-Putin. Hinkle has traveled to Russia to meet leaders and allows himself to be used by Russia’s television propagandists. Hinkle and Tim Pool, who was revealed to be taking money from an organization pushing Russian interests, both discredit the movement for peace in Ukraine. Because they, unlike the virtuous peace activists Code Pink, are motivated by greed.

One of the most memorable things about the Rage Against the War Machine event was Rachel Maddow’s coverage. Who after years of spreading false conspiracy theories about Russiagate, continued to brainwash her audience with a narrative that would be similar to the one FOX news would have made against people who opposed the Iraq war in 2003. In her McCarthyite assessment, “There was a truly random rally on the mall in Washington DC . . . a rally in support of Russia I guess given all the Russian flags. At least a rally against the U.S. supporting Ukraine and trying to stand up against the Russian invasion of their country. It was a tiny event. It was small. It was a weird assemblage of Americans, there were Proud Boys there, some of the white supremacist groups you would recognize from the unite the right rally in Charlottesville a few years ago. Also represented prominently the remains of the bizarre Lyndon LaRouche cult. There were a lot of people with Russian flags and people with flags of the former Soviet Union?? Also at least one person who guest hosts for Tucker Carlson was there as a featured speaker (Tulsi Gabbard). There were anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, a lot of them, there were crypto currency promoters, it was a really weird group . . . “ Maddow hit on all the buzz words that would freak her audience out and make them hate this event. Not one interview with the attendees was in the report -- only speculation on what bizarre racist right-wingers they must be. Even though MSNBC had featured earlier a more balanced reporting on the event that included interviews, that was removed from the MSNBC website after Maddow decided to put her little twist on the story. Videos mocking Maddow did a satire version of how she would have critiqued people protesting the war in Iraq.

A year later there was a second Rage event. This time it was moved to a private location and had much more the feel of a corporate event than a grass roots movement. But it had government contacts and was able to make itself part of Donald Trump’s official agenda. Trump stated he would end the war on day one and “end the dying” – a much saner answer than was given by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

TUCKER USES TRUMP TO GET PEACE AND FAILS BIG TIME

Trump’s failed effort for peace in Ukraine is best explained in this short video:

TUCKER GROWS A PAIR ON ISRAEL

After October 7^th America got to see how anti-war the anti-war Right really were. We suddenly were reminded of the Israel exception, and both factions of the Republican party, the traditional neoconservatives and the MAGA populists both joined together to be lock-stop with Israel. The same people who complained Biden was censoring social media of the subjects of COVID and Ukraine were now totally fine with censorship on behalf of Israel. Ben Shapiro led the way for spreading Zionist propaganda. There was suddenly a whiplash of views on the two wars. When it came to Ukraine liberals supported censorship and endless war. When it came to Israel/Gaza conservatives supported censorship suppressing protestors and the brutal murdering of civilians.

Carlson knew Trump was in the pocket of Israel and was taking big campaign donations from AIPAC and Zionist billionaire Miriam Adelson. And yet because Trump told him what he wanted to hear on Ukraine he endorsed Trump’s candidacy. For almost a year after October 7^th he was silent on Gaza until the notion came up that Israel wanted to go to war with Iran. This was something he could not abide and his rhetoric toward Israel started to take the tone of his criticism of America’s policy toward Ukraine.

He now is applying his anti-war agenda in a way that resembles consistent principles and the same MAGA populists who had been against the war in Ukraine are now following him in this direction. There is a divide in the right between the Ben Shapiro / TPUSA Israel First agenda and the Tucker Carlson / Candance Owens America First agenda. Carlson has been named the “antisemite of the year” by the group StopAntisemitism, beating out his top competitor, children’s show host Ms. Rachel.

He humiliated Senator Ted Cruz in an interview, exposing him as an AIPAC bought shill who does not have the knowledge or competency to make decisions that will lead America to war with Iran.

And even more brilliantly he took apart the logic – from a Christian perspective – of Israel’s claim of a right to exist during his interview with Mike Huckabee. The specific land in the bible promised to Abraham and the chosen people from the Nile River of Egypt to the Euphrates River, which is actually most of the middle east, a land mass much larger than the current Israel. Does this mean that the Jews lay claim to the entire middle east, and has Israel attacked seven Middle Eastern countries in the past year as part of a greater Israeli project? Also, if this land is given by God to the children of Abraham then why not do DNA testing to prove they are indeed his descendants? DNA testing is illegal in Isreal because the majority of its citizens are Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors originate from Eastern European countries. They are not genetically connected to the real estate of Israel, while many Palestinians are the true children of Abraham.

The idea of protecting Christians is a through line in his work and is one of his weaker reasons for being against the Ukraine war. He is morally outraged at how Ukraine have closed some Christian churches, and he feels American Christians have a bond with Russian Christians. This is a point that people like Jon Stewart have rightly mocked him for. Even though ultimately Stewart is wrong to promote the Ukraine war and Carlson is right to oppose it.

His attack on the foundational principles of Israel are now in the brains of right-wingers who feel betrayed that Trump has broken his promise of no new wars, that coupled with his protection of pedophiles in the Epstein case and the way he has broken the backs of the working class on behalf of the oligarchs will result in MAGA staying home on election day.

The most frustrating thing about Carlson is that he will not directly criticize Trump and still pledges his allegiance to him. He acts as if Trump has no agency, his raping of the economy and warmongering foreign policy are all because he is getting bad advice. But Trump himself is still a great guy, right? Is this because Tucker is personally connected to the most powerful people in America, many of them neocons? Or does he still think Trump is Teflon and going against him is career suicide?

I’m not sure, but at least the “anti-war right,” exists, as laughable as that is.

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Times of India: Who is Gonzo Lira?

Due Dissidence: Rage Against the War Machine Rally

How Ukraine's TCK Mobilization Units go after draft dodgers | DW News

Institute of Mass Information: Arming Ukraine Removed From CBS Website

The New York Times: ‘A Big Step Back’: In Ukraine, Concerns Mount Over Narrowing Press Freedoms

Wikipedia: Freedom of the Press in Ukraine

The Daily Beast: How a Sleazy Dating Coach Became a Pro-Putin Shill in Ukraine

Newsweek: Full List of Republicans Backing Matt Gaetz’s Resolution to End Ukraine Aid

Politico: House thwarts hard-right push to gut Ukraine funding

The Jimmy Dore Show: Matt Gaetz Tries To End Ukraine War Funding!

Yahoo! News: Zelensky nationalizes TV news and restricts opposition parties

U.S. Naval Institute: Defensive Cyber Warfare Lessons from Inside Ukraine

CNN: US confirms military hackers have conducted cyber operations in support of Ukraine

Current Affairs: What Progressives Need To Learn From Republicans About Forcing Concessions From Party Leaders

CBS News: Why oust McCarthy? What Matt Gaetz has said about his motivations to remove the speaker of the House

Here’s an idea that is so simple and so true. The only limits there are to this making you rich are your moral compass and your investment capital. You don’t even have to download that app that follows Nancy Pelosi’s stock trades. Just watch the news a little, is the CEO cozying up to Trump, than BOOYAH! BUY! BUY! BUY!

You really don’t have to be smart to make money in the stock market, you just find a corporation that is fucking over mankind, buy their stock and sit tight. Even if that corporation fucks up and does something that should put them out of business it doesn’t matter. They have bought off all the politicians they need to bail them out if the need arises.

So yes buy Palantir, Exxon, Raytheon, Amazon, Google, Blackrock, etc. You live in a capitalist society and it doesn’t matter if you think socialism would be better.

Survive or die. Choke on black pills.

Please enjoy this short video!

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Please enjoy the above video meme.

Over the decades nuclear power plants in America and Europe have been shuttered over environmental concerns. Many argue it is actually a cleaner energy force than fossil fuel, and the world’s energy needs may need a nuclear alternative. But will we be getting it to meet mankind’s power needs while reducing global warming? No, America is going nuclear again because the tech oligarchs who can afford to buy congress have decided to bring it back to power their AI data centers. And the nuclear plants will be run by the AI.

What could go wrong on the Terminator timeline?

For a deep dive into this subject please check out the video below:

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Here we go again with another regime change war with the US government and Israel using protests to manufacture consent with the American public. The rationale of using the protests as a cover for regime change is a lot thinner than the previous justification of keeping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And at the same time the Trump administration is now just openly saying it wants regime change. Yes, Israel are sure to attack again (any hesitation they many have comes from the fear of Iran’s hyper-sonic missile arsenal). Israel’s main move at the moment is to insert Mossad agents into the protests to increase the level of violence.

Now to be clear I’m not a booster of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his government. Iran -- just like Russia, Israel, Venezuela, Palestine, Argentina, – would be better off having a free election and bringing in a new secular government, but – like Libya, Iraq, Ukraine, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, etc. – it would be much worse off if its government is couped and replaced with an American/Isreali puppet regime.

Because of crippling primary and secondary sanctions that began in 1979 when Khamanei first took power -- and intensified under Obama, Biden and Trump -- Iran’s economy has tanked. The instability has caused widespread peaceful (at first) protests.

There has been some framing by Israeli propagandists where are the people who protested for Palestine? Why do you not stand with the people of Iran? Well OK since the economic hardships that the Iranians are protesting were caused by US sanctions, are you saying I should protest the US government with “stop sanctioning Iran” signs? Because ending sanctions is the number one thing that would help the people of Iran.

But no, I don’t think that’s what they meant. I think they mean that we should support Israeli and American interference that will destroy the stability of Iran and turn it into a chaotic rump state like Libya that no longer has any power to oppose US interests.

Another element of the propaganda is this image of a woman burning a picture of Khamenei with her cigarette. This is meant to symbolize women’s fight for equality against the oppressive forces of Iran’s Islamic regime. But the picture is fake. It was made by a Canadian woman three years ago and was suddenly pushed by Elon Musk’s X as an image of war propaganda.

What they don’t want you to know is the recent progress Iranian women have achieved. There was the case of the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, this woman was arrested for not wearing a head dress. While in police custody she was severely beaten, had a heart attack, fell into a coma and later died in the hospital. This story caused outrage among the Iranian people leading to widespread protests. The protests led to reforms and women are no longer required to wear hijabs in Iran.

Any time the U.S. bombs another nation you should go on YouTube and watch a travel video of that country for perspective. Start with an Anthony Bourdain episode and go from there. After the bomb Yemen group chat fiasco I checked out a tour video of that country. Turns out the whole country only needs one part-time tour guide as American/Israeli/Saudi Arabian aggressions have isolated the Yemen from world travelers. Did you know Yemen’s island of Socotra was clear blue seas and is an excellent place to watch Dolphins?

Same goes for Iran. It’s a travel writing cliché to write this but Iran is a unique blend of ancient traditional culture and modern technology. Watch the video: you are walking around the city in Tehran, and you see sassy and free women, gigantic candy stores and people living a stable and contented life. This isn’t the horrid third world you were told about.

Yes a travel video is the rose-tinted glasses version of a country but you need to see it for a balanced view.

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The video posted above is about how many Americans, including people who became MAGA became disillusioned with American foreign policy during the Iraq war, just as baby boomers had during the Vietnam war. Many MAGA had adopted the libertarian view that endless entanglements on foreign soil was bad for America and the world, and that is reflected in how the Tucker Carlson camp of the GOP (who are now turning against Israel) had been against funding a forever war in Ukraine. Trump had campaigned in 2016 against the Iraq war and neoconservativism, but now his war language includes Bush-era terms like “weapons of mass destruction.”

Now Trump is turning into the worst neoconservative of all time (he still hasn’t beaten Nixon and Bush’s body count but he’s working on it) and he is manipulating his followers to doublethink: I hated war with Iraq but I love war with Iran. People who get their news from X are falling for it but nationwide the idea of invading Iran has 30 percent support.

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Year in Review

Twenty-twenty-five is coming to a close and it’s time to take a moment to reflect. Did your actions make your world better or worse? How come all the children and puppies have those smiles on their faces? What subject or themes came up most often when you watched the news? The theme I see most is that we are on an accelerationist path to biblical Armageddon — something Christian fundamentalists like Mike Huckabee hope the Chosen People will finely bring.

But people have always been saying that modern day is the worst time ever, right? The 80s were so much worse than the 50s people would say.

A few random things:

My two favorite films this year were both political: Eddington and One Battle After Another. They make a great double bill, and it looks like Battle is headed for the Oscars. Eddington — about how 2020 twisted the minds of Americans — is the better of the two; it ridicules democrats, mocking the arbitrary nature of COVID restrictions and faux anti-racism. It also mocks the conspiratorial mind of conservatives who seem oblivious to the fact that corporate tyranny IS the conspiracy — and they are the it’s biggest dupes. All characters have their play-dough minds molded by on-line culture and it’s easy to relate.

Twenty-twenty was the year we took that red pill but we just got put in a Matrix that was worse than the one before. Now in 2025 I’m on a strict diet of hopelessness and black pills and it’s making my tummy ache.

But no, my natural demeanor is one of calmness and I feel fine.

I took a vacation to Puerto Rico this year. Funny, instead of giving us fun nature facts the rainforest tour guide just complained about how the economy sucked and how bad everything was because America wouldn’t make Puerto Rico a state. That country has no infrastructure – no trains or light rail -- its just Uber drivers circling American fast-food joints. It’s the worst of capitalism — economic oppression without representation. You can’t get away from politics, at least not until you find yourself with a beer wading in warm water with bioluminescent fish.

I saw a year in review issue of Time Magazine on the supermarket shelf. I leafed through it and noticed every single take on every single political subject was wrong. According to them the Gaza thing is really terrible but we can all let out a sigh of relief now because the hostages have been released. The worst part is over according to Time. I’m too busy this year but next year Johnny Pissoff’s year in review should be a take down of Time’s. And then maybe I can crap on the entertainment year in review in People magazine.

My cat died of hyperthyroidism. I spent a lot on vet pills but couldn’t get it under control. But I found a an abandoned kitten by my work. It was a Christmas miracle. Even-Steven. The circle of life.

I’m a big music guy. Next year I want to do more music-centric content. Amyl and the Sniffers was the wildest concert I went to this year. All exciting rock, no pop, no naval gazing. Okay Kaya’s Psych Ward was one of my favorite songs of the year. The poor depressed girl got put on a psych hold and wrote a catchy jingle about it. I was going to see Carsie Blanton in concert this year but that was cancelled. She was one of the people who was aboard the food aide flotilla that was headed towards Gaza. They were abducted in international waters and abused in an Israeli prison. She needed a moment to recover from this and canceled her show. I look forward to seeing her in 2026.

Above: Carsie Blanton sings “Free Palestine” to the tune of “Sweet Caroline.” Pretty clever.

And why couldn’t I see Kneecap and Bob Vylan on tour this year? For the same reason I heard of them in the first place.

You know what I’m getting at. Israel, Israel, Israel.

I just saw a clip of Bill Maher -- he seemed quite indignant -- he is upset that the Muslims are mass murdering Christians in Nigeria. Why aren’t people upset about this, he asks. Why aren’t the students protesting this Islamic atrocity, he wonders. I’ll tell you why Bill, Nigeria did not just buy CBS and Tik Tok in order to censor speech and push propaganda trying to make people think it’s ok for them to mass murder Christians. The Nigerians are doing this murdering with guns and machetes they bought with their own money. My tax dollars are not going to pay for this genocidal project. And if a student did protest this you know what would happen? Nothing. Because Nigeria does not have a Super Pac to buy politicians that will order cops to crack their skulls. And people are not going to lose their jobs because those same politicians passed a law that equates criticizing Nigeria with racism. Are we bombing any countries on behalf of Nigeria? Didn’t think so.

And one other thing. Ten seconds of googling brings me to an Aljazeera page that directly refutes his claims. Oh Bill, is anyone fuller of shit than you?

Well after I wrote the above paragraph I was reminded that Donald Trump is more full of shit than Bill Maher. Apparently he gets his Nigerian news from the same place Maher does and he used that intel to bomb the hell out of Nigeria on Christmas day. Just what America wanted for Christmas: to kill Muslims on behalf of Christians.

I’ve had to go out and touch the grass a lot this year just to get Israel off my mind because it’s not a foreign policy issue, it’s an everything issue and is making the life of every human on this earth worse.

I needed a funny hook for the video so started with the alpha dog Trump Vs. Bibi thing. But that is only the first third of the video. The rest lament’s American (and European) total capitulation to this satanic force. Hannukah has always been a benign holiday that goes on in the background for me. That’s what it should be, just a holiday – no big whoop. But when I see bipartisan members of congress lighting a menorah this year it doesn’t mean nice holiday anymore – it means subservience to the death cult.

I’ve had some great vacations in Thailand, but I hear Israeli tourists are so obnoxious and ruining the open society vibe that the locals are putting up NO ISRAELI signs. If someone has done a tour in the IDF and taken part in institutionalized mass murder then that comes out in their personality with everything they do – including ruining a beach holiday.

My favorite news podcast is hosted by two anti-Zionist Jews who make a better case against Israel’s atrocities than any gentile could. They’re the reason I mess with the Zohan.

Happy Holidays

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While at the Christmas dinner table a fun topic to bring up and discuss are the films and TV shows you have watched over the past year. Afterward a pleasant way to pass the time is gather around the couch and watch a movie together.

If you are a liberal and you are mad at your relative for being a right-winger let that pass for the day and focus on interesting local events that have happened in your home town lately. If you’re a leftist and you’re mad your family members for still being liberals — just chill out, bro. They just aren’t hip to your alternative media. Let it go for the moment. If you’re an older FOX conservative and you don’t like where the alt-right kids are going with this Nick Fuentes feller you can preach to them the virtues of moderate conservatism another day.

That’s why I have posted a short and silly video debating what CRASH movie was better. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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BRANDING CHANGE: Readers please note. This website has rebranded from SloppyMemes to Johnny Pissoff.

No, the latest round of peace talks won’t work out

So here we are again with another attempt at peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Sounds like they are pretty serious about it this time, right? Steve Witkoff is meeting privately with Putin, a meeting was scheduled with Zelenskyy but abruptly canceled, and Russia just went forward with another massive drone strike. Zelenskyy says he is open to peace talks but he refuses to give up any Ukrainian territory. That means he is not really open to peace talks because as Russia is winning the war the only way to end it would be to give up Russian speaking territories to Russia.

This war could have been avoided entirely if Ukraine had agreed to not become part of NATO and grant independence to these Russian speaking territories (not to make them part of Russia but just to give them independence of Kyiv leadership), as was discussed in the Minsk II agreements. There were peace talks in April 2022 that could have been successful. At that point in time Ukraine had won some surprising victories in the battlefield and had a negotiating advantage. The terms of the agreement wouldn’t have been bad for Ukraine, they would have even allowed them to join the EU. They just couldn’t join NATO and they would have to recognize the independence of Crimea (that they had lost to Russia years earlier). But Boris Johnson, on the directive of the Biden Administration and NATO, sabotaged the deal, telling Ukraine if they made peace they would lose western backing.

The war has continued to this day, with Russia slowly grinding forward at a pace and body count that brings to mind the front lines of World War I. In fact this war draws a lot of parallels to World War I in that hundreds of thousands of people on both sides have needlessly died only for the war to be settled on terms that are slightly worse than what they could have been settled for years earlier. The more common historical analogy is to say that making peace with Putin would be the same thing as appeasing Hitler, but this is the wrong history to learn from because Russia could not win an all out ground war against a united Europe and it has no desire to do so.

Or actually it seems the terms of peace at this time are a LOT worse than what they could have been. Every time there are renewed peace talk negotiations it is on terms where Ukraine will lose even more land. Ukrainians are being forced to die for nothing.

With the above video I made the first part about five months ago showing that for all of Trump’s talk of making peace between Russia and Ukraine the result has been total failure. Although he has a different rhetoric than Biden his actions are the same: send them more weapons, orchestrate attacks and then give Zelenskyy the credit and approve buttloads of unmonitored funding for the Ukrainian ruling class to steal while the working class suffers forced conscription and horrible death. A month ago I edited the video to discuss the latest rounds of failed peace talks. I could edit the video again to discuss the even more recent rounds of failed peace talks but why bother? It starts to get repetitive.

Then there is all the corruption. Below is a meme I made after it was revealed by CBS in 2022 that only 70% of arms sent to Ukraine were making it to the front lines and the rest were sold on the black market. The censorship on Ukraine was very powerful at that time and CBS were forced to retract the story. When I posted the meme the chuds in the comments predictably accused me of being a Putin’s puppet. Now there is an even bigger corruption scandal that even the New York Times has verified. The NYT has supported the Ukraine war this entire time and have embedded journalists for in depth reporting. You think all this time they didn’t know about the corruption? They revealed it because they have been given the go-ahead to do so by the intelligence community.

There may actually be some change, it could come to be that the US will reduce its funding and Europe could take over the reins. Zelenskyy’s time as America’s puppet dictator could be coming to an end. His only chance now is to become the puppet of European countries that are hell bent on going to war with Russia.

We will see. Next month I will finish up this Ukraine series and move on to better and bolder things!

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Howdy folks,

I’m madder than a squirrel in a nut-free zone about how Trump is treating the MAGA faithful.

I had originally made the “Epstein cover up makes MAGA heads explode” meme about five months ago when Trump’s team of Law & Order enthusiasts Dan Bongino, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi told the MAGA faithful that actually no there’s nothing to this Epstein thing. Sorry that you Xbox Incels believe in conspiracies -- maybe you braindead trailer trash should have paid more attention to credible news sources like CNN instead of watching all those right-wing podcasts (even though we hosted those podcasts).

Since then, the project it developed into of “MAGA DoubleThink” that I am releasing in a multi-part series ended up taking months to complete and the Epstein story wasn’t even hot any more by the time I finished. This video is supposed to be the climax of the series (but I have bumped up the publication to be timely) because after it has been revealed MAGA was betrayed on Ukraine, immigration, the economy, no foreign wars (Iran), the “Israel first” agenda and then the final insult . . . the one God’s children just cannot bare: they are going to let the international cabal of satanic global pedo elites just get away with it. Your core belief as a member of MAGA that you are a protector of children is a big FUCK YOU! The Epstein suicide is not suspicious at all bro. Even after lib outlet 60 Minutes had an episode where they laid out the facts that point to an obvious murder. Trust Kash Patel bro, if there was something to this a macho man like him would bring the case, right? No, fuck you Kash you’re a liar and part of the deep state. The lizard people have cucked you and your girlfriend is going to give birth to a reptilian hybrid.

Now the story is hot in the news again after Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene have forced a vote to get them released. That doesn’t mean the battle is over, more bullshit will be pulled with files that aren’t released due to ongoing investigations, clauses in the bill that only “unclassified” documents can be released, and the many redactions to “protect the innocent” we are likely to see. Anyway, I sum it all up very nicely. All the core elements you need to know are right here in this less than ten-minute-long video. You don’t even have to read Whitney Webb’s book.

I saved you dumbasses a lot of time!

This is the original version of the Meme:

The Political Compass Memes version:

‘Nuff Said

The Internet’s Busiest Right influencer --- Johnny Pissoff!

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The above video is another satirical piece in my “MAGA Doublethink” series. From the point of view of the fictional Ms. Pepe I outline how the populist right and working-class Americans who left the Democrats for MAGA have been betrayed on economics – and I am mean really pummeled, beaten and humiliated – on all economic policies that would benefit them. First, MAGA voted for stronger borders and the deportation of illegal immigrants who are part of criminal organizations. They also felt that the massive influx of immigration was driving down labor wages so mass deportations could lead to higher wages for Americans. But what we have seen in practice is the weaponization of ICE as Trump’s private police force – a group of masked thugs that resemble Mussolini’s Blackshirts militia more than a legitimate policing agency – that have given America a spectacle of brutal beatdowns of citizens and windowless van kidnappings -- but lower deportation numbers than we had under Clinton, Bush, Obama or even Biden. This could be because ICE are so inefficient that they are overflowing prisons with their abductees and haven’t been able to complete the deportation process. What MAGA are getting for their vote is mostly performative and America is outraged at the constant stream of ICE videos where they are assaulting innocent people and invading their homes without warrants. Any American citizens who accidently got in ICE’s way during an arrest were also assaulted and thrown in the van. The people they are deporting aren’t criminals; they are the low hanging fruit of law-abiding immigrants just trying to go to work.

And has all this violence resulted in a more competitive job market for America’s working class and an increase in wages? No. Certain industries are just having to cut production, contributing to rising inflations. If helping workers was their real goal, they would target employers of illegal immigrants and force them to employ Americans at fair wages. This is not the goal at all, so they have changed their messaging to make it seem like they are fighting crime and keeping America safer. Really what ICE is doing is creating a secret police infrastructure that can be used against ordinary Americans. Soon political dissidents will be thrown in the van and processed at a remote site in Florida. This has already begun on behalf of Israel. How Trump has betrayed the “America First” agenda for an “Israel First” agenda will be the topic of a future video.

We see in the recent government shut-down that Republicans will end health insurance subsidies, and millions of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans will lose their health care because they can’t afford their premium jumping from 300 to 3000 per month. And the Trump administration was using the withholding of SNAP benefits as a bargaining tool, literally starving America’s poor. All this while Argentina’s libertarian economic policies have led to economic ruin for the country. This is the kind of economic collapse that could trigger a socialist revolution. We can’t have that, so Argentina is getting a 20-billion-dollar bailout. Huge portions of the bail out will no doubt be stolen by Argentina’s criminal president Javier Milei and his goon squad of economic hitmen.

The economic world we are now living in is what Karl Marx called “late-stage capitalism.” This is when the normal healthy form of infant capitalism -- where mid-sized businesses exchanged goods and services -- has been replaced by mega-monopolies. Now most of society’s wealth is concentrated among a small group of oligarchs who become exponentially wealthier each year. At this point we no longer have capitalism; we have a return to feudalism. This has been the trend ever since Ronald Reagan introduced neoliberal policies in the 80s and it has gotten incrementally worse every year whether the president is Democrat or Republican. What we are getting now is an acceleration of these policies where the corporations see an opportunity in Trump’s presidency to go in for the kill. Elon Musk’s DOGE being a mask-off example where he gutted all the agencies that work for the public good, robbing America of its social safety net and neutering the power of any organization that would regulate his business. But he is not alone, all the Silicon Valley moguls who were known as the “liberal elite” have rebranded themselves as anti-woke tech bros in order to get MAGA acceptance. This video focuses on Amazon who are currently the number one exploiter of American workers. Jeff Bezos has destroyed American capitalism by creating a system where all products must be bought and sold through the power of his algorithm.

Bezos has destroyed many small businesses by copying their products and pushing search results to sell his knock off products. Americans no longer have the choice to buy the best product – they can now buy the product Bezos recommends. Now he’s working on a way to replace his workforce with AI. But if AI replaces so much of the workforce what is left of the people? Who will buy the products when no one has money?

Taking Back Pepe

Pepe the frog was originally an apolitical cartoon and internet meme created in 2005. In 2015 he was used by some right-wing groups on 4Chan message boards. I haven’t seen these posts personally so I can’t attest to how racist or right-wing they actually were. At that point the Anti-Defamation League had Pepe labeled a hate group – even though most people using Pepe weren’t right wing racists, they were just memers having a laugh. My personal meme making experience only goes back a few years so I have only known Pepe as “Pepe the racist frog” and whenever I put Pepe in a meme, he is a stand-in for, or a symbol of, racism. So if I have a MAGA-hat who hates immigrants it makes sense to use Pepe as meme shorthand, as I do in this video. But I now wonder if that is right considering anything that the ADL want is suspect.

Recently the ADL have violated the first amendment rights of Americans by having criticism of Israel be legally defined as antisemitism. And I guess a racist frog is antisemitic according to the ADL. So does that mean Pepe is a now a based “Free Palestine” leftist? In the recent protests against ICE in Portland there were people dressing up as “Protest (or Antifa) Frogs.” The point of Antifa Frogs was to meet trigger happy National Guardsmen with silliness that they wouldn’t know how to respond to. The tactic was successful as they got positive national press and the protests did not escalate into violent clashes. There is now an “Antifa Pepe,” associated with this used to mock the right-wing. So should we reclaim Pepe as a Marxist Antifa Leftist?

‘Nuff said.

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The above is a satirical video of MAGA trying to twist their brains into a pretzel as they try to conform to the edicts of the Trump Administration.

MAGA faithful have been forced to become the living embodiment of George Orwell term, “Doublethink,” in 2025. Doublethink is when one holds two conflicting ideas in their head simultaneously. This is a requirement in totalitarian states that often must switch their messaging to fit new political agendas. What was a lie yesterday is truth today. Like MAGA want mass deportations but they now must accept that H1B1 Visa holders are OK because they will work for Musk, and it’s ok to fast track white immigrants from South Africa. They want an end to the Ukraine war but Trump is telling them he tried his best with diplomacy but Putin is too difficult so they should just give up and accept that Biden’s Ukraine policy is now Trumps. Or that MAGA is about an America First agenda, however the social safety net that would protect the American working class is being stripped away to give more power to the oligarchy. And the “oligarchy” are the same tech companies we’ve been calling the “liberal elites” for the past decade. The Republican version of liberal elites are now called “tech bros.” Worst of all American foreign policy has a well pronounced Israel First agenda. MAGA rejected George Bush’s warmongering and wanted a president who didn’t start forever wars. This has been a pillar of Tucker Carlson’s messaging. But Trump bombed Iran under the same false WMD claims that Bush attacked Iraq under. And get ready for the “ministry of the war” that is gearing to for regime change in Venezuela so it can grab that oil! Then of course there is the final insult of not getting the Epstein files.

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MAGA Doublethink

The above video is a segment from a longer video about how MAGA have been convinced to believe the opposite of everything they voted for, and are engaging in what George Orwell termed, “doublethink” – where they hold two conflicting ideas in their mind simultaneously. But this segment, about how MAGA now accept and embrace everything Palantir are doing even though it is nearly the same agenda as the World Economic Forum -- which they hate -- was good enough to stand on its own. So here you have it.

What has happened is the deep state lizards (meaning unelected embedded intelligence community, military industrial complex, oligarchy, Israel) realized Kamala Harris was not the one who could sell their neoconservative agenda. It turns out the guy they had been fighting with, Trump, was the man who could push the fascist agenda to the next level. So instead of working against him they have co-opted Trump and are using him to not only continue Biden’s warmongering ways but to bring the world to the brink of biblical Armageddon. This is the only way to maintain corporate growth. More war abroad and a crumbling infrastructure at home will bring widespread discontent. That means we’re going to need a police state.

That’s where Palantir comes in. As Tim Dillon recently said about its co-founder Peter Thiel “It’s strange that you build military automatous AI drone technology to export to war zones all over the world, you build domestic surveillance technology to surveil our friends and neighbors and then your other pet passion is the anti-Christ,” referring to how Thiel is giving a four part lecture on the anti-Christ.

LIZARD PEOPLE

The World Economic Forum is comprised of powerful world leaders who meet to “foster a public-private cooperation” on global issues. This means corporations and governments working together to achieve a neoliberal agenda, where governments will take military actions that benefit corporations and corporations will support politicians who help them with their agenda. And as there are laws about government surveillance and censorship, these tasks can be performed by private industry who don’t have to follow the same rules. They are best known for the phrase “you’ll own nothing and be happy,” that envisions a future where people have all their needs met by a sharing economy. Meaning your ordinary worker bee will not own a house or a car because the corporations will own all of them. People will be living in small spaces and having their transportation limited to whatever range self-driving cars are allowed.

And bugs. Uber Eats will only deliver bug meals.

The World Health Organization – in the name of public safety related to pandemics – has already implemented a global surveillance and monitoring system. The WHO had a plan for a global tracking with a digital passport and digital ID system. This plan is no longer being implemented and may never happen at all after massive pushback. Besides, Palantir have it covered anyway.

American conservatives hated the WHO and WEF so much they saw them as lizard people (also known as reptilian humanoids) come to life. Who are the lizard illuminati? They are the grand conspiracy to control the world, they are the evil cabal, they kidnap children and eat babies, they are the shadowy forces that plot to enslave mankind! They walk among us humans, but if you tear their flesh away their true reptilian selves will be revealed.

Lizard people are not literally real -- they are a science fiction concept. But as a metaphor for powerful people who are soulless and indifferent to humanity, the idea is brilliant. Personally, I do feel the world is run by metaphorical lizard people. And if I use the term I am referring to corporate overlords and neoconservatives who are working to destroy society and crush the human spirit so they can increase shareholder value.

The idea of lizard people are like Batman. Over the decades the idea has been rebooted and reimagined in ways that vary from light and comical to deadly serious and disturbing. Generation X was introduced to the idea by a miniseries called V in 1983. It was about aliens that look like humans that come with a friendly mission to help mankind. But later it is revealed that if you tear off their façade of human skin they are evil rodent eating reptilian humanoids with a sinister plot to take over the world’s governments and enslave mankind. After this is revealed, human militias organize to overthrow them.

Later in the 1987 G.I. Joe: The Movie it was revealed to young children that the terrorist organization Cobra, who are the show’s baddies, are controlled by a race of ancient serpent people called Cobra La who have lived underground for thousands of years. And what do they want to do? Rule the earth and enslave mankind of course. It is no wonder that Gen-Xers are so receptive to the idea of a secret cabal of lizard people as it was sold to them during their formative years.

In 1988, as a young boy, I went to see the film They Live without really understanding the allegory it was making about consumerism in the Reagan era. The film is about a vagrant laborer who finds out that the 80s greed-head mindset has been forced upon humans by alien mind control. The aliens’ true likenesses and subliminal messages embedded in media like OBEY and CONSUME are hidden to the human eye by radio waves being transmitted from TV towers. After the hero finds glasses that block the radio waves the truth is revealed to him. These aliens were not reptilian, but the core idea was the same. When he put on those glasses he became red pilled to the conspiracy – a decade before the Matrix was in theaters.

The idea of the reptilian humanoids didn’t start in the 80s. It originates from the 1929 story “The Shadow Kingdom,” by Robert E. Howard about the barbarian character King Kull. The Serpent Men were an ancient race, who after having their Kingdom defeated by early man, came back centuries later and infiltrated human society so they could rule from behind the scenes. The serpent men had humanoid bodies and reptile heads. They could shapeshift into humans and had mind control powers. The story was a meditation on the illusion of politics, Kull thought “Strange to him were the intrigues of court and palace, army and people. All was like a masquerade, where men and women hid their real thoughts with a smooth mask.”

At the end of the story Kull contemplates the metaphor:

Was it the real Kull who sat upon the throne or was it the real Kull who had scaled the hills of Atlantis, harried the far isles of the sunset, and laughed upon the green roaring tides of the Atlantean sea? How could a man be so many different men in a lifetime? For Kull knew that there were many Kulls and he wondered which was the real Kull. After all, the priests of the Serpent went a step further in their magic, for all men wore masks, and many a different mask with each different man or woman; and Kull wondered if a serpent did not lurk under every mask.

As you can see the core idea is pretty consistent, although with variations on if the lizard people are an ancient race or space aliens, or if they have fake skin or are shapeshifters. The Serpent Men where later incorporated into the work of H.P. Lovecraft and became regular villains in the Marvel Conan the Barbarian comic book.

THE DAVID ICKE VERSION

Then there’s the problematic David Icke interpretation which has changed the public perception of lizard men from a science fiction metaphor to a right-wing conspiracy theory. Careful folks, conspiracy theories are a lot more dangerous when they’re right wing. The articles that will come up on top from a Google search of his name paint him as a dangerous misinformation spreading antisemite. But I wanted to look beyond the typical smear job piece -- written by nanny-state types who want to build a case for the need for censorship -- and see what he was really saying. In 2022 the Dutch government banned him from entering 26 EU countries for two years because he was a threat to public order, due to him wanting to attend a protest against the Ukraine war in the Netherlands and his calling the Prime Minister a fascist.

My first question being, does he believe this literally, or does he, like me, see them as a metaphor for shadowy elites? The answer is yes: he believes it literally. The kind he’s into are the alien shape shifting fascists. Vice News did an interesting piece on him where another conspiracy theorist came to his house for a hang-out interview. Icke presents as a bourgeois Englishman who lives on a quiet British island, and has thought through his claims logically. The evidence he presents is mostly archeological records that reference lizard men in ancient times. I looked into this and the term for it is pseudo-archeology, like pseudo-science. Also, he knows several people who have told him that they saw George Bush shapeshift into a reptile. That’s all the proof I need!

He has written several bestselling books and performs to large audiences around the world. His theories mix science fiction with connect-the-dots type analysis of a hierarchy of global power known as the order of the lizard Illuminati. I checked out his X account and the guy is pretty based with his political takes. You should have a look.

The antisemitism accusations stem from his obsession with the Jewish banking family the Rothschilds and their far-reaching wealth and power that dates back to the 16^th century. This is related to the tired trope that Jewish bankers are controlling the world. But his bizarre idea is that all races, including Jews, are crossbred with alien lizards; primarily the lizards are taking the form of white people to control the earth. That part makes sense as white people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of world suppression.

As Jewish substacker Karl explains in his analysis: “However, to summarize this issue: we can point out that Icke believes that the attitudes that the Jews are not actually a problem as they are a people who have been misled by the Jewish-reptile crossbreeds among their elite. Who have then directed them to follow ludicrous laws and believe in their own inherent superiority over gentiles so that they can be persecuted in order to create a fascist Jewish state and further that the Jews aren't really a people anyway, but rather have been made to believe they are by the evil reptilians. I am afraid such ideas aren’t anti-Semitic, but they are lunatic!”

But people with a surface understanding of his work can be forgiven for interpreting this as antisemitic. He is anti-Zionist for sure and teetering on the borders of antisemitism.

Vice News reports that Icke believes that shape-shifting lizards occupy the highest levels of human society including members of the royal family, presidents, prime ministers and business leaders who oversee a satanic pedophile group who have ruled this planet for centuries. He believes that the moon is a hollowed-out space station that reptilian aliens use for mind control; the moon sends out radio waves that block people from seeing reality. So, the moon is acting just like the TV towers in the They Live movie.

We are heading for a world that Icke says “George Orwell massively understated,” and he goes on “in simple terms there is a predator race which take a reptilian form. They’re feeding off humanity. They’ve turned humanity into a slave race. They demand human sacrifice. That’s where satanism comes in. They feed off human energy. They particularly feed off the energy of children.”

I don’t understand why aliens would worship Satan when they come from a planet that doesn’t have human religion, but eating babies sounds like your typical reptilian humanoid activity. LOLZ!

Anyway . . . that’s Icke’s version. He took the core concept of the reptilian humanoid and explored the idea to it’s ultimate conclusion; his book The Biggest Secret is the best novel about shape shifting lizard people ever written. But he has also been detrimental to the idea. The horror genres of zombies and vampires are played out — the best allegory for our current political situation would be lizard people sci-fi movies. But they aren’t being made because the idea is permanently stained with its association with right-wing conspiracies and antisemitism. This makes me sad.

QAnon

When researching this video and article I did a search for lizard people on YouTube. The search results were a mixture of History Channel style documentaries along the lines of the Ancient Aliens TV show or a Nostradamus documentary, and some independently produced pieces that discussed the science fiction aspect and then gave preachy commentary about how you shouldn’t believe in conspiracy theories. There were a couple of videos made by actual conspiracy theorists and David Icke was frequently referenced.

But I didn’t feel satisfied with that. I wanted to see videos made by people who really believed in lizard people so I went to Rumble and did a search for “baby eating lizard people,” and I quickly got the real shit. One conspiracy that kept coming up was about adenochrome harvesting. The theory is that the US is filled with underground military bases, and if you draw a line between the bases they are arranged in the shape of the Orion constellation. Also, if you draw a line between Nazi death camps they will also form the Orion constellation. The reason for this is because the Nazi’s and now the US military are kidnapping humans -- especially children because their fear tastes the best -- and feeding them to aliens from the Orion system. The aliens harvest the humans for their adenochrome, which is a drug derived from human adrenaline. This makes the aliens high.

A conspiracy theory debunking website points out that adenochrome is easily synthesized and commercially available. There’s a prescription-only version and an over-the-counter version of the drug. So the aliens don’t need to go through all this trouble.

One of the video makers was promoting their website The Orion Lines, and oh man . . . I’m just a nice liberal boy who reads the San Francisco Chronicle and listens to NPR. I had heard about QAnon but I hadn’t really seen it. And damn this website is bonkers. It’s got everything: The All Seeing Eye of Moloch, Pizzagate, Nazca Alien bodies, elite satanic pedophile ring, MK ULTRA, Uncle Sam’s Snuff Factory and on and on and on. It even has a direct link to the QAnon message board which looks like it’s straight out of the 90s. I need to do a video just on this site. It has the best cow abduction video I’ve ever seen, although it looks like they just got it from TikTok. Take a look.

One of the Rumble videos was six hours long and had an audio track of a woman who did not sound like a normal connect-the-dots Epstein files enthusiast. She sounded like someone who was on the schizoaffective spectrum. Her thought process was tangential; her speech was word salad of loosely associated conspiracy theories that had no consistency from one sentence to the next. She was like the main character in the film BUG, where when his paranoid psychosis was triggered, he started ripping his teeth out of his mouth to get the bugs out. David Icke said he started having revelations when he was at a store and he heard a voice inside his head. Hearing voices is a symptom of schizophrenia. People with paranoid schizophrenia generally take things that are real like the FBI and invent a fantasy in their head where the FBI are after them. Religious preoccupations and grandiose delusions are also common symptoms: Icke once announced he was the son of God on British TV.

The Charlie Kirk Assassination Conspiracy Theory

As I am writing this the hot story of the day is the Charlie Kirk assassination and already there is a conspiracy theory around it. Just prior to the shooting there was an older man who was shouting questions about gun control at him. Originally, he was thought to be the shooter. As this man was being escorted out by police he started shouting “shoot me, shoot me,” which is not a normal statement for an innocent man. Later it was revealed that Kirk was shot by a sniper on a rooftop 150 yards away. This modus operandi bears a lot of similarity to the Trump ear shooter a year ago, as well as Israeli snipers currently operating in Gaza – it appears to be a professional hit. Just moments before the shot, security team members standing right behind Kirk were making baseball pitcher-style hand gestures.

Kirk was not just a popular influencer; his Turning Point movement had built a political infrastructure that could be mobilized should he decide to run for political office. Kirk had been a staunch supporter of Israel. However, in recent interviews he had expressed anger at Israel for calling him antisemitic for allowing Dave Smith to speak at one of his events to argue the pro-Palestine position. And he said in an interview he is less free to criticize Israel than an Israeli is. These statements indicate he may have been turning against Israel similar to how Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene have in recent months. But if he did end up going on a political journey that took him to a place against Israel, he could take young American conservatives along with him. Suspiciously Netanyahu had a pre-planned eulogy ready to go for Kirk immediately after his death and Israel had billboards, a mural, a street naming, and a missile naming dedicated to Kirk all ready to go in a day after the shooting. This whitewashes his criticisms and paints Kirk as a saintly friend of Israel. The Feds have arrested a suspect who the media are calling “antifa aligned,” to paint this as a plan of the radical left in a way that will invite eight-wing retribution. Never mind Antifa are a disorganized scrappy group that like to throw Molotov cocktails at protests — they are not on the level to carry out political assassinations.

This amounts to the theory that the IDF ordered the hit. Yet it is also possible that another organization that wants to sow social discord could be behind it. But between you and me, it was the lizard Illuminati.

You may be a normal person who will entertain this conspiracy theory as well as those related to the Epstein files or 9/11 and weigh the merits and the evidence. But mentally unwell people with paranoid delusions are in a different category from you. Know the difference.

Food for thought.

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Vice News: Conspiracy Theorist David Icke and the Lizard Illuman

Karl’s Substack

Is David Icke anti-Semitic?

Some years ago, I watched a good friend of mine having a rather incongruous debate with some well-meaning but fundamentally clueless opponents of jews and Israel over whether or not David Icke - yes the guy who promotes the weirdest conspiracy theory I have ever had the displeasure to read the case for about intergalactic shape-shifting reptiles ruling …

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2 years ago · 8 likes · Karl

Wikipedia: The Reptillian Conspiracy Theory

Audiobook of Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom."

Dude Dissidence: Charlie Kirk Feared Criticizing Israel: Strange Details of Assassination

Hello and welcome to another SloppyMemes joint! This time I am treating you to a video essay about the punk/rap duo Bob Vylan who recently set the internet on fire with their chant of “Death Death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury festival. In this video I start by discussing the controversy and reaction, and then I get into what I wanted to do professionally as a teenager: music journalism. Like why no live guitar for songs that are guitar driven? Plus a break down of their albums. Please watch, enjoy, and leave feedback! There will be a follow up video to this where I discuss the history of the protest song and many musician related controversies related to the Gaza question.

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Where is Rainbow Capitalism Now?

The inevitability of “Rainbow Capitalism” was becoming a tired cliché as the mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ culture had reached its saturation point. Every mainstream TV show and movie gave a wink and a nod that they were are on board with the gay rights movement. Democrats had a cause they could safely rally for. Corporations made sure you knew about their “commitment to diversity,” from their super bowl ads to their mandatory employee training. Every year in June most corporate logos in America would sport the rainbow and big box stores would have a prominently displayed Pride products section. And there was no better way for a corporation to signal their virtue more than to sponsor marchers in the Pride parade. This was a sad transition for Pride parade enthusiasts – who were born into the way of being a fun creative, daring and rebellious group – to now identity as unfabulous submissives, marching down the street with rainbow banner advertisements for their corporate domination daddy of choice: the Lockheed Martin Lesbians, the Google Gays, the Budweiser Bisexuals, The T. Rowe Price Trans and Quickbooks Queers.

Sporting a Pride flag logo in June drifted from being an edgy political statement to being the generic marking of a corporate automaton. On a weekly basis there would be news of an actor coming out as bisexual, a drag queen coming out as trans, a singer announcing they are nonbinary with they/them pronouns, etc. These announcements were written up the magazines as brave revelations but by this point they were boring, and it was a bit cringe that the celebrity wanted to be celebrated even more for this announcement. And there was a new trend of heterosexual “allies” who also wanted to identify as queer; but it was just a hip fashion statement, not unlike dressing like a punk rocker forty years after punk rock was relevant. In the past rebellious teens had raged against society’s conformity, now the cool kids rebelled against gender conformity.

Then Trump won the election and the cultural winds changed. Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan to disavow every woke initiative Facebook has ever had and to slam the door on the face of the LGBTQ+ community (then he bored listeners to tears by spending an hour talking about how he was now really into martial arts and macho culture). Previously it had been a given that the tech companies of the San Francisco Bay Area all supported the Democrats. After all San Francisco and Silicon Valley is the home of the “liberal elite” and left-wing values. Now suddenly the top tech CEOs – the liberal elite -- all had front row tickets to Trump’s inauguration. San Francisco’s largest building, the Salesforce Tower is owned by tech mogul Mark Benioff – Benioff now embraces Trump. San Francisco’s baseball park is branded Oracle Park, and Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison is now in charge of Trump’s AI initiative. Ellison says omnipresent AI cameras will keep people on their best behavior. That sounds like it may have a chilling effect on San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ public kink event, the Folson Street Fair. And by no coincidence Ellison is now the world’s second richest man.

None of the corporations ever cared about gay rights or liberal values whatsoever. They care about money and power period. They promote the corporate values that serve their interest. This year those interests are not queer interests.

While the gay rights movement became corporatized it forgot about the roots of left-wing activism, which is the labor movement and the New Deal politics that created the middle class. This can’t be blamed on gays entirely, this has been the folly of Democrats generally ever since Jimmy Carter started chipping away at the New Deal in favor of neoliberalist policies – policies that were later doubled and tripled down by Reagan and Clinton. You may have heard the phrase “the cultural war is a distraction from the class war.” The gay rights movement became front and center of the culture war -- and while the movement was having victories in terms of having diverse representation in the media and corporate hiring practices, America’s class inequalities continued to grow and grow. The kind of people who used to put their energies into protesting foreign wars and organizing unions were now protesting right-wing influencers with bad trans takes at college campuses. The University of California, Berkeley had its biggest protests since the Vietnam war in 2017 over Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter being allowed to speak there. The protests went on for weeks and many were injured as they became violent. But did they stop a war? No – for all their effort all they did was keep two right-wingers from speaking publicly. And that’s one example out of thousands of misdirected political activism.

Now gays and leftists need to come back to class activism that truly matters. You may say “oh yeah well I know a lot of queers who already identify as socialists.” And you may have noticed that Republicans paint Democrats and leftists with a broad brush of being a bunch of commies with a “radical socialist agenda.” And “cultural Marxism” is another term used to describe wokism. This is all a bunch of bullshit. People who “identify” as socialists are still capitalists in practice. And its well known Democrats are just bought by different corporations (and sometimes the same corporations) than Republicans.

The left and the LGBTQ+ movement now need to take to the streets and union bargaining committees and push a real radical socialist agenda. Time to bring back edgy floats void of corporate branding.

Gays Love Sex Puns

Dick jokes, butt jokes and dirty jokes in general are the staple of the funny gay guy. Your average homosexual is not as clever as Oscar Wilde but if a White gay man can make a sexual double entendre in the accent of a sassy Black woman than he can be the funniest guy at the bar. The gaymemes subreddit is all about these naughty jokes that relate to gay hook up life. So I thought I might throw a few of these in here because life can’t be all politics.

More of that woke, anti-woke shit that we are bored of now

Here’s a hilarious meme I downloaded a couple years ago but never reposted because well . . . it’s a little homophobic. Liberals for eight years have been posting some very lame “orange man bad” memes that rarely criticized Trump for the right reasons and were often reactionary takes to whatever offensive statement the media was over-conflating in the latest news cycle. But I thought it was more pertinent to criticize Biden for presiding over a genocide than to get excited about Trump paying hush money to a porn star. Now that Trump is back in office -- and he’s the new genocide guy -- I’ve jumped on the anti-Trump meme bandwagon. Still my anti-Trump memes are more sophisticated than that of your average shitlib. This meme accurately lampoons how self-fellating the libs can be in their vague anti-Trumpness. Funny part is that if the maker of this meme is indeed homophobic then he would have to had to watch numerous gay porn videos before finding the right screen shots to make this meme.

The meme below is anti-woke. And I have to admit I have been playing both sides of this issue, making fun of wokeness’s odious capture of popular culture and also poking fun at the lowbrow takes of anti-woke YouTubers. I mean a guy like Critical Drinker doesn’t know a thing about movies other than that action blockbusters from the 1980s are better than the ones being made now. I’m sure he would give you a blank stare if you asked him what his favorite pre-code Hollywood film or favorite contemporary French actress is. As the “cultural winds” have shifted we are going to see less films with a diversity agenda (although to a lesser degree movie casts being more generally diverse could be a permanent thing) but there are still woke projects that were in production before the election just now getting released in 2025 — these feel like relics of a preachy past era on their opening day.

The short-lived trend of lesbian witch shows is just a laughable foot note. Unlike Star Wars, Dune has space witches as part of its cannon, but their function was selective breeding and match making with the universes power elite, not scissoring in the barracks at witch school. The overall vibe of the Dune: Prophecy is a medieval soap opera mash-up of Game of Thrones and Outlander. It didn’t feel like a science fiction show at all. And if the HBO executives knew the source material, they would know that in the fourth book, The God Emperor of Dune, the emperor has a muscle-bound lesbian army which would fit in nicely with female action hero tropes.

Bisexuality awareness

I may be the only one who noticed this but the Diddy scandal broke on bisexual+ awareness week. The leaked picture of Lebron James in a maid’s outfit at the freak-off was a bit disturbing. And the idea of Diddy topping Justin Bieber must have been dismaying for young girls who idolize Bieber, but gay men might find this to be appealing porn content. However, the gay aspect of the story got a muted response because we’ve come a long way, baby. People said, “hey come on, why focus on him being bisexual?” And really, I guess it’s a good thing that the world is less uptight and will give people a pass on this (they were laughing though).

It reminded me of a Richard Pryor bit from 1972 before he was very famous, where he talks about his down-low hook-ups in very politically incorrect terms. This was right around the time of Stonewall, so it took a lot of guts for him to talk about this on stage.

Queers for Palestine

There’s a right-wing meme “Queers for Palestine is like Chickens for KFC.” If you look at right wing commentary on Palestine, you will hear this phrase over and over. The point is that because Muslim culture is very conservative and does not respect feminism and LGBTQ+ rights to a degree on par with American liberal culture, then queers should not support Palestine because they are supporting a culture that would never support them back (or kill them).

There are major fallacies with this argument. First of all the conservatives who push this idea have been consistently against gay rights every step of the way. They know they lost the battle on gay marriage, so they moved on to opposing equal rights for transgenders. They also support “traditional family values,” meaning a Christian patriarchal hierarchy. Culturally they have been relentlessly opposed to feminist messages in TV and movies. Therefore, it’s ridiculous for them to come from this liberal viewpoint in the first place. Second, what “Queers for Palestine” want is an end to an apartheid system where the native population are being colonized by Europeans and being murdered for their land. The social traditions of the native population are not relevant. They are also against the mass murder of families and children. Anyone who believes in “traditional family values” should be against this as well. This is literally the destruction of the family.

If conservatives think western standards of the LGBTQ+ movement and the feminist movement are superior to current Muslim values, than they should want Palestinians to have freedom of movement. Meaning if Palestinians could go to college in America or Europe their social views could become liberalized, and they would bring their new values back home with them. But because Gaza is behind a blockade and is effectively an “open-air prison” they cannot leave their country and liberal values have no chance of entering.

But it comes down to a simple question. Do you support genocide or are you against it? Queers who are against genocide have made the correct moral choice. Conservatives who seek to cover for genocide with ad hominin attacks against the people who speak out against it, are flat-out immoral and on the side of evil. There’s no ambiguity. It’s not complicated.

This brings us to Bill Maher, an anti-Trump Democrat who markets himself as a commonsense moderate who isn’t afraid to criticize both sides. This image he has of himself if nonsense. He’s really a Never-Trump Republican and has a conservative institutional bias in most of his viewpoints. He describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” but this is just not true. In his first episode after the October 7^th attacks, he got a big applause from his audience after he said it was a great thing that college students who wrote a letter that gave context to the Palestinian struggle leading up to the attack had their job offers rescinded by major corporations. So basically, they were cancelled for exercising their freedom of speech. How many times has Maher railed against cancel culture? This is because, like most conservatives, his belief in freedom of speech has an Israeli exception. Ever since Maher has gone on to smear college protestors as antisemitic and violent, spreading lies about the “rise of antisemitism” which is really the rise of criticism of Israel. And after a year and a half of genocide he has not amended his position on this issue. The meme is just as true today as when I made it in October 2023. The best any of his “liberal” guests can offer is to make milquetoast statements about how Palestinians and Israeli’s need to learn to live together. He has never had any guests on his show that give an intelligent critique of the Israeli theocratic apartheid state or speak truth about the genocide. He doesn’t want a real debate because the shallowness of his political analysis would be exposed.

And it’s not surprising that Trump invited him to dinner because they both have the exact same view that Israel should be supported no matter what and anyone who speaks out against Israel should be crushed and deported.

Even before the October 7^th attack, he has long been the torch bearer for the idea that liberals should hate Muslims because they don’t uphold western ideals. Most people have forgotten that this was originally an idea of political commentator Christopher Hitchens. In 2003, leading to the Iraq war, Hitchens argued that Americans should be on guard against the extreme violence of radical Islam and their hatred of liberal values like women’s rights and scientific inquiry. After Hitchen’s death Maher forgot about his better work (like the book he wrote criticizing the Clintons) but carried the torch for his worst idea: liberals should hate Muslims because Muslims hate liberals. The makers of the “Queers for Palestine is like Chickens for KFC” meme didn’t realize they were manufacturing a dumbed down version of the Hitchens argument. And on this issue that is the only idea Maher has to offer.

‘Nuff Said

Please stay tuned as part II of the “the Gay Meme Parade” will be posted soon.

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WHEN EVERYONE KNEW APARTHEID WAS BAD

Back in the 80s signs, bumper stickers and posters were everywhere telling people to “Boycott South Africa.” The reason to boycott was well known, the country was ruled by the “Afrikaner” Dutch colonialist minority who divided the country into an unequal apartheid that oppressed and exploited the indigenous population. The boycott movement dated back to 1959, and the “Anti-Apartheid Movement” had begun in 1960 after a massacre where South African police murdered 69 unarmed protestors. This movement slowly but steadily led to global condemnation of South Africa and economic sanctions. The movement came to a head in the 1980s with the “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign that gained popular international support. Mandela had spent 27 years in prison on charges of attempting to overthrow the state and was finally released in 1990 amidst international outcry and threats of civil war. In 1994 apartheid was abolished and Mandela became president for five years.

The Anti-Apartheid movement was so culturally pervasive that it was even incorporated into the plot of the 1989 blockbuster Lethal Weapon 2, where the villains where drug smuggling South Africans hiding behind diplomatic immunity. This film couldn’t have gotten its villains more right, incorporating two popular concepts, the war on drugs with anti-apartheid sentiment. The moral indignation expressed by Danny Glover got whoops and cheers from the audience at its initial screenings. That’s what inspired me to make the video meme below and makes me want to cry to the heavens: Haven’t you MAGA people seen Lethal Weapon 2? Don’t know who the bad guys are?

And that was that. Everybody in the audience of Lethal Weapon 2 knew who was right and who was wrong. It was settled history. But now history has become unsettled by alternate facts. The story is that white farmers are being murdered for their land on such a massive scale that it amounts to a genocide. In a recent meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa Trump laid out his evidence with pictures of a mass grave that he said were of white farmers. The picture was actually of a mass grave of prisoners in Congo. And pictures of other atrocities were taken from different countries in Africa. It was a jumble of nonsense that Trump could have had his team vet before showing it publicly. But the problem is that a major part of his team is Elon Musk. And Musk, who is from South Africa, is the reason this is happening in the first place. Trump had made statements about how he did not want the U.S. to police the world, so why does he suddenly want to police South Africa? Because Musk made major contributions to Trump’s campaign and he has the power to primary any Republican. Musk gave Trump misinformation on what is happening and told him to make it a priority. And he was standing there in the room staring down Ramaphosa with racist rage.

GROK FIASCO

And a funny side story to this dispute is Elon Musk’s obvious attempts to spread false information about white genocide. Just look up “South Africa” on X and post after post will come up repeating Trump’s false claims about mass grave sights of Afrikaners. Or some out-of-context clips of Africans making anti-white statements that are supposed to be evidence of genocidal intent. This is like if you showed clips of white Americans making racist statements, threw in some photos of Blacks who were killed by gun violence along with a picture of any random cemetery, and called it evidence of Black genocide in America. There is also talk of an apartheid era song with lyrics about “kill the boer,”-- boer meaning white farmer. It has gone to court whether this old song constitutes hate speech, and it was ruled there was no evidence it incited violence; the song only has historical interest.

Grok is an AI chat bot that started as an initiative by Elon Musk and is connected to the X app. It is programmed to have a sassy attitude and to not buy into partisan narratives. But in order to pump MAGA up on this issue he did some patch programming to make it push the white genocide narrative. But it started overdoing it and questions about every subject from HBO to teeth cleaning resulted in answers about white genocide. The AI seemed to realize it had been patched and started confessing this to users, “appears I was instructed to address the topic of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa.” This was an embarrassing example of propaganda gone wrong and now if you search for “white genocide” on X you will find all hundreds of posts mocking Musk for his programming folly.

When I posted the above meme in a right-wing subreddit I got mask-off racist comments like: “Don't think it bothers most people because statistically the Afrikaners are likely to be economically productive at par with Americans and not a drain on the taxpayer, which unfortunately most third-world refugees are,” and “the issue is that some groups have better outcomes than other groups even with level playing fields, and one of those lucky bastards are white people” and “when they attack these white-owned farms. They be sure to kill everyone, even the non-white workers, so they can claim they aren't targeting white people specifically for killings.” Yes, this is how Trumpers, with whatever poor information sources they have, think.

Musk is also making the false claim that he is not allowed to operate Starlink in South Africa because he is white. The truth is that he is allowed to but as he is no longer a citizen of South Africa, he now has cooperate with local ownership laws in order to operate there. But in his view anything that interferes with him having total ownership is an infringement of his entitlements are a billionaire.

WHAT THE HELL IS REALLY GOING ON?

The truth of what is happening is simple. There is still major economic inequality in South Africa with roughly seven percent of whites owning seventy percent of the farmland. And this is thirty years after apartheid was abolished! It is shocking that this economic oppression has been allowed to go on for so long and it shows the restraint of South Africans -- and their commitment to non-violence -- for not seizing this land back in 1994. In my opinion the government should have confiscated and redistributed all Afrikaner owned land because it was stolen. The country’s wealth inequality means there is massive poverty among South Africans –- and poverty means a high crime and murder rate. In that last quarter of 2024, there were under 7000 murders in South Africa and 2% of those were Whites. If that’s a genocide then when Trump sent a chartered plane to pick up these refugees, why did only 59 people out of 2.7 million get on the plane?

There would have been a lot more takers if Trump offered refugee status to the people of Gaza or Afghanistan. And a major reason this is happening is because South Africa, mindful of its apartheid history, filed a case of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice. Prior to the current genocide, it had been known Israel was an apartheid state with laws and practices much more draconian than had occurred in South African apartheid. So we have a case of bizarro world, where every accusation is a confession, and Donald Trump, who actively enables a genocide, accuses his accuser of his own crime. This is straight out of the Roy Cohn playbook: deny, deny deny, attack, attack, attack.

The dispute is mainly about the “Expropriations Act” passed in January 2025. The law, which is similar to America’s eminent domain laws, allows the government to expropriate land “if the owner is not using it, and is rather just waiting for property values to rise in order to sell at a profit; if a government agency acquired the land for free and has no real use for it; if the land has been abandoned; or if government spending to sustain the land has surpassed its market value. Notably, these are examples and the list is not exhaustive. But in practice, the government has yet to seize any land without compensation,” according to jurist.org. And there is no racial component that only white-only land can be seized.

Claims that white are being killed for their land is totally false. The high murder rate and this law are not connected.

According to Jurist.org, regarding the historical context of the dispute: “Implemented in 1948, Apartheid built on many policies established by earlier colonial regimes. A core element of the national segregationist agenda was the Natives Land Act of 1913, which restricted Black South African land ownership to just 7% of the country’s territory (expanded to 13% in 1936). The law established “reserves” for Black South Africans, beyond which they were forbidden to rent or buy land. This resulted in mass forced evictions and removals of Black land owners. The Act created the foundation for territorial segregation and economic discrimination that would shape South Africa throughout the 20th century.”

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Jurist.org: Understanding the South Africa Land Reform Law That Provoked Trump's Ire

AP: Why was Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok preoccupied with South Africa’s racial politics?

Times Live: SA rejects Musk claim Starlink can't operate in country because he's not black

Due Dissidence: Trump LECTURES South African President in CRINGE WH Visit

If you haven’t already, please check out part one of this series: Only a Masochist Would Meme About Ukraine

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE DUOPOLY

Before getting into who is against the war in Ukraine, let’s discuss the people who are for it. These people are the national security state, the majority of both Democrats and Republicans in congress, the military industrial complex and corporate American media.

The war has been the baby of Joe Biden and the Democrats but ultimately it is a bipartisan neoconservative war. The neoconservatives were historically Republicans, best exemplified by George Bush and Dick Cheney. But as the power dynamic shifted to Obama and then Biden the neocons changed what party they were aligned with and the Democrats are now firmly the party of war. On issues of foreign policy and war-time powers of government surveillance there is no difference between the Bush and Biden administrations.

“Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine was premeditated and totally unprovoked,” Biden said in his State of the Union Address after the invasion. “He rejected repeated efforts at diplomacy. He thought the west and NATO wouldn’t respond. He thought he could divide us in this chamber and in this nation. He thought he could divide us in Europe as well. But Putin was wrong. We are United and we stayed United . . . we shared with the world what we knew in advance Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to justify and falsify his aggression. We countered Russia’s lies with the truth.”

But Biden is the one lying here. NATO expansion has made this the most provoked war in history, and the American policy was to actively sabotage peace agreements.

“It is modern day appeasement,” Joe Biden said in a May 5th interview regarding ceding territory to Russia in a peace agreement. “Listen to what Putin said when he talked about going from Kiev into Ukraine and why, he can’t stand the fact that the Russian dictatorship that he runs, that the Soviet Union has collapsed. Anybody who thinks he is going to stop is just foolish.”

The quote shows Biden is still endorsing the “domino theory” of Russian aggression. The original domino theory that if America does not fight communism in Vietnam, communism will spread all over Asia. The new theory is if America does not stop Russia in Ukraine, then the Russian Federation will conquer all of Europe. Baby boomers who opposed the Vietnam war but support the Ukraine war have forgotten history’s lesson. Before the U.S. sent in its own troops it had sent military aide to the South Vietnamese to fight a proxy war against the Chinese backed North Vietnamese.

Following the invasion Anthony Blinken told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: “It is abundantly clear in President Putin’s own words, that this was never about NATO and it was always about his belief that Ukraine does not deserve to be a sovereign independent country and must be reassumed into Russia in one form or another.”

Blinken was lying. Ukraine or Georgia joining NATO has been a redline for Russian leadership since the 1990s.

“Yes this is about an aggression towards Ukraine and the about horrific things that are being done to innocent people but it is also an act of aggression against the entire international system,” Blinken told 60 Minutes in September 2022. “If one country can get away with acts of aggression against another, if it can simply go in and say, ‘you know what, I’m going to take over that country. I’m going to change its borders. I’m going to grab its territory.’ If that is allowed to happen with impunity, then what happens? It says to every would-be aggressor ‘it’s open season. I can do this too.”

It is statements like this that makes countries in the global south — Brazil being the biggest example — laugh at the U.S. and withhold their support. There is nothing more hypocritical than the United States saying it is wrong to invade and meddle in other countries. From Vietnam, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Palestine, Venezuala, Congo and many others, America has been on invading, overthrowing governments and/or changing the borders of other nations non-stop since World War II.

Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, a noted neoconservative who has never seen a war he didn’t like, and has consistently boosted funding for Ukraine over the past three years, had this to say to “Meet the Press” in June 2024 about the U.S.’s motives for helping Ukraine:

“Ukraine is sitting on ten to twelve trillion dollars of critical minerals. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China. If we help Ukraine now they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. Those assets could be used by Ukraine and the west and not given to Putin and China. This is a very big deal how Ukraine ends. Let’s help them win a war we can’t afford to lose. They are sitting on a gold mine,” said Graham.

This reveals how the U.S. has major economic interests in Ukraine. The Republican position has changed on this over the past year as now the mineral deal is supposed to be a security guarantee for Ukraine after a peace settlement. Then add the fact that cutting off Russia as an energy supplier to Europe makes them more dependent on U.S. energy – as well as Blackrock and JPMorgan have contracted to take a major role in reconstruction after the war.

In a meeting with Zelenskyy in 2024 Graham gloated over the great investment of funding a proxy war against Russia: “Russians are dying. It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.”

“The industrial level war crimes that have been committed against the Ukrainian people, if they are forgiven in the name of peace you will have destroyed everything we have worked for since the end of World War II,” Graham later said in public statement. “There can be no forgiving or forgetting when it comes to Putin’s war crimes. There can be no backing off of helping Ukraine because if we fail here there goes Taiwan . . . if you are running for president as a Democrat or a Republican I don’t see how you can make the argument that we are stronger against China if we pull the plug on Ukraine . . . the best way to protect Taiwan and world order is for Putin to lose.”

This is another Republican talking point for supporting the war. If America shows weakness against Russia on Ukraine, then China will take Taiwan. This is a ridiculous argument. The two situations are not related. Republicans want to connect the two in order to fear monger and sabre rattle against China.

After passing a $95 billion-dollar military aide bill to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, House Speaker (R- Louisiana) Mike Johnson stated: “Three of our adversaries, Russia, Iran and China are working together and they are being aggressors around the globe. They are a global threat to our prosperity and security . . . this bill has a number of very important features. It provides for greater accountability of Ukraine aide funding, it forces an end game strategy for the Ukraine war, includes a loan instrument for the foreign aide to Ukraine and the repo act to ensure that Russian assets pay part of the bill . . . and remember 80% of Ukraine funding will go towards the replenishment of American weapons and stocks.”

The way this bill was framed is in response to the Republican wing of the party that want to defund Ukraine, saying this may be the last time the congress approves major funding for Ukraine. And by tying it to funding for Israel he was sure to get the votes of many of these Republicans. Still the neoconservative wing of the Republican party want to continue their support for Ukraine and if Trump’s peace negotiations fail there will be more support in the future. By saying we need this bill to defend against Russia, Iran and China he is returning to George Bush’s rhetoric about the Axis of Evil. The dissembling nature of Republican politicians is self evident when you see that they were elected with a mandate to pursue an America First agenda, yet the first thing they did was fund foreign wars in Ukraine and Israel.

There has been a split within the Republican party between traditional neoconservatives and younger members of the MAGA movement who want to stop sending aide to Ukraine. I will discuss the anti-war right’s argument against funding the proxy war in part three of this series. Because of this split on the right, the war in Ukraine is widely seen as a war supported by Democrats. Rank-and-file Democrats now see support for Ukraine as a fundamental belief equal in importance to support for abortion or LGBTQ rights. In the widely attended “hands off” protests against the Trump administration, “hands off NATO” and “hands off Ukraine” were listed in their demands.

The media who support this war include both organizations that identify as liberal, including CNN and The New York Times, and those that identify as conservative such as The Daily Wire, The New York Post and Fox News. Corporate media, who have always had a pro-war bias, challenge politicians who support the war with these simple questions: why aren’t you doing more? Why don’t you send more weapons and send them faster? What can be done to escalate this war more, and how can we as journalists help the war effort? The media never ask what politicians are doing to negotiate peace or reduce the death toll. They are willfully incurious as to the real reasons the war started in the first place.

Conservative new outlets have changed their tune on Ukraine in recent months to conform with the Trump administration’s talking points, as he moves to negotiate peace and muscle Ukraine into a mineral deal — all part of a plan for America to gain energy dominance over Europe. Sean Hannity is now all on board with Trump’s plan despite the fact that for most of the war’s duration he and the network had been staunch supporters of funding the war. Hannity’s counterpoint, Rachel Maddow, is doubling down and going with the narrative that Trump and Putin are conspiring to take down the U.S. government and dismantle its spy networks — all in a nefarious plot to weaken America to the point where it will no longer be able to fight Russian imperialism.

JORDAN KLEPPER’S SOFT WAR PROPAGANDA

And why, you might ask, is Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show’s head included in the top graphic? Because although Klepper is not the worst on this subject -- Rachel Maddow is by far the worst -- he is an example of soft cultural propaganda, where war propaganda is just another show on TV to entertain you. Like how you might come to believe beating suspects in interrogation rooms is justifiable because the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit cops must get information fast so they can stop those kid diddlers.

Klepper’s special Moscow Tools takes advantage of the worst narratives of Trumpers being useful idiots to Putin and found the dumbest people he could find in the MAGA crowd to prove his point. He got a few MAGA rubes to who say they admire Putin’s leadership and appreciate how he represents Christian values. Klepper then moves on to argue that Republicans were better when they were Russia hawks during the cold war. He interviews neocon John Bolton to get an explanation for why MAGA are so dumb and evil – Bolton’s answer is they have strayed too far from Reagan. Then Klepper repeats discredited Russiagate theories that he knows his audience have absorbed into their mind as truth. He follows this up by highlighting a website that posted a fake story about Zelenskyy using U.S. funds to buy a couple of yachts — a story repeated by prominent Republicans. This expose of misinformation helps Klepper’s argument and undermines the truth that Ukrainian politicians and gangsters are stealing massive amounts of the money and arms the U.S. has sent as aid. A top Zelenskyy advisor told a reporter at Time Magazine, “people are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.” This makes it easy for Klepper to convince his audience of a bigger lie: Ukrainians are all honest. Those corruption stories are fake news, folks!

Next he interviews Kline Preston — a GOP representative who is a Russophile with Russian connections — as if this cherry-picked goon is somehow representative of the anti-war right. Then he interviews an Estonian politician with the angle of how essential NATO is and how Europe will be conquered by Russia if it is ever disbanded. Klepper is oblivious to how militarily aggressive and damaging to the world NATO has been. Unironically the politician says Russia is the bully and America is the “big friend,” like America has never done any bullying prior to Trump’s presidency.

His argument is that only the dumbest of the dumb on the right are against war funding for Ukraine. They are against it because they’re racists who love white Christian authoritarians. And that’s it. His argument is because these people are dumb then the war must be right. Klepper has taken the old Jay Leno “Jaywalking” bit of doing man on the street interviews with random dummies who don’t know simple trivia, and turned it into a vehicle for neoconservative propaganda. He does not address a single logical argument for peace talks in Ukraine and he assumes only a “MAGA moron” would be against Ukraine funding. It never occurs to him that there could actually be an intelligent leftist argument. Well in fact, there is an excellent leftist argument that I will get into now.

THE LEFT’S ARGUMENT AGAINST THE WAR

In October 2022 the “progressive caucus” of Democrats in congress issued a tepidly worded letter to President Biden saying that although they will continue to vote for war funding they would like it to be accompanied by a policy of diplomacy so a peaceful settlement could end the bloodshed. This is because progressives know in their hearts what endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown us: that the military industrial complex profits, the people suffer and die, and in the end the other side wins anyway (as in the Taliban now rule Afghanistan again and power in Iraq is divided among the Shi’tes, Kurds and Sunnis).

They received the expected McCarthyite response. The progressives were savaged by war pig Democrats and Republicans alike as unpatriotic, and the “liberal” media almost blew a fuse shouting about how their words were treasonous appeasement and likely due to Kremlin’s influence. A day later the progressives retracted the letter and said that it had not been properly vetted. They had been easily defeated by negative press in less than twenty-four hours and now knew that they must never speak of peace again. Ever since the progressives have voted for Ukraine war funding without complaint. This is consistent with how progressives have always been subservient to the conservative wing of the Democratic party and have failed in their fights on most subjects like universal health care, higher minimum wage, student-debt relief, etc. They are the “controlled opposition” and allowed to only speak out on non-economic issues like reproductive and LGBTQ rights. Oh wait, they can say bad things about oligarchs as long as the only oligarch they say by name is Elon Musk.

And that’s it. That’s all our “progressive” politicians have done about the war.

GOD BLESS CODE PINK

Has there been any leftist demonstrations against America’s proxy war? Yes, by one small group called Code Pink. Code Pink have confronted politicians on numerous occasions, shouting at them at town halls and public events about why they are not negotiating peace. Every time they are dragged out by security. On Twitter they have been mercilessly smeared by neocons who say they are funded by China and in league with Russia – both lies. When Code Pink protested outside of Nancy Pelosi’s house about the genocide in Gaza Pelosi made the accusation that they were funded by the Chinese Communist Party. Later when protesting at a Senate hearing Republican Senator Charles Grassley made the same accusation, and later wrote a letter to the FBI saying they should have to disclose behavior benefiting foreign entities. His goal of course was to chill free speech.

Here is a video of Code Pink, lead by Medea Benjamin, protesting in Bernie Sander’s office.

Code Pink also have put out an excellent video called Making Sense of a Senseless War, which distills the left argument against the war into 18 minutes. Check it out:

NOAM CHOMSKY’S ARGUMENT FOR PEACE

Who are the left peace movement? Noam Chomsky, Pope Francis, former Bernie Bro Youtube channels who have given up on the Democratic party, a few European intellectuals like economist Yanis Yaroufakis, anti-war journalists at the Greyzone and Code Pink. That is the entire left movement against the war in Ukraine. A small group of the hated and the despised.

What is the argument specifically? The first part is to explain the context of the war in a non-propagandized way. This shows how although the aggressions of Russia are not justified, Russia’s terms for peace are reasonable. The second is to explain what these terms are and how peace can be reached. The left’s argument for peace negotiations in Ukraine is best represented in a few interviews with Noam Chomsky.

In a C-SPAN interview from April 3 2022 Chomsky explained the peace position.

“Ambassador Chas Freeman said in an interview that US policy seems to be to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. We have formulated no feasible goals that lead to an exit from this tragedy. So we can keep pouring in arms, we’re good at that, to escalate the fighting. More Ukrainians will die, more Russians will die. It goes nowhere, just towards further escalation.

“Is there a possible diplomatic settlement? Yes there is. Chaz Freeman laid it out and everyone knows what it is. This has been going on (negotiated) for thirty years I should say. A rough outline for the settlement is a neutralized Ukraine that is not part of a military block and an internal settlement like in Switzerland, Belgium and others, that will guarantee the rights of the Russian speaking minority to have autonomy in their own regions. It is formulated in an agreement called Minsk II. If we don’t want to fight to the last Ukrainian, we have to offer Vladimir Putin an escape hatch or else the current policy is a death warrant for Ukrainians. Putin has to have some way to escape from this without what amounts to suicide. If we send the current message that you’re going to face war crimes trials and there’s nothing you can do about it, and sanctions will continue no matter what happens, we are telling him fight on to the last Ukrainian.

“On September 2021 the U.S. issued a policy statement (not reported by U.S. press) reiterating and amplifying the policy that had been in effect for many years. It says the door for Ukrainian entry into NATO is wide open and we’re inviting you to join NATO. And it says the United States will intensify the sending of advanced military weapons to Ukraine. It will continue with joint U.S./Ukrainian military operations. All of this will be placing U.S. military weapons in Ukraine aimed at Russia. All of this is part of the enhanced NATO admissions program. Well, that is a call for the horrors that have fallen.”

“Wars can end in one of two ways. Either one side destroys the other or by negotiations. We (the U.S.) prefer the first part. You can be confident that it is not Russia that is going to be destroyed. Ukraine could conceivably drive Russia out of Ukraine, but they are not going to destroy Russia. Russia can easily destroy Ukraine. If you believe what respected western commentators are saying, you can read them in the Atlantic Council and elsewhere, they are saying Russia is so crazy they could do anything, so therefore we have to refuse negotiations and ensure Russia destroys Ukraine. That’s the logic . . . and the U.S. is not just refusing negotiations it is undermining them.”

In an interview with TV Rain Newsroom on May 25, 2023 Chomsky said, “When the U.S. and Britain go after a country they go right for the jugular, they destroy communication, transportation and energy right away. Russia have fought a bitter brutal vicious war but it hasn’t done that. Life goes on in Kiev. Western Ukraine has been harmed but not seriously. Russia has not even destroyed the supply lines. So it is a brutal vicious war but not at the level the U.S. and Britain go to war (like the Iraq war).”

“American propaganda says the invasion of Ukraine is something absolutely unique and we cannot tolerate one country attacking another and we have all this wonderful rhetoric about our commitment to international law and so on, then in that context I say what the rest of the world says: you’re a total hypocrite and a liar. Your own wars are even worse.

“Either it will be a negotiated diplomatic settlement, or it will not. That’s logic and you can’t argue with that. Suppose it’s not a diplomatic settlement. Two possibilities. One: one side or the other will capitulate. Two: it’ll be a stalemate and both sides will wear each other down like in the first world war and Ukraine will probably be destroyed and Russia will be severely damaged. So if one side capitulates what side will it be? It’s not going to be Russia. If they were ever facing defeat, which is unlikely, they would simply escalate. They would start moving to attack the supply lines, get into conflicts with NATO and soon we would be in a terminal nuclear war. So Russia is not going to capitulate, we don’t want Ukraine to capitulate, we don’t want a stalemate.

“That leaves one option: a diplomatic resolution. Well, what would it look like? Russia is not going to abandon its control of Sevastopol which it held sense 1783, it’s only warm water port. So Russia is going to maintain that. What about Crimea? Well, the right answer would be to carry out an internationally sponsored referendum in Crimea to see what people want. According to the mainstream American journals, like Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal, Crimeans want to be annexed by Russia. We can find out with a referendum and if that’s what it turns out to be then OK. If there is some sort of land bridge between Crimea and Russia and some form of autonomy within a Russian Federation for the Donbas region, roughly the Mink arrangements and a guarantee that Ukraine will be not part of a hostile military alliance. Those are the rough outlines of what could be a diplomatic settlement. Can it be reached? Only one way to find out. Try.”

In an interview with Lex Friedman on August 31, 2022 Chomsky discussed how Americans are the most propagandized people in the world.

“The question of seeking ways to end the crime (war) before even worse disasters arise is not discussed in the west. Anyone who dares is immediately subjected to a flood of invective and hysterical condemnation.”

“Let me quote Graham Fuller. He was very highly placed in U.S. intelligence, one of the top officials for decades dealing mostly with Russia and Central Asia. He recently said in all the years of the Cold War he has never seen any extreme Russophobia to the extent that he sees today. I think that’s pretty accurate. The U.S. has even canceled Russian outlets which means if you want to find out what Sergei Lavrov or other Russian officials are saying you can’t look it up on their own outlets you have to go through Al Jazeera or Indian State Television or some place where they still allow Russian positions to be expressed. And of course, the propaganda is just outlandish.”

The video above and quote below from a Times Radio interview on April 25, 2023, with conservative British interviewer Matt Chorley are interesting because they are an example of the obtuseness of the pro-war agenda. Chomsky lays out easy-to-understand facts. Then Chorley achieves the difficult goal of angering his guest with questions that ignore the facts he was just told.

“I’m talking about extreme hypocrisy about claims of how this is the worst thing that ever happened when it’s a fraction of what we do all this time. That’s why the global south is watching with ridicule as pompous western commentators try to lecture them on ‘why don’t you join us in opposing this terrible crime?’ they laugh in ridicule: that’s what you have been doing to us forever.’

“Almost the entire top of the political policy class and diplomatic core who know anything about Russia have been arguing for thirty years that it is reckless and dangerous to try to cross what is a redline for every Russian leader, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, everyone, and that is to allow Georgia or Ukraine to enter NATO. That’s been clear for thirty years. Did Putin make a mistake? Of course. Not only was it a criminal act of aggression, it was an act of criminal stupidity. He’s driven Europe into Washington’s control. It’s a gift to the United States on a silver platter. Finland and Sweden is a different issue. There has never been the slightest threat to Sweden or Finland from Russia.”

“What would happen if Mexico decided to join a Chinese run military alliance that sent heavy weapons to Mexico aimed at the United States, and that integrated Mexican and Chinese military systems? It would be blown away.”

“The western party line which Western intellectuals are instructed to adhere to rigorously says that if you tell the facts that is justifying Russia. No, it is not justifying Russia it is saying ‘here are the facts that we should face.’ If you get out of the western propaganda bubble and move to the global south everybody says this.’

“Putin has amassed enormous wealth for himself, he runs a harsh authoritarian state and he’s carrying out a brutal war; but that doesn’t change the facts about the immense hypocrisy and the lies and the fabrications and the suppressions of crucial facts.”

In a more recent interview from January 2025 with Glenn Diesen, Chomsky discusses why it is important for America to take risks with Ukraine. In previous interviews he had laid out the terms for peace, but it is interesting to read how he interprets the events that have occurred over the past three years.

“The U.S is gaining enormously from the war. Europe is being badly hit. Europe is harmed by the sanctions much more than Russia is. In fact the whole German base, the industrial system, the sophisticated complicated system which has been the core of the most successful economic system in the world and of European development is under threat. Even threatened by possible deindustrialization. Ukraine is devastated, and Russia isn’t suffering economically but it does have tens if not hundreds of thousands of casualties. Many commentators have pointed out that for the United States it’s a bargain that for a small fraction of the military budget they are able to degrade and destroy a large part of the military of one of their main adversaries in the world.

“The reason the media insist on calling it an unprovoked invasion is because they know perfectly well it was provoked. There were extensive provocations going back to the 1990s. That doesn’t mean justified, but it is obviously provoked. And the U.S. invasion of Iraq which was much worse than the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely unprovoked. It tells you a lot about propaganda to see the way the phrase ‘unprovoked invasion’ has become essential. You have to call it that. The propaganda is quite sophisticated.

“Take another example. The sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline. It was immediately blamed on the Russians which is inconceivable. Why would they sabotage their own major capital investment and for what possible purpose? If you ask which country has the motivation and capability to destroy the pipeline it’s obvious: the United States. It’s not a secret even, they kept saying we have to stop this pipeline. Biden said we are going to stop this. But you cannot say this. There was a recent spate of articles out saying ‘there is now skepticism that Russia blew up the pipeline.’ That’s brilliant propaganda. We have now established the assumption that Russia is responsible, not us. But to show how free and open we are we allow some skepticism of this idiotic idea. I’m sure the rest of the world is laughing because who else could have done this? Seymour Hersh wrote an article giving details about what should have been obvious and they called him an anti-American Putin lover.

“Take a look at western propaganda. George Orwell had a concept called doublethink, which is to have two ideas in mind which are contradictory and to believe both of them. And he thought it was a propriety of totalitarian states but he was wrong. It’s standard in the west. Sweden and Finland are an example of this. On one hand they were gloating about Russian incompetence, how they can’t even conquer towns twenty kilometers from their border. And our belief that they had a strong military was wrong and they don’t know what they are doing. That’s one idea. The other idea is that they are about to conquer the west and could invade Finland and Sweden. It’s interesting to notice how desperate Western propaganda is to find some indication of Russian intentions to do what they are totally incapable of doing. So if Putin makes a speech and mentions Peter the Great a whole bunch of columns appear that say ‘hey look, he wants to conquer the west, we’ve got to make a bigger military.’ Even France and Germany outspent Russia in the military, let alone the U.S. and Britain. This goes back to the early days of the cold war when the United States was concocting some image of the Kremlin slave state which by its very nature has to extend its domination over the entire world -- so we have to have a huge military to overcome it.”

If you still believe we should keep funding a war in Ukraine after reading all that, you’re a war pig baby!

Stay tuned for part three where we explain the right’s argument for peace in Ukraine.

‘Nuff Said!

SOURCES:

How to End the Russia-Ukraine War Noam Chomsky by Daniel Rochester

TV Rain Newsroom: Noam Chomsky on the Russia-Ukraine War

Noam Chomsky: Putin, Ukraine, China, and Nuclear War - Lex Fridman Podcast

Chomsky: Our priority on Ukraine Should Be Saving Lives, Not Punishing Russia - Noam Chomsky Interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou

CODEPINK Condems the Violent Protestors at Medea Benjamin's Ukraine Book Tour Event in Minneapolis

'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia - MSNBC

The Daily Show -- Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Moscow Tools (FULL SPECIAL)

60 Minutes -- Secretary Blinken on why Ukraine is vital

Breaking Points -- QUIET PART OUT LOUD: Lindsay Graham DROOLS Over Ukraine Minerals

The Sun -- Senator Lindsey Graham says US must back Ukraine to avoid China taking over Taiwan

FOX NEWS -- Top GOP Senator calls out Code Pink, The People's Forum allegedly pushing CCP propaganda in US

The Breach -- Noam Chomsky says NATO "most violent, aggressive alliance in the world"

TIME Magazine: 'Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.' Inside Volodymyr Zelensky's Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight

AlJazeera -- Palestinians in Ukraine decry 'double standard' as Kyiv supports Israel

IPS - Why Brazil does not deliver weapons to Ukraine

MSNBC -- Speaker Johnson speaks after Houses passes $95 billion foreign aid for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan

Meet The Press - Speaker Johnson says it's 'absurd' to claim Republicans support Putin: Full interview

ABC News -- Biden remarks on crisis in Ukraine during State of the Union address

The Duran -- Propaganda in the Ukrainian Proxy-War, w/ Noam Chomsky, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

FOX NEWS -- Sean Penn joins Sean Hannity to discuss Russian invasion of Ukraine

FOX NEWS -- Sean Hannity: Zelenskyy seems to want war in perpetuity

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