Well, people who are slavishly obedient to “handlers” no matter what, shouldn’t be surprised to be seen and treated like dogs by said “handlers”.

IMHO, one should never deliver blind trust and/or obedience to people you don’t personally know well for a long time, especially not to salesmen types (which is what politicians are), no matter how famous and how many other people you see delivering blind trust and obedience to them.

Neoliberals are hard-right, IMHO.

Think about it: the whole point of privatisation, reducing regulation, small government and so on is to reduce the power of the one entity - the State - which is (supposedly) controlled voters via votes which are (supposedly) of equal weight for all, and make it be below the power of Money which is controlled by a “voting” system were some have literally trillions of times the weight in chosing what happens than others.

In other words, Neoliberals are against Democracy, same as Fascists.

That’s also what popped-up in my mind at that title: giving money and weapons to an ethno-Fascist nation to mass murder children of another ethnicity is also “pure evil”.

In pure ethic and moral terms letting people starve is actually less evil than helping murder children, simply because the former is mostly a passive action (doing evil by refusing to act) whilst the latter is active (acting to, or in this case to help, do evil).

If one sees the former as worse than the latter because the victims of the former are Americans and the victims of the latter are not, one being guided by something else than morals or ethics - most likely some form of tribalism such as Nationalism.

In summary this specific shit, whilst evil, isn’t actually morally and ethically worse than what American Administrations have already been doing: the people activelly helping mass murder Palestinian children clearly don’t have the morals or ethics to refrain from doing this not-quite-as-evil thing, so will do it (and keep on sleeping like babies at night) if they think they will gain from it.

This isn’t at all surprising and not even close to the depts of evil they’re capable of reaching.

I think a more subtle point is that even by the most Business-oriented, cold, calculating, empathy-devoid, mathematical take possible were humans are nothing more than wealth generating cogs, the system is still shit because it’s not using said cogs in the most optimal way (which requires the “cogs” to be healthy and at least somewhat content with life).

In other words, even by the criteria of the hardest of hard Right, the system we have is shit because the over-exploitation of those they see as wealth producing peons and sub-optimal allocation of resources for necessary auxiliary social system means the entire system is producing less wealth than it could if said “wealth producing peons” were kept in better shape and more content.

And here I was thinking it was because of dark slimy waters and the bottom feeders …

Manufacturing Results is the main mode of operation of Think Tanks.

They actually showed bits of both speeches on TV news around here (I’m not in the US) and these guys are like a clown version of the Nazis.

• Left of center thinking person: “If you want to defeat Far-Right populism, you need to understand how low socio-economic conditions make people more susceptible to the siren song of populism and how fixing that would drain a significant proportion (if not most) of the electorate of the Far-Right”
• Liberals: “THAT’S COMMUNIST THINKING!”

He would’ve slapped the Democrat Leadership from moving even more to the Right (with things like getting close to the Chenney Family) all the while one of the main strategies of the other candidate was to promise to solve the problems of the working class.

Yeah, Trump was lying his ass of, as usual, but clearly a lot of people saw “candidate that promises to improve my life” vs “candidate that doesn’t even do that and cozies up with elites” and voted for the former or just thought “they’re all liars” and didn’t vote - relying on “fear of Trump” for the incumbent to get votes from an electorate which is economically crushed after 4 years of that incumbent’s policies even while de facto telling that electorate that “we don’t care about you”, all while the opposing candidate tells the “I care about you” is the very opposite of an intelligent strategy.

So the supposedly “leadership material” at the top of Democrat Party applying for the position of “leader of the nation” literally followed the worst possible strategy when it comes to the vote of the low politically engaged working class (who don’t live in the “couldn’t give a shit about economic inequality” permanent online identity wars battlefield that is American “politics” nowadays), yet according to the Democrat Party tribalist club fans, the fault couldn’t possible be of their incompetent, priviledged and “detached from what’s the real world for most people” leaders and the fault is all with “leftwingers”.

If America actually does keep on having free(-ish) election, people supporting this narrative are just making sure that after one or two Democrat Presidential terms, another MAGA type gets power again folowing the exact same strategy as Trump and they’ll probably be a more effective version of Trump.

Of course Russia and China are trying to interfere like crazy - they too want to get their desired outcomes and their governments are as sociopathic as the rest.

Yet, judging by the outcomes they’re getting, they’re minions at this next to insiders and even “allied” foreign powers like Israel.

Knowing that, ask yourself the question “why so much focus on messages that it’s China and Russia damaging America when those countries aren’t getting much from America compared to the likes of Israel or even more compare to very wealthy insiders?”

As I see it, it serves the dominating Propaganda forces to get the riff-raff distracted with the “usual suspects” (which have a long history as antagonists of America) and it’s a very easy thing to do because it dovetails with the usual nationalistic tribalism (“Americans” v “foreignes”) and America is insanelly big on Nationalism compared to all other countries but the overty Authoritarian ones.

So the Fascists in America are fed the “immigrants want your jobs” variant of “foreigners bad”, whilst Liberals get fed the “foreign powers are making our country worse” version - it keeps both groups looking away from those actually pillaging their country and undermining whatever little Democracy the country still has.

You’re find plenty on very wealthy and well connected insiders who gain from having the plebes - both those aligned with the Fascist Party and those aligned with the Neoliberal Party - focused on the “evil foreigners” rather than looking for blame in their own house.

There are several people in America with Means, Motive and Opportunity to push “foreigners are fucking up our country” narratives, both a Fascist-appealing version and a Liberal-appealing one.

LOL!

Keep up batting for the ultra-rich!

This is the Liberal’s version of “blame the foreigners” similar to how the Fascists blame immigrants.

It couldn’t possible the fault of insiders, many incredibly wealthy including some who actually own most of the fucking Press, plus yet others in positions of power and influence.

Of course not, those are “our” people. The country couldn’t possible be fucked up because of “our” people. The only explanation is those filthy foreigners.

It’s the exact same tribalist bollocks being deploye to protect the real monsters which are very much inside the walls, it’s just that one group of right wingers blame immigrants and the other blames foreign states - one arse, two cheeks, same shit.

Even more funny when this bollocks is used for America as done here is that thr one single country which American politicians support unwaveringly even when it’s against the very interests of America - Israel - ain’t one of the “filthy foreigners intervening in our nation”. I would looove to hear an explanation of how Russia or even China influence America more than Israel.

Whatever those nations are trying to do to manipulate America and Americans, it’s nothing compared with what some specific Americans are doing to the rest, especially the ones which own parts of the Press - China and Russia have very little influence in the country compared with those extremely wealthy people towards whom the Liberals point no fingers.

Respect is a Social Contract, not a Right.

It’s telling that the choice of the Judges/Administrators of the Royal Court Of Judges for a mural by a celebrated artist which is accusatory against the actions of said Judges, created on the wall of that building, was to hide it.

Guilty people are generally the ones whose instinctive reaction to critiques of their actions is to hide or suppress them.

I belonged to a small left-wing party in my own country where the oldies (the party was born from the union of parties which dated back to before the anti-Fascist Revolution in my country, which was more than 50 years ago) kinda decided to pass the baton to the younger generation and almost as one stepped aside and passed control to mainly 20-something years olds, all of whom scions of the Middle Class.

The result was that the party went up in votes when the Left had a resurgence, got into an informal coalition with the mainstream supposedly (but not really) center-left party in Government, to keep the right-wing one out of power, and after that in a period of two elections collapsed to the lowest vote ever.

As I see it, the party leadership lacked experience (being all from a narrow social circle and lacking all both broad and long life experience) and didn’t even have a concrete pre-made Ideology to guide them like, say, the old-fashioned Communists or even the Neoliberals have, because they dropped the strength of ideology of the old guard when they took over and instead just made it up as they went with no strong anchoring on fundamental Principles or a well thought framework, so ended up copying stuff they saw on the Net from Anglo-Saxon countries which was basically right-wing shit disguised as left-wing (i.e. for example “Equality” by treating people differently depending of the genes they were born with, aka Identity Politics), were easily manipulated and outsmarted by the mainstream party leadership and wouldn’t really spot social or economic problems until they had hit their narrow socio-economic segment for a while, or have well-thought strategies to solve them, ending up being just another bunch of politicians making the same promises as the rest (which means that outside the party faithful they had trouble gaining trust from the electorate who just saw them as people who sounded the same as the rest.

IMHO, I think left-wing movements need variety both on the ages of the people involved and their backgrounds in socio-economic terms and life experience, to avoid falling into political traps, becoming little more than groupthink circle-jerks and being disconnected from most of society - being left-wing means working for the many rather than the few, so you should probably have people from all over and of all kinds, in positions within the movement were they’re actually participating in setting the direction of that movement, rather than having only a narrow age range, socio-economic background or path in life in control.

The fetishization of youth is narrow-minded and self-defeating for a left-wing party, especially nowadays, when most young people grew up under Neoliberalism thus have interiorised as “the way things are” many economic and social practices they grew up with which really aren’t “the only way to do it” just the way things have been done in the last 5 decades, and have never thought about Politics in Power Dynamics terms since, unlike in the old days, there is very little talk of non-Governmental forms of Power in present day politics.

This is just as true for the fetishization of old age, social class or educational level - it’s not a specific age range, socio-economic origin or path in life that’s the problem, it’s the narrowing of ideas, perspectives and sources of information that is the result of one group monopolizing the discussion and decision-making.

We have ‘freedom of expression’

The HRA says that we are free to express ourselves as we see fit so long as it is within the confines of the law.

That’s only freedom of expression for those who make the laws.

Thanks for with your evasion of the question and even switching to attacking me rather than actually arguing the point, confirming that ultimatelly your entire chain of trust is anchored on nothing more than the nation from where the information, comes rather than trust levels being the results of system analysis.

That’s Nationalism not Rationalism, exactly the kind of shit that polutes most discussions about the Uyghur Genocide and ends up making people distrust most information about it in the West because the real and unbiased information is poluted and swamped by state-sponsored propaganda from the more heavilly Propagandistic Western nations being parroted by Nationalists who believe it because it comes from the “right” nations.

Plenty of things published about the 7 October attack have never been retracted, most notably the count of deaths assigned to Hamas which in light of the activation of the Sampson Doctrine by Israel was almost certainly wildly exagerated since the Israeli Military was activelly murdering any of their own citizens that had been captured by Hamas.

It took almost a year of Israel doubling down almost daily on Murdering and Lies for those retractions to happen and even then they were only in a few Western News media, not as far as I know in the actual Israeli News Media who still now and almost without expection (the notable exception being The Hareetz) keep on unqestioningly publishing whatever the IDF and the Israeli Government says as God’s Own Truth.

Using “the Press didn’t retracted it” as measure of trustworthiness of something published by the Press is just circular logic: News Media who knowingly published Propaganda aren’t going to retract it unless it blows up in their face to such a level that they are forced to do so, and that almost never happens with wordy “reports” that don’t stay long in the spotlight, are hard to validate and which basically say that “country we see as adversary are bad people”.

But even more simpler than that: replace everything with China and Chinese - if a Chinese Think Tank funded by the Chinese Government and even receiving funding from whatever is equivalent to the Department Of Defense in China, put out a report saying that the Uyghurs have been treated just as well as everybody else in China and all Western talk about an Huyghur Genocide are outright lies, would you believe them?

Because if you believe it when it’s all Australia and Australians but not when it’s the exact same structure but with China and Chinese instead, then your trust is entirelly anchored on your biases, not on any objective analysis of the problem space and the actors involved.

It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time.

Well, yeah, that’s the whole point of Think Tanks - it’s to produce reports for the media to unquestioningly parrot and in this day and age they definitelly unquestioningly parrot Think Tank reports without actually checking them, especially when they align with what the Government says and the target is a different nation’s Government (they’re more likely to actually check those things and even question them if the target is an internal group in a country, but even in certain countries you see for example reports of the words of spokespersons from, say, representatives of the industry treated with more implicit trust than those from unions, even though both sides should be thought of as equally biased towards certain interests),

Australia specifically falls in the “Country with wholly captured Press” category, same as the US, the UK and China itself.

As an example, a lot of the Propaganda pushed out around the 7 of October attack of Hamas on Israel was also pushed out by amongst others similar organisations and was widely reported in the media at the time as well as repeated by countless politicians in the West, and in the fullness of time most of that turned out to be wildly exagerated, misportrayal of events and even complete total bollocks.

Given the present day levels of “journalistic” “integrity” of the Press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, “widely reported on the media” isn’t the stamp of trustworthiness you seem to think it is.

Yeah, there is still some level of uncertainty as they could just have crafted that data, but Reports (which are mainly talkie talkie with selected pieces of information - hence prone t cherry picking) are even more distant from raw data hence harder to confirm as “the whole truth” and when they’re from Think Tanks funded by Governments (or, worse, with undisclosed funding sources) in nations that see China as an adversary (or China, or one of its allies) you know with absolute certainty that the makers of such reports have a huge incentive to push the viewpoint of the mainstream politicians of those nations.

Ultimatelly Trust is a scale rather than just two absolute points, and highly processed selective data wrapped with lots of text is itself less trustworthy because it’s harder to check that it’s both true and complete (i.e. hasn’t been cherry picked), and sources which are funded by those who openly have very specific views of the target of such reports are much less trustworthy on that subject than sources not suffering from such a conflict of interest.