ἐγὼ τὸ μὲν δὴ πανταχοῦ θρυλούμενον κράτιστον εἶναι φημὶ μὴ φῦναι βροτῷ·
I’m not saying the American public doesn’t care about the genocide. I’m saying even if 90% of the American public wanted the genocide to end it wouldn’t matter because those in power won’t stop supporting Israel. The United States isn’t a democracy in the sense that the government listens to the will of the public.
The American public’s opinion re: the genocide is entirely irrelevant. There’s a far better chance that consistent stochastic terror acts against Zionists convinces the US elite to stop providing support to Israel than the opinions of the public. There’s no need for the USAmerican state to listen to the will of the public, and indeed they never have unless backed up with the promise of violence.
These incidents aren’t about strategically sound actions, they’re spontaneous acts of outrage against a genocide the Western world seems to have deemed no big deal. This is the price the rulers of the West have decided as acceptable to continue supporting genocide. These acts will continue, no doubt about it, and who are we to stay they should stop? May not be strategically sound, but can you honestly say it’s immoral to kill a supporter of an active genocode?
Reading the Financial Times this morning I came across an op-ed by fucking Francis Fukuyama. How this motherfucker still gets writing gigs I’ll never understand.
Anyway this bit about Lee Jae-myung, probably the next South Korean president, absolutely cracked me up.
I work with plenty of programmers from Latin America who make a third of what American programmers are paid, speak fluent English, and work harder with better code. Can’t imagine it’s a trend that will slow down.
I’m just commenting that saying Chinese workers have to work less than Danish workers to retire is disingenuous because the nature of that work is very different. It’s obviously better, for a worker, to be doing easy non-physical work for a “longer” period than strenuous fast-paced work. Easy the working conditions of people who generate value is certainly something to aspire to! Denmark (and the West) delenda est because yes their otium is built atop the backs of a latticework of violence exerted on upon the global South.
Ah got it, agreed.
I mean I think there’s a lot of merit to say the Nazis were a result of the October Revolution. Historians like Enzo Traverso and Domenico Losurdo would argue that WWI and WWII are part of the same thirty years war, and that the fascists were the direct result of the communist challenge to capitalist supremacy. There was no other method aside from fascism to restore the Capital order in a place like Italy.
I’d also add that the actual like day to day process of “working” in China vs a place like Denmark is also radically different. A significant amount of Danes work pretty cushy office jobs with long lunch breaks and their “work” consists of lots of emails. The average Chinese worker, whether that be in a factory or an office, is going to be doing far more actual labour in any given hour.
I’m not saying his entire post is wrong. I agree that often the liquidation of low level functionaries of something isn’t akin to an actual revolutionary strategy and often backfires, that’s not what I’m arguing. I’m strictly pushing back on his statement that killing unarmed civilians is always immoral. Something can be both moral and still stupid/ineffective in the long run.
Nah I’m going to push back on that, killing unarmed civilians actively contributing to genocide is not “immoral.” This is the same argument for like why the Rebels shouldn’t have blown up the Death Star, because they killed thousands upon thousands of “innocent civilians” doing plumbing or electrical maintenance or cooking on the Planet Exploding Death Ray Genocide Machine. Obviously “morality” here isn’t relevant one way or another, these kinds of violent acts are the natural consequence of genocide, but there comes a point when unarmed civilians are no longer “innocent.”
Yeah I mean bonds are just savings accounts for rich people. Governments feel beholden to bond markets, and for countries like the large EU ones that don’t issue their own currency they really are, but for a country like the United States it wouldn’t really matter.
The risk of US government defaulting on its bonds is exactly zero.
That’s the only thing I want to push back here on, because the risk is definitely non-zero. There’s no like technical, structural reason why the US would ever need to default on its bonds, because obviously it controls its own currency and can just print the money it needs to pay the bonds denominated in its own currency, but if the people in power believe that they need to default on those bonds then they absolutely could. And Trump is one such guy. Take a look at this interview:
TRUMP: No, I think this – I think there are times for us to refinance. We refinance debt with longer term, because you know we owe so much money. It’s so – nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about it until the bubble pops, and the bubble could pop, and it could pop, and it could be ugly. You’ve seen it a couple of times, but you haven’t seen it as bad as it could be. As bad as it was, you haven’t seen. And I could see long-term renegotiations, where we borrow long-term at very low rates and, frankly, we do need money to rebuild the infrastructure of our country.
It’s an idea that’s been bouncing around the Trump administration for a bit, a partial default on US bonds so they can refinance at lower interest rates for uh reasons unknown idk they just like fucking around maybe?
Broadly I agree with this, but Hedges (as per usual) is a bit too soft. We’re not entering a dark age, the entire twentieth century has been one, and those before it. The Second Congo War killed millions and nobody gave a shit. There’s nothing new or unique about the horrors of Gaza unfortunately, it just lays bare the world for more folks who are paying attention.
To be fair to France, it’s not “outsourcing” because French Guiana is technically part of Metropolitan France. Like even though it’s in South America it’s just a department of France and uses the euro and is part of the EU and all that. Obviously a colonial holdover like Algeria.
Unfortunately I don’t think a consumer market of 300 million people will ever be “irrelevant,” but yes hopefully it will be at best a regional power. Still won’t happen until China et al. break the dollar’s hegemonic global reserve currency status.
I mean the entire world that we live in is designed for human bodies. It makes sense to have humanoid robots because they slot in with the world we’ve created the easiest.
US long-term borrowing costs climbed to their highest level since late 2023 as the stripping of the country’s triple A credit rating and progress on President Donald Trump’s massive tax and budget bill fuelled concerns about the government’s mounting debt burden. Yields on 30-year US Treasuries rose as much as 0.13 percentage points to 5.03 per cent on Monday, exceeding a peak reached during the tariff sell-off last month and putting the country’s long-term borrowing costs at their highest point since November 2023.
Bond-watchers, we’re back baby. US 30-year Treasuries briefly went past 5%. Per: https://www.ft.com/content/c1f34949-86fc-4e70-90c9-4e2e49ed2a29
It’s far more than cringe comedy. Nathan Fielder is perhaps the funniest person working in entertainment right now. The Rehearsal is a masterpiece that posits its impossible for any human to ever truly “understand” another, and demonstrates this in very funny ways. It skirts this insane line between total farce and genuinely insightful and sincere.
Apparently Trump caved re: Iran and uranium enrichment. We might see a deal signed after all. Who knows though. It’s back to the 3% enrichment limit that initially got Iran to sit at the table, rather than the 0% they were reporting over the weekend.
Per https://www.axios.com/2025/06/02/iran-nuclear-deal-proposal-enrich-uranium