insurgenRat

I understand, today my own nation votes to slap down a hand outstretched in peace and warmth. In my own state police deploy anti terror powers to crack down on anyone attending a rally against Israeli militancy.

But if we give up nothing will improve, and everything good we have started small and grew into unstoppable movements.

Larger scale action takes smaller scale first

The Israeli government is able to pursue its horrible policies because of a lack of support for palastinian people.

Preventing protest in powerful nations stops public opinion changing. Public opinion allows the political establishment to continue to avoid historical responsibility.

If western nations drop support of Israel and start using sanctions etc it would be much harder to destroy Gaza.

This ban will allow the Israeli state to continue murdering an entire people unchecked

I don't think that's likely, we are apes not angels.

Sometimes we have conflicts, some are probably resolvable, some represent fundamentally opposed interests.

We can try to make society different, so there are fewer situations that lead to irresolvable conflicts. That project will never end.

Whether this gives you hope or grief is largely up to you.

Just don't do what I did. You start with some basic mix right? good old 20/80/trace and you're happy. But you wonder, who doesn't wonder, so you try some different stuff right? I mean it's there, can't hurt to know cannit?

Maybe you try a little high/low humidity. you think hehe this feels a bit funny. Then it's just a small step to puffing clouds at high altitude right? next think you know you're chasing that forever. It's strange and weird but then breathing down on the ground feels so exhilarating. Nothing can stop the road you're on now.

You'll be trying diving mixes, pure oxxy, vox mods with helium and shit. You're sleeping among empty gas tanks. It's no life man, no life at all.

Make better choices, it's too late for me.

A lot of the Aussies you'll chat to on the internet don't realise how recent there was heavy segregation even among people broadly considered white now.

If you look at the last names of powerful people even now you'll find that while they're general all white dudes Irish last names are underrepresented, despite being around as long as English ones. A lot of migrants from Greece/Italy/Poland etc were heavily sidelined too.

Lets not even get into treatment of native peoples and non white migrants cause we'll fucking be here all day.

This country is definitely heavily divided by class, last oecd report I read found 4 generation median time for bottom quartile income to next quartile up. That's bonkers.

Everything is feedback cycles. Yes there's homegrown bullshit but it's naive to ignore how that is encouraged by for example the usa exporting neoliberalism and encouraging/bullying other countries to deregulate their own markets (like media ownership that lets people like Murdoch rise) for favourable political treatment.

It's naive to ignore that when usa media, usa products, usa megacorps all arrive somewhere that they wont swing the culture.

The usa has almost certainly interfered in our elections ffs.

Being a country the usa has military interest in is incredible corrosive. It's not just Australia where this has happened.

we elected a socialist in the 70s. It ended in a constitutional crisis and his successor was groomed by the CIA. rhymes with certain things no?

we had a publicly owned transport system, telephony, healthcare system, a thriving public service. Then we started getting leaned on.

We had a collectivist culture, government funding for our own media with our own values, then we started getting leaned on.

It goes on.

Even our slang is being replaced, people are pronouncing things your way, the media of the usa is replacing everything and that's intentional government policy.

I (and billions of others) ignore almost all of this and eat with my hands, by the beach, dusting sand and swatting flies off chips that fall and guess what?

We're almost all fine.

This stuff seems like paranoid germophobia to me.

While it is true that insane propaganda is off the charts, for example in my own country Australia we're chaining ourselves to the fading star of the usa and the UK militarily despite having:

• different trade interests
• different geopolitical interests
• different cultural interests

all while the usa government tries it's hardest to undermine our economic policy, erase our culture, and distort our politics towards their own demended lines.

There is zero evidence the chinese government does not want to do the same. They have interfered in our media, our education systems, there has been stupid petty trade squabbles with both "sides" using us for their own ends.

When chinese diplomats speak to our media, even in excruciatingly fair interviews, the pattern is the same slimey deny deny deny and legal quibble that usa diplomats engage in. Their media is insanely critical of Australian life too.

There are no good guys in this power struggle and looking for one is childish thinking.

Even this article refuses to address the notion that the chinese government has ever conducted itself in a condemnable manner.

agree with all of these, although sadly liquid smoke is probably not a healthy thing to have a lot of.

That said I eat onions all the time and they make me ill. Everyone makes their own judgement on the blandness for longevity trade