THIS USER IS NOT NORMAL ABOUT THIRD LIFE

In the era we live in, a government cannot exist independently of its people, "the usamerican government & the usamerican people" are not completely unrelated entities that happen to be on the same land with the people having no influence whatsoever on the government, nor is that true for any country on earth, let alone the Iranian people. The quote tries to ignore this reality by pretending as though the people of all countries are unrelated victims of their governments

While the "east" and "west" aren't perfect descriptions the world is very much divided! Again, the political scene does not exist independently of the population! Denying this reality denies the very context all governments currently exist in and make their decisions based on, it is denying the very active global hegemony's oppression, it therefore denies how the governments of SWANA exist in relation to it: sucking up to the west in expense of the populace and / or trying to protect the populace, it denies the victimhood of all Iranian people within this order actively hostile and deadly to their very life because it pretends such a hostile order does not exist in the place.

As you said it yourself too, "(our) governments being as bad as USA is incorrect". It is actually the worst offender here, the above so far is a deeply flawed understanding of how states & the world order operates. This deeply flawed understanding piles up to logically result in the final misconception: That the US; the deadly force that has been causing suffering and mayhem in SWANA for over a century, couping and scheming to install puppet regimes that results in the death of millions, dehumanizing everyone within the made up category of "the middle east", (something it carries from the west before it!) and the very aggressor here, is the same as its victims

Solidarity is a weird thing… all of a sudden you’re seeing the Pope on your dash and the tea is… piping hot? (To offset the Vatican.va link, here's a tl;dr from The Onion.) ... Look at him go!

(Disagreements with his Holiness aside, it’s great to see a powerful figure power taking the side of the people.) ... EDIT: Wake up babe, a new Inquisition just dropped - apparently, not even the Pope can escape being wrongly accused by AI "verifiers."

filing all of that under mere "disagreements" signals how unprincipled this reaction you perform is. this framing only holds if you've already decided that opposition to AI is the only relevant axis, and the actual politics, the actual institutional record, the actual people on the receiving end of church policy, gets brushed aside because it's inconvenient to the posts you want to make.

a position that evaluates institutions by whether they've said something useful about your issue, and brackets everything else as secondary, has no mechanism for discerning if praising what is among the most reactionary institution of our time making one statement that aligns with your interests while continuing to cause serious harm in every direction its power reaches is a good choice. the reflex of single-issue politics ends up celebrating an institution with a documented record of what it does with the dignity of people actually vulnerable to it, on the basis that it produced however many words useful to the discourse.

I always see people talk about Laika the space dog, but never the other dogs Russia sent up.

hi. @samreich of @dropoutdottv/@gamechangershow/@makesomenoise/etc., may I ask why you thought that making a joke alluding that men in a lot of makeup are likely to be pedophiles was an okay thing to do on a public production?

Transcript of the interaction below, from about 9 minutes in on No Rolls Barred's episode Blood on the Clocktower But JUST FIVE PLAYERS | Terror in Teensyville | Episode 1

----- Dom Allen (Host/Storyteller): I suppose you're all hardened gamblers. *Laughs* Elaine Carroll: Yes. Dom: Addicts, sociopaths... Elaine: Indeed. Dom: Nonces. [All players laugh] Elaine: The eye contact! The eye contact as he said that! Sam Reich: To be called that... Elaine: Piercing! Sam: To be called that from someone wearing so much makeup.

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For those who may not be already aware [per Collins Dictionary]:

I don't really know what else to say at this point. I'm tired. Between the subpar transfem representation on display at Dropout (a point long argued about over here), and the entirely baffling decision to collaborate with copaganda show The Rookie (both points I've already talked about at length), and now this? I'm kinda done caring about Dropout in general unless some big changes happen.

Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time. The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks’s landmark 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive “advanced” interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.”

[. . .]

The first reference to “Project Bluebird” in the NSA’s collection is an office memorandum from April 5, 1950. Addressed to CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the document lays out the project’s goals, required training, and budget, all while emphasizing that knowledge of Project Bluebird “should be restricted to the absolute minimum number of persons.” The memo includes detailed plans for interrogation teams trained to utilize the polygraph, various drugs, and hypnotism “for personality control purposes.” These teams were to be made up of three people: a doctor (ideally a psychiatrist), a hypnotist, and a polygraph technician. The memo clarifies that while the doctor and technician would need to undergo approximately five months of training, the Inspection and Security Staff’s own department hypnotist could be made available immediately. In a later memo from February 2, 1951, there are inquiries into acquiring six “hypospray” devices: experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via “jet injection.” There’s a request to investigate modification of a “tear gas pencil” and other “devices of unestablished action,” such as the “German ‘Scheintot’ [sic] (appearance of death) pistol.”

[. . .]

[W]hile the actual offshore locations are redacted, a write-up of a CIA meeting held one year later specifically notes a “project in Japan and Korea in which the Army had used a polygraph operator along with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists on Korean POWs.” Although the initial proposal for Project Bluebird mostly emphasized the potential for “personality control,” it’s clear that CIA officials were also interested in broader, more ambitious outcomes. One document summarizing a “special meeting” between U.S., British, and Canadian intelligence services notes the CIA’s desire to research “the psychological factors causing the human mind to accept certain political beliefs” and “determining means for combatting communism,” “‘selling’ democracy,” and preventing the “penetration of communism into trade unions.” Another meeting held on May 9, 1950, called for “the Surgeon General of the Army to place on the search list of the Nuremberg Trials papers request for information on drugs, narcoanalysis, and special interrogation techniques.”

[. . .]

Notably absent from these declassified documents is any proof that similar experiments were undertaken by enemies of the U.S. The central animating myth behind MK-ULTRA and Project Bluebird is the narrative of the American soldier who returned home after months of imprisonment by enemy forces, only to be revealed as a hypnotized double agent. Throughout the Korean War, American moviegoers were screened films starring and narrated by future president Ronald Reagan. These films showed American troops being psychologically tortured by Chinese and North Korean soldiers until dangerous, anti-democratic ideals were implanted in their minds without their knowledge.

[. . .]

> that country

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Julia Serano, "Whipping Girl"