Thank you, it is a very important account from someone directly involved with
that pseudohumanitarian project. A human being of fantastic integrity,
speaking from a very important perspective of someone in line
with the mainstream pro-Palestinian/anti-Hamas narrative,
as well as someone who is a patriotic U.S. citizen,
so none of his observations and evidence
can be dismissed for perceived bias towards "the other side".

One note I have is the M855 ammunition is fairly standard for U.S. and NATO military equipment,
and those distribution sites are in the middle of an active war zone,
so the security forces there could be expected to face enemy combatants in body armor and vehicles,
and would be justified in being armed that way. But yeah, those rounds are notorious
for overpenetration even in their civilian versions, like those used by the 2017 Las Vegas shooter and Rittenhouse,
and the armor piercing bullets can wound multiple people each when fired at a dense crowd.

However, as Aguilar stated, the very fact that the distribution sites
are in the active warzone is a heaping pile of international law violations.
That those military-grade-armed U.S. citizens are there on tourist visas
is also a grotesquery.

That John Spencer man is a perfect foil to Aguilar – incurious, self-absorbed,
eager to implicitly trust the statements of the military that's been accused of war crimes
even as he is hospitably embedded with the troops, as if that hasn't been
a staple of military propaganda across the world for ages.
He wouldn't be worth debating, he'd just shrug his shoulders
and defer to Netanyahu's press releases for any atrocity accusation.

Absolutely.

And much as with Archone, he'd only be worth debating to show people the truth in direct opposition to his lies, which he's obviously completely bought into.

That analyst would be pretty safe to debate for that purpose, I guess.
It is unfortunate that someone like Ben Shapiro, even without a single fact
to back up his arguments, would still trample anyone trying to debate him on stage
just because of his talk show experience and quick conversation style.

Unless there is strict moderation and an panel of factcheckers,
free range debates often turn into contests of fallacies and insults,
with the slickest used cars salesman always getting the popular vote.

Ben Shapiro is a special case. He controls the narrative on his own show. If I were debating him I'd just wait for him to shut up before responding to him and not let him trample on what I had to say.

Perhaps I'd be better off to just go through what Spencer said and debunk it point by point, but that just sounds tedious. I really just found him like a cartoonish and extreme exaggeration of the typical blind, ultra zealous Zionist.

NPR has a tendency to not infrequently put on people like Spencer in some misguided attempt at showing "Both sides" of an issue.

With the way he was interviewed, it did seem like the hosts used him as a model of an out of touch, clueless supporter of Israel's policies.
"Get a load of this fellow!" kind of thing. There are tons of people who are carrying water for Netanyahu's side as it is,
there's no need to invite them to every conversation to restate their unchanging position.

Note that Innskeep just let him have his say with no pushback.

The host's tone felt like he thought Spencer's arguments were so obviously false
that he'd just let audience to dismiss them naturally. Would have been better
to confront him with some statistics and the UN rulings, I agree.

Hey, he only had so much time. Probably better to just give him enough rope to hang himself.

And, off topic, but what do you think of Ukraine and Belorussia's recent cyber attack on Aeroflot?

I have only heard a little about this, I admit. Here's an article with more detailed information from an anti-Putin Russian news site.
The hacking groups behind the attack have accomplished fairly serious data breach attacks before.
In this specific attack, the two parts of the harm done are the immediate losses due to the flight cancellations for that day,
and the data damage to the servers which may take much more time and money to restore.

This is very impressive, but not critical. The greatest issues Aeroflot are facing now
are the lack of access to new air planes and components, so the steady deterioration
of the civilian fleet will eventually cause its operations to shrink, and probably cause many crashes.

It also bears mentioning that large airports in Moscow and other large cities are sometimes forced
to freeze their work and ground or divers all the flights for hours because of Ukrainian drone attacks,
or threats thereof.

Russian economy in general is very robust and the regime can solve any emergency quickly
by throwing unlimited money at it, so such pokes are not fundamentally dangerous to the country,
but they do add up. The problem is, as it always has been, that Putin's Russia can afford to stagnate and suffer
for decades, while Ukraine only has a few years' worth of tenacity that's contingent on the fickle Western support.

Hoping for the best, as always.

I see possibly the most significant aspect of this attack being the reminding of the Russian people of the war and opposition to it.

A reasonable assessment, but the thing with the captive citizenry in autocratic states
is that their attitudes are largely irrelevant. By this point, everyone who had ever been organized enough
to challenge the system to any significant degree has been driven out, jailed or killed,
so no protests are possible, unless something happens on a catastrophically large scale.

The people here are aware of the war, and after three years of escalating drone attacks
and government crackdowns, they've adjusted to the new normal.
An attack on the airline servers is an inconvenience at this point.

Three things can tip the scales enough: a massive economic recession (which is coming);
an internal power struggle within the regime's leadership (possible if Putin dies);
and the return of all the troops and mercenaries to the civilian life and the ensuing explosion of armed violence.

There was also an option of the Ukrainian forces driving back the invasion and liberating all their lands,
but with the kind of assistance they've been getting from EU and Trump washing his hands off this war,
it's a pipe dream, sadly.

Of course, as you are well aware of from your truly heroic actions.

I've never had to put my ass on the line the way that you did.

And all true.

We can only hope that if Putin dies, which will happen at some point, (There are at least rumors of his being in failing health) or otherwise loses power, that someone even more extreme doesn't assume the reins.

I've heard no talk of Putin having a succession plan.

Luckily (although that's an extremely low bar), Putin's administration and himself
don't have a grain of ideological drive between them, their actions have been
very firmly in line with "rational self-interest", i.e. being greedy callous mobsters.
The succeeding political group would likely tone down the military aggression,
because the whole war is basically Putin's self-preservation ploy,
but they won't make any excuses, and retain the strict internal control
and the pretense of upholding "traditional values" and the hard right wing rhetoric.
A few generations of their children and successors down,
the wartime oppressive laws would likely be relaxed further.

That's barring any big surprises.

And thank you for remembering my trouble with the law!
I must clarify that my actions weren't guided by any courageous heroism,
but by despair and the sense of isolation. I was just leaving anti-war messages
around the city for other people who were doing the same,
and for the passers by to take note, but it wasn't any open defiance.
There were young people barely out of high school who would go protesting, and got beaten and tortured
and imprisoned for years, and my late middle-aged ass could only manage the timid tagging of lampposts and walls,
and got half of the smallest jailtime imaginable. And I didn't have any family or career to lose, so it was easy.
Seeing anti-war messages scribbled on the walls of the detention center was very inspiring, too.

Gee, reminds me of a certain American president...

I suspect that you're right. Regaining the "Lost Glory of the Russian Empire" has clearly been an obsession of Putin's. His motivation for self preservation is also similasr to Drumpf and Bibi.

Rather amusing how many people in the US still refer to Russia as being communist.

Whether you intended to put yourself on the line or not, you still did.

I'll likely never be in such risk here, though I recently was caught by a cop writing "Palestine WILL be free" on a lamppost, which was truly a freak occurrence, and just my luck.

The worst things likely to happen to me are likely to be to pay a fine or be assigned to do some sort of charitable work.

The "Glory of the Empire" thing is an integral part of the Russian exceptionalism propaganda narrative,
but I doubt the higher ups really believe all that. After Putin had won a dirty war with the oligarchs,
and had consolidated his power, he wanted to be legitimized by the West as an exception
to the international law, a special boy supreme leader with mild manners who would play ball
in most international interactions, as soon as his machinations in the CIS space would be overlooked.

When the Western players had rejected (for different reasons) his right to be that exception,
and after several of the post-Soviet states had aligned with the EU and NATO
(which I'm sure he saw as a direct CIA intervention), Putin had changed course
from appeasement and bribing of the West, to building up his independent stronghold state,
severing more and more ties with the international laws and restrictions,
until slamming the door in 2022. His plan seems to be to die in his office chair at the age of 99,
so no long-term leverage is going to get him to budge from his current course,
only complete capitulation and accepting his sovereignty over everything adjacent
to the Russian borders. The whole Greater Russia project with carving a path
through Ukraine towards Transnistria, Moldova and the Balkans,
and through the Baltic States towards Kaliningrad are more of a power-mad old man's hobby
than any personal holy crusade of his.

Oh, and Russia isn't communist or socialist in any way, but the labor laws are much more worker-friendly,
with more paid days off and national holidays, and even the massively corrupt courts
tend to settle labor disputes in favor of the worker. There is also a cruddy, but present national healthcare system,
and (bribery-heavy, and reserved for the best high school students) free state universities – a legacy of the USSR.
But then, almost every European country's labor laws are more humane than those in the U.S., sadly.

My sympathies to that run in with a copper, I hope your luck will be better in the future.
Mad respect for you getting yourself involved so directly with this line of humanitarian advocacy,
being an important voice on the streets, as well as keeping the signal freely moving
on this platform!

I doubt he really saw that as a CIA intervention, though of course he'd say that.

He's definitely increasingly isolated himself, and used his grip on Russia to do so. He has fewer and fewer allies, and therefor grows more paranoid by the day.

Sad thing to realize that even Russia has at least marginally better social programs than we do.

Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I'm an old white dude, and therefore not much of a target around here.

I'll always worry about the decent people who are willing to speak their mind, for they are rare, precious and good,
but I'll trust you to pick your battles wisely.

Apparently I blew that one, but in the long run I don't regret it.

We get knocked down,
but we get up again.
They're never gonna
keep us down.

...Speaking of Chumbawamba and Anarchism...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsyIXqdMZTc

Thank you! Negativland will forever be synonymous with Over the Edge and you in my mind,
that mix of meandering samples and soundbites that are nonetheless woven together
by a deliberate artistic thread.

And thank you for teaching me the name of the band, and the song!
I only remember hearing the chorus used in various other media.
As someone mentioned in the comments to the music video,
Tubthumping would have been a thousand times more popular
and recognizable if it were called I Get Knocked Down instead.

There are definiteiy connections.

"I get knocked up, but I get down again."

I was amused by how much most of the people in the comments hated it.

I didn't notice that changing around of the lyrics, thank you for pointing it out!
The comments about Negativland, a mash-and-mix surrealist sample theater, stealing other people's works –
they were something. It's such a shame that we no longer have Marylin Monroe OR Campbell Soup,
as both have been stolen by Andy Warhol.

I certainly wouldn't expect most people to understand what they're doing, particularly on just hearing them once.

Hey, did you see the above question?

I have gotten at least two notifications about your comments on this journal
since our last exchange, thanks for poking me to make sure.

I'd describe Spencer as pretty basic, based on that interview.
He's more like a "why would an official lie about something?/it's cool that the good guys are here to fight the terrorists!"
kind of person than a "I know we're committing genocide, and we should be!" dyed in the wool extremist.
But it's painful to hear this wide-eyed dismissal of the horrors inflicted on the Palestinians, I agree.

I'm pretty tired of that, too, as the Russian political opposition who are no mostly scattered across Western Europe
are almost all only accept the hardcore pro-Israel outlook on the slaughter in Gaza, with a handful of exceptions,
and the most conversations still are centered about the October 7th, rescuing the hostages, and destroying Hamas,
with the casualties being acknowledged as necessary collateral that's also being exaggerated by "the lefties" on college campuses
and the Hamas-Controlled Gazan Healthcare Authority ™.

And those pundits are the "good guys" of the local political spectrum, sigh.

I just see them all as making lame excuses for genocide. It increasingly fails to make them look very good, to say the least.

The problem with Russian politicians and public figures in that regard
is that with the vast and deeply rooted tradition of real anti-Semitism
trailing back through the USSR and into the Imperial era,
it has become the default etiquette to overcorrect in favor
of anything related to the Jewish culture, and that includes
anything related to Israel, as well.
Sort of like the German draconian laws regarding the subject.

I admit that as someone with no Jewish relatives, I also quadruple-check myself
whenever I think and talk about the Jewish culture, and I include it
under the general progressive umbrella of great civil rights struggles,
but it's clear that many people substitute this attitude of "see no evil, speak no evil"
for the real engagement with and the humanization of the Jewish communities everywhere.

And that humanization necessarily implies accepting the flaws, mistakes and crimes
that the Jewish people, and especially Israel, considering its bloody genesis,
are capable of.

The stance boiling down to "Of course they couldn't have done the bad thing – they are Jewish, after all!"
is better than "Of course the did the bad thing – they are Jewish, after all!", but only barely.

This reminds me of a journal I wrote quite a long time ago about Russia's accusations of Nazism in Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frmMjXq1QoQ

It's all about the hypocrisy.

Thanks for this panel with Naomi Klein, the intersectional analysis of the overcompensating male trauma
is something I'd not thought about in relation to these surges of resentment-driven vengeful behavior.

Very gratifying to see people putting the Shoah in the greater context of human history
and its many different exterminatory projects.

Someday, we will need to get beyond the nation state paradigm,
as those structures are consistently being used to justify both
industrial-grade mass murders against the people outside,
and the transforming their own people into tools of violence,
all supposedly in service of sovereignty and security.

Naomi Klein always has something insightful to say.

And I fully agree. Nationalism always leads to violence, and is always poison.

It's not even nationalism, but the overall logic of corralling millions of people,
massive percentage of whom are not in line with the current government's policies
even in democratic systems, and using their combined converted power
to attain the goals of the tiny percentage of the people in charge.

I know you're favorably disposed towards anarchism, and I'm preaching to the choir,
but it's been tiring to hear all those musings about "What do the French think about the migrant crisis?".
"How will the Americans react to this bill getting signed?" and "When will the Turks rise up?"
It is a convenient simplification, but it skews the way the social processes are perceived.

It'd be a long way towards the future where most people will be accurately represented
on the world stage, but we need to stop vesting so much cumulative national identity
into presidents and other pinnacle groups; a large country should always interface with the world
with at least all the major out-of-power political parties following the lead diplomats around,
and offering their perspective.

Consolidation of power is an existential cancer.

Yeah, I'm ultimately always for the decentralization and democratization of power.

Respect!

Right back atcha!

I liked Daniel Maté's description of that self-caricaturizing incident at 06:20
as wearing a fursuit – a true man of culture!

I was also amused at that reference.

Daniel Maté is the son of Dr. Gabor Maté, who's an amazimg person. He is also a supporter of Palestine, but is known for his study of addiction and Trauma and it's effects on people, and his applying of these things in treating people. Look him up. He's truly a remarkable person.

Much obliged for the information! I'll keep his name in mind as one of the good eggs.

He's got a ton of videos up.

In some of them, the son and the father are together!
Pretty cool, considering how different their areas of expertise are.
The world needs more family collaborations like this, and you're right,
they both seem to be extraordinarily decent people with a drive to help others,
and advocate for a better world. Many videos about Gaza featuring them.

I'll be sure to watch some of that, thank you again.

Yup. They're definitely a couple of really cool folks.

Did you also look up all of the videos that Gabor Maté has?

I noticed Daniel has a channel, and they have a joint channel with Gabor.
Also, Wiki has a page for Gabor, and his other son Aaron, but not Daniel.
They are all an amazing family, but Wiki's standards for notability are often baffling.

Yeah, Gabor has his own channel as well.

Wiki pages are posted by their viewers, after all, but you're right about their standards for who they decide to include or not being pretty impenetrable.