ParentiSoundSys

The ICC hasn't indicted "every war time leader" because they're not all committing an open genocide.

It's because the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for committing war crimes.

I remember that being reported in newspapers in 2020 but did those allegations make it into "The Epstein Files"? (I have paid almost no attention since it's the most obvious limited hangout ever hung out.)

When the Epstein news first really broke into the mainstream in 2019/2020, there were a ton of victim testimonials that were absolutely harrowing (and pointed to much weirder and more consequential stuff than "just" sex trafficking), it's been really surreal and disheartening to see the Trump-era releases successfully trivialize and downplay it.

"It's not in the officially released files that the government itself provided, therefore it didn't happen" is the level of 'reasoning' going on here.

It would be nice to think this will significantly hamper Flock and its goals and methods in any way, but it will probably just have the effect of selecting for the employees who are either true believers, or are desperate enough that they'll keep their heads down and get good work done just to keep their jobs.

Sporadic vandalism, a handful of canceled contracts, some employee morale problems, all of this falls far short of the organized campaign of resistance that would be needed to roll back Flock at this point. Flock really should be the last nail in the coffin of Edward Snowden's libertarian take that mass surveillance can be fought only with individual action and technology rather than political movements.

It's the phones and the propaganda being streamed through them 24/7. And if your reaction is, "the rest of the Western world has that too," well, they're really not all that far behind us.

Along the same lines, "Welcome to the New and Improved Police State" by Dave McGowan, September 12 2001: https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/welcome-to-the-new-an...

> everything you know about Epstein and his circle was already public knowledge after his first conviction 20 years ago

Complete nonsense, a lot of Epstein's deep ties to Silicon Valley and academia weren't even developed until after his conviction, and weren't reported to the public until much later.

The more lurid takes on Epstein and his network/influence popularized by the QAnon psyop certainly did a lot to encourage everyone to look the other way, but the facts themselves were reported by a handful of responsible and even-keeled gumshoes in fringe/alt media until Julie Brown came along.

Are you referring to the start of the 12 Day War here? If so, are you leaving out Israel's unprovoked airstrikes on Iran out of ignorance or dishonesty?

They're not going to drive much "I went to see this movie because I loved the video games" traffic, but I've always thought the Gabriel Knight games could be great IP for a movie series.

> Wouldn't the democratic way be to petition the mayor or support a mayoral candidate to appoint a police commissioner whose beliefs on surveillance more align with your own?

Do you believe Flock cameras have been rolled out en masse across the entire country all at once because there is near-unanimous democratic support for their presence?

> Seems like destroying public property for political reasons is wrong and would otherwise be considered terrorism.

"Terrorism," at this point, is just a term used to describe any action taken in opposition to the ruling class and its objectives of total domination & control, assuming that it has some potential to be effective (in contrast to toothless protests or voting).

> But why would Jobs, a child of the counterculture who had practiced Buddhism under a Zen master and cited taking LSD as a formative experience, tether his company’s future to spies?

That's a funny sentence to read when you know the actual history of LSD, how it was brought to and disseminated throughout the U.S., and the role it played in de-fanging the counterculture.

I don't necessarily disagree, but what's interesting is that Julie Brown and the Miami Herald are printing it now.

The cash transactions are also not hearsay.

All of the Gulf satrapies are de facto Iran's enemies by virtue of playing host to U.S. bases in exchange for certain goodies handed to their ruling elite structures. Iran's goal is to hit them hard enough to make them pressure the U.S. to sue for peace.

Also, many of the hotels that have been targeted are ones where Iran likely had intelligence that U.S. soldiers had been moved after the bases were abandoned before the U.S. launched its "preemptive" attack.

What ideology do you believe is driving Iran? To me it just looks like "survive and deter unprovoked attacks from a genocidal aggressor, and don't become Syria 2.0"

I think it's the actions of the United States and Israel that beggar niche ideological explanations at this point.

If you're in Europe or one of the 20 Eyes countries it's the same thing.

Has China been cut off from Iranian oil? Your post implies that's a fait accompli.

It's not to the detriment of our ruling classes who have their hands on the actual levers of power.

If you don't have an industrial base, you don't have a military. Good thing we hollowed ours out to juice the S&P to 7000!

It's just funny that people can't stomach that their own ruling class is leading them down the primrose path so they have to go casting about for a foreign bogeyman who's making it happen, despite the fact that every major Western power has bent the knee to this action against Iran.

Of course it might cost a lot less if we didn't need to pay for unprovoked attacks on countries like Venezuela and Iran.

What if I told you the entire country of Russia is not actually oil fields, and Iran does export oil to them?

It's a nakedly imperial gambit, the Western ruling classes are attempting to deny Middle Eastern oil to Russia and China. Iran is their only capable opposition in the region, every other Gulf country is a bought-and-paid-for satrapy which just cosigned a genocide on its doorstep.

Unfortunately it's the same people asking for both, so you should be wondering at whom those weapons are really intended to be pointed.

Okay but then why is that also seemingly a red line must have for the Department of War? Isn't it just a tool of domestic surveillance and counterinsurgency for them? Seems like a distraction from any real U.S. national security objectives.

What does domestic surveillance have to do with national security objectives or keeping denizens of the U.S. safe (that is, the ones who are not lucky enough to be in its cosseted ruling class)?

Mark Zuckerberg was in a big hurry to call Trump a "badass" in the wake of the Butler hoax, and is clearly trying to appeal to the right with his cultivated jiu jitsu Chad image. It doesn't mean a damn thing what these CEOs are willing to say behind closed doors when their public decisions are to remain in lockstep with the agenda and fire anyone who asks questions about whether it's the right one.

Are you saying that we should consider the Chinese government to be an existential threat and menace to world peace on the same level as Nazi Germany?

What if the side that did Operation Paperclip and is currently champing at the bit to impose Total Surveillance on its own citizenry maybe isn't The Good Guys?

Zohran Mamdani has yet to demonstrate that he poses any serious impediment to Trump and the agenda of Trump's owners.