He’ll turn red any second now.

They’re destroying eggs at the border

I seen they’re trying to say 9 is a dozen. They just want to keep pushing a narrative until it sticks. Anything that sticks is a win for them. It’s a loss for us average folks.

Interesting… Thanks for that info. I am a Brit, I wonder what plans our secret services have prepared for different scenarios (Russia, China, North Korea … and now USA). Looks like world is going back to Macchiavelli (if we ever really left).

Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby a long time ago.

I know you’re making a joke.

That reminds me of a news story from a few years back: a series of bank robberies in Germany, Holland, Denmark - all the same modus operandi and all done by white-haired robbers. Interpol (international police force) said they thought it was elderly members of 1970s terrorist organisations like Bader-Meinhoff gang stealing money because they had no retirement pensions as they destroyed their state records when young/had no savings accounts/criminal records etc and had to find some way to pay for elder care. It just paints an hilarious picture in my mind: Zimmer-frame Zapatas!

Creating bigger problems. Exactly why I ponder if assassination does any good or just recoils on you. But I think that its usefulness is contingent on who kills whom.

I guess that is why there are so few assassinations of elite figures - it threatens the stability that protects the elite so the elite do not assassinate each other.

However, assassinating non-elite people - terrorists and revolutionaries is routine. The elites (governments of nation states, their sub-contractors) have even mechanised assassination by using remote-controlled drone attacks. This stabalises their control.

So, if elites assassinate those that threaten them, it typically works in their favour. But if non-elites do it to elites, does it empower them or not? If it causes chaos and instability amongst the elite, and the chaos spreads to wider society, and does harm to bystanders or even brings about war, is this a price worth paying, or even a good and necessary outcome?

Honestly, I am still struggling with these questions. Part of me thinks ‘sauce for goose, sauce for gander’ and the tyrants deserve to die by their own methods turned back on them. Another part of me knows war is terrible, especially for ‘ordinary people’ and for the environment, and should be avoided. But there is such a thing as ‘a just war’ and armed struggle can be morally good or even our duty.

So, I go back and forth.

I know too little about Russia to know who is a contender to replace Putin or if when he goes the system that created him will go too. I am trying to educate myself on that.

As for China, I know a bit more but I am no expert. Given my limited insight, I am surprised that Xi is still in power. I expected the Communist Party to have ‘neutralised’ him, not necessarily bumped him off but to have taken away his power and reduced him to a figurehead, especially after he mishandled the pandemic and has struggled to fix China’s economic woes. He is basically a thug. If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. But you cannot beat a pandemic with a hammer nor fix inflation or unemployment or pollution with one. You must have as many tools as possible - Chinese perfected the toolkit of government over thousands of years. Sophisticated people in Chinese government must think Xi is an ignorant lout. I suspect they keep him in place because its better for the people who really run China to have a useful idiot as a puppet than to go through the uncertainties of replacing him - more or less how they handled the Kim regime in North Korea until lately. Putin and Kim collaborating on Ukraine must have really angered China which is probably why Chinese are considering sending ‘peace-keeping’ troops to Ukraine. Xi is a pig in a drawing room and the real government is just working around him.

It is hard to tell how much of the reportage about Xi is ‘smoke and mirrors’. I recently saw a viral report on Reddit and in The Guardian newspaper (probably going around all the news outlets) about Chinese military exercises and some special navy vessels (biggest of their kind! etc) they had which were supposed to provide support for amphibian landings of tanks etc. Every report spins this as ‘China war games is preparation for invading Taiwan - shock!’. I am very sceptical. Xi is apparently the driving force behind sabre-rattling rhetoric against Taiwan and building up PRC military might (his new bigger hammer), but I reckon most of Chinese government are not interested in a war with anyone least of all Taiwan - I think they expect to recover Taiwan eventually, by peaceful means, and are happy if it takes a century cos that long timescale is how Chinese think. So, given this split between Xi and the rest, I have the sense this whole media story is just a performance - whether it is to fool the world about China’s military aggressiveness (advertising Xi’s policy) or is some part of Chinese administration doing this to fool Xi he’s still in charge (covert anti-Xi policy), I cannot tell. I just don’t have enough facts to judge what these military manouvres tell us about Chinese government or, on the bigger scale, what real difference it would make if Xi was not around.

We (in UK) get 24/7 coverage of Trump’s idiocies but not real information on other political leaders. I am European and I could not name five European political leaders, let alone predict the outcome if one were assassinated. As for politics in rest of globe, I am just clueless for the most part but I do try to educate myself. I have to create my own news feeds because the MSM is worthless.

The Chinese would certainly just appoint a new president, no problem. Xi might be in charge, but the Chinese communist party isn’t some vestigial organ. Russia, however… Putin’s been exclusively in charge for long enough and with no immediately clear successor that I’m almost certain that his death is going to result in a power struggle and civil war.

You’d have power vacuums.

In America it’s not too late. We have a clear succession strategy. It sucks…I think you’d have to pick people off till you got to Rubio to get back to something closer to normal. He’s #4. If you don’t stop there…it gets a lot worse before it gets any better.

China, Russia, and especially Best Korea are so deeply entrenched, I don’t think succession would go as cleanly.

Good point!

I mean, plenty tried to kill Hitler. He was just really good at not getting assassinated. Frequent last-minute changes to planned public appearances helped a lot

We need monsters who fights on the side of the light.

same problem as cops then

Very clear statement, very helpful, thank you. I think you are correct in your analysis. I know that one reason I play video games is to help myself become aware of my ‘ethics’ (derived originally from my Roman Catholic childhood and still full of that mentality despite decades of ‘personal development’ and consciously trying to break free from false religiosity) and to start questioning them. I am a vegan, literally avoid hurting insects let alone humans. I recoil from violence … and it makes me easy to abuse and exploit. I have been trodden on all my life one way or another because I am too ‘nice’ - I am not a Christian but I still ‘turn the other cheek’.

I play Skyrim and one story arc allows you to be an assassin who eventually assassinates the Emperor which, as a republican who finds monarchy morally offensive, is fine by me! But before you kill him, you have to kill a list of ‘ordinary’ people and it is hard to justify doing so as most of these targets are just eccentric or annoying rather than political threats deserving of execution on behalf of those they oppress. I struggle to do this mindless killing (which the game presents as a cultish sacrifice on behalf of a ‘daedric’ demi-god and/or service performed for pay/capitalist commodity) and as I play the game I am trying to understand my anxieties about ‘killing’ pixels, and trying to achieve a visceral sense of it being okay to use violence in specific situations, to feel good in myself about using my own power/agency, so I am not constantly second-guessing myself and thus conceding the initiative to others who are bad actors. I do not find it easy.

I am currently playing The Outer Worlds which is explicitly about the act of rebellion or revolution against tyranny. One of the characters revels in killing the evil corporation’s mercenaries. I am like a child, looking on and trying to understand the lessons, trying to imagine feeling the same about the work of liberation. It is ironic that capitalist products are helping me become a revolutionary but everything can be a learning experience and whatever the developers think they are creating, the players make their own experiences.

You can absolutely make a massive difference with just one person. People really underestimate how much importance one leader is…

You do have to worry about the election after any assassination though lol.

Yes, it is. So when there is someone going out to kill a large number of people, what should we do about it?

Killing people is wrong.

TIL the allies of WW2 are evil.

Sure, the Japanese invaded my ancestral homeland, done the horrible massacre in Nanjing, but “killing people is wrong” so I guess my ancestors shouldn’t have fought back and let them slaughter my people?

🤣

Yes, Jan 6 murders were very wrong. Tesla vandals are morally superior, I agree wholeheartedly.

no the entire archival institute that had to dig up this shit (because it was missing) which he then lied about giving back, trump then got subpoenaed for lying about it.

Yeah no this is literally a criminal conspiracy as far as the government is concerned.

That’s not even the worst of it. Several rooms full of documents were found at his property and, though everyone seems to focus on the toilet one, IMO the worst is the one of a storage room full of classified documents plus a scanner/printer.

Yes that’s one of the actual pictures from the indictment they brought against him. He apparently had like 300 different documents of varying levels of classified status. There’s a couple more iirc of different places like a bedroom and a ballroom stage too. Basically it seems like he had his goons just hide anything he could get his hands on in random boxes of what were supposed to be just irrelevant personal effects

He was only indicted specifically for like 30 of them but my understanding is they specifically chose ones they were willing to have potentially entirely exposed.

Then we would have eyeliner wearing Venereal Disease Vance and he’s just as worse!! It’s an “evil vs evil” situation and the only people who lose are the American people who tried to change the narrative! I legit feel like I am walking in real time through some “Idiocracy” film set watching for Luke Wilson to pop out and say JK, but NOPE… here we are! :/

Failed last time. Unfortunately. I cannot wait to see that he died.